Seòmar agus comataidhean

The two measurements that I am particularly interested in are the investment in net zero opportunities and the carbon reductions supported. You would expect those to correct themselves over time. Your ambitions there have not reduced.

My question for both agencies is on community wealth building. I see from your targets that both of you have had some success with, for example, supporting social enterprises and community development. What does community wealth building mean to you and what role do you play in that?

As you know, I have a political interest in the ethical considerations relating to funding to arms dealers—I support the First Minister’s move in that regard—so I am interested in your comments about human rights checks. Further to my previous question, it is frustrating to hear about small companies being unable to get funding when BAE Systems, which made £3 billion in profits last year, and Raytheon, which is the second biggest arms company in the world, have received funding. However we feel about the morality of the decisions that such organisations make in relation to which countries they sell arms to, it seems very odd that those huge organisations are getting money from Scottish Enterprise when small growing businesses are not able to get support. Do you want to comment on that?

I have one question to put to each of the agencies, to be followed by a more general question to put to both of them.

Following on from what the convener mentioned in relation to HIE’s targets, I am interested in the targets that have been presented in the report. I have looked only at the top-level table; I have not dug into the details. I want to give you an opportunity to talk through some of that. In nearly all cases, the targets have been exceeded—sometimes wildly so. I am curious about what is going on there. Is it that targets were not set ambitiously enough? Is it that the situation has changed? On the one hand, wildly exceeding your targets makes it look like you are being very effective, but, on the other, it makes it feel like the targets, when they were set, were not in alignment with the situation.

I have three questions. The first is about community wealth building. When the committee has been taking evidence on the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill, various witnesses have talked about how the enterprise agencies should and can be involved in community wealth building. What role should Scottish Enterprise have in community wealth building? Last year, in a similar session, I asked about how much focus Scottish Enterprise was directing at supporting co-operative social enterprises and other more democratic business models, as that is one of the key elements of community wealth building.

My next question is about the sectors that are supported. Josie Saunders, who is the chief executive of Ceteris, which runs the Business Gateway contract for Clackmannanshire Council, emailed me in frustration about many of the businesses that Ceteris supports having outgrown Business Gateway. She said that, although Scottish Enterprise staff have been helpful, small successful Scottish companies that she feels have so much potential—she listed a prebiotic drinks company, a food manufacturing company, a destination management company and gin and whisky distilleries—have not been able to secure Scottish Enterprise support, even though she feels that those are exactly the kind of growing companies that we ought to support in Scotland. Can you help me to understand why such businesses might not get support and how you choose which businesses to support?

I turn to the South of Scotland Enterprise. Again looking at the high-level reporting on the targets, I noticed that investment in net zero and carbon accounting has reduced in the past year, if I have read that correctly. I do not know whether you have any thoughts that you want to share on that.

I understand that. However, witnesses have brought up questions such as how many businesses are co-operatives or social enterprises and how many people they employ, and we do not know that. I am not aware that we have data on it, and the evidence that we have taken suggests that it is not widely understood. Employee-owned businesses are a key pillar for community wealth building. However, that is just an example. I take the point that procurement is one of the easier pillars to implement and measure, and that some of the other five pillars are more difficult to measure, but we will want to make progress with those pillars as well.

Thank you.

I would like to ask about how we will measure the success of the bill. Section 2 says that one of the intentions behind it is to reduce inequality. I have no issue with that, but the second stated intention is to increase “economic growth”. Just about every witness who has given evidence to the committee has suggested that gross domestic product is not a good measure of the things that we are trying to achieve through the bill, such as increasing opportunity, improving crisis management and increasing connections. How would the minister measure “economic growth”? What does he mean in having it as one of the stated intentions behind the bill?