Seòmar agus comataidhean

Fraser, do you want to add anything about whom we could learn from?

I ask John Ferguson the same question.

Do not worry—I am very much on to that issue.

Obviously, your business is quite unique. I confess that I have eaten cakes and been to film nights and exhibitions there. Your focus is very much on bringing people physically into your building, and you cannot replace that online. Is that a particular challenge, particularly in a rural area, given the fact that you are basically asking people to travel to your business in an area in which public transport is largely not an option? Do you see that as a barrier to reducing the overall carbon footprint for the business?

The message from businesses is not about the number of different schemes; it is about having a one-stop shop to go to. No matter how many agencies are behind a single portal, businesses want to go to one place to get the information regularly. The issue comes up a lot.

What also comes up is the issue of awareness. The FSB told the committee that its members felt that the main economic agency, Scottish Enterprise, was not visible enough during the pandemic. In fact, the quote it gave us was:

“We were in the middle of a crisis. Scottish Enterprise was not there.”

Do you think that is a fair reflection? Why do you think the FSB is saying that?

Thanks very much. A key part of this is making businesses aware of what is out there, not necessarily that there is a range of agencies. Small businesses are simply getting on with the day job. They have their heads down and they do not know what is available.

Listening as you have said and learning from the pandemic, what changes does the Scottish Government plan to make in order to raise awareness of what is available to businesses, particularly around equality of awareness? One of the issues that was raised with us is the need to break down the barriers to businesses being led by women, in particular. What is being done to raise that issue of equality as well as awareness of what business support is out there?

I will continue on the role of the agencies. The cabinet secretary has just said that there are a lot of agencies that provide support. It is five years since the enterprise and skills review. One of the issues that constantly comes up from business in evidence to this committee is the extent to which the business support landscape is still very cluttered. In fact, the Federation of Small Businesses told the committee that the system is too complex. Cabinet secretary, do you think that the enterprise and skills review, in its implementation, has done enough to declutter the landscape and give businesses a one-stop shop approach? If not, how will that be dealt with in the forthcoming economic strategy?

Thank you—that is a big problem for me, as a Christmas-eve shopper.

Is this the new normal? Are the challenges that we face, in many cases—to be frank—here to stay? Do we have to rethink the just-in-time stock approach? What does it mean for our high streets? At the moment, walking down any high street can be quite a depressing experience, given the shop closures. Are these long-term challenges, or is it a short-term phenomenon?

I would like to follow up on the question to Ewan MacDonald-Russell on retail. How great are the short-term supply challenges that retailers face in terms of stock levels? What does that mean for families as we gear up for Christmas? Are we going to have shortages of particular items on our high streets?

I very much support a flexible approach to grant criteria—in fact, I wrote to your predecessor to push for that early on in the pandemic, because it was clear that businesses were slipping through the gaps when it came to Government support during that period. I am conscious that such an approach makes it difficult for businesses to find out what is available—they cannot just go to a website and find the criteria for a grant, for example. I have lost track of the number of businesses that I have directed to look at things such as the crisis fund.

Secondly, although a flexible approach is a good one, it presents challenges around governance. I am often asked by businesses, “How come that business got a grant and I didn’t?” It is not easy to tick the boxes on criteria. How do you tackle those two challenges? I think that we should roll out a flexible approach across other agencies.

I have a follow-up question to Colin Beattie’s question, which is for Malcolm Roughead.

The summer was obviously incredibly busy with staycations—for obvious reasons, a lot of people who would normally have gone abroad did not and stayed in Scotland. As a result, prices were quite high.

What did VisitScotland do, and, more important, what will the organisation do differently, to promote areas that are not the most obvious destinations for mainly historical reasons rather than because they do not have a lot to offer? There are parts of Scotland that, if we are being honest, do not need a lot of promotion, but other areas are still very much untapped. The interest in staycations gives us an opportunity to really promote those areas, boost visitor numbers and make a big contribution to inclusive growth. I am sure that Malcolm Roughead will know the areas that I am talking about in the south of Scotland, where there is real potential that we have a chance to dig into.