Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, and welcome to the 15th meeting in 2021 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. Following advice that was issued by Parliament last week, the committee meeting is being held virtually.

The first item of business is a decision to take items 3 and 4 in private. Are committee members content to do that?

Members indicated agreement.

I will bring in Colin Beattie. Thank you for your patience.

The substantive part of the meeting is an evidence session on Scotland’s supply chain. We are looking at the short-term and medium-term challenges for Scotland’s supply chain and how those and the shifts in the supply chain are impacting on Scotland’s economy. We are also interested in long-term solutions. We want to consider how to build future resilience and whether there are opportunities to develop domestic supply chains in Scotland.

I am pleased to welcome our witnesses. Professor Iain Bomphray is the director of the lightweight manufacturing centre, Professor Keith Ridgway is the executive chair of the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland, and Nick Shields is the head of business support services at Scottish Enterprise. As always, I ask members and witnesses to keep questions and answers as concise as possible. It is helpful if members indicate which of the witnesses they would like to respond to their questions. That will make it easier for broadcasting to keep us on track.

I will start the questions. Professor Bomphray, the committee is looking at some of the solutions to the supply chain challenges that we face. Over the course of the inquiry—we are in the last stages now—we have identified the pressures due to Covid, different trading arrangements resulting from Brexit, labour supply and skills markets. Those are the pressure points that we have identified. Yours is an organisation that looks to respond to some of those challenges, which have existed for a few years. The landscape for supply chains has also changed dramatically since the Covid pandemic started. As an organisation, have you changed? How are you responding? Do you agree that we have identified the correct pressures? What impact have those pressures had on what you are trying to achieve? Have they made your work more challenging? Perhaps you could talk a wee bit about where the organisation is at.

Would Nick Shields like to respond? That would give you the opportunity to set out how Scottish Enterprise is responding to the additional pressures in the supply chain over the past 18 months.

Last week, we heard evidence from the construction and house-building sectors that supply chain pressures are causing a degree of sluggishness in those sectors because they cannot get jobs completed or started. Do you see that among the businesses that you deal with? Are downward pressures being created on their ability to grow?

As procurement has been mentioned, I will bring in Colin Smyth at this point—earlier than expected—as I know that he wants to efxplore that issue.

That is helpful.

I am sorry to interject, but we have to finish by half 11. It is unfortunate that you have been the third witness to speak, Bill—you have been a very good witness, so I am sorry to, again, ask you to be brief.

I will bring in Jamie Halcro Johnston.

The main item of business this morning is the fifth evidence session in our inquiry into Scotland’s supply chain, in which we are looking at the short-term and medium-term structural challenges that Scotland’s supply chain faces and how the challenges and shifts in supply chains are impacting on Scotland’s economy. We want to consider future resilience and whether there are opportunities to develop domestic supply chains.

This week, we are looking at the construction sector. I thank our witnesses for joining us. I welcome Gordon Banks, who is managing director of Cartmore Building Supply Company Ltd; Bill Ireland, who is chief executive of Logan Energy Ltd; and Stephen Kemp, who is a board member of the Scottish Building Federation.

We have received apologies from Stephen Good, who is chief executive of the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre, who cannot attend due to illness. We send him our best wishes for a speedy recovery.

As usual, I ask members and witnesses to keep questions and answers concise, and it would be helpful if members could direct their questions to the witness they wish to respond.

I will start with an introductory question. The supply chain challenges in the construction sector have been quite high profile, so people are aware of the challenges around labour shortages and the supply of goods and materials. Can you give us an overview of the challenges that the sector has faced, when those challenges started and what the reasons are for them? Maybe you could also refer to what you think the economic impact of that has been for Scotland. That question goes first to Gordon Banks.