Seòmar agus comataidhean

I want to follow up on the point about partnership working. I am keen to get the panel’s feedback on how effective regional economic partnerships have been so far. I will start with Jane Morrison-Ross, because my observation in the south of Scotland is that there is a very strong strategy and it is a very cluttered landscape but, when you look at the delivery, it is not always clear to me who takes the lead. For example, the very first action in the south of Scotland strategy is to

“Develop and deliver interventions to address immediate and longer term labour and skills shortages”.

Then, under “Key Partners”, it lists 11 partners that are involved. How do I assess whether that is being delivered when there are so many partners? It is not clear who is taking the lead on each of the interventions.

The project that I am talking about was a retail scheme with an element of housing to bring people into the town centre and boost that economy. It was very much an economic project, but clearly it falls outwith your remit.

I have a brief follow-up on the revenue side of things, although I know that my colleague has a question on losses for companies.

This question is probably for Jane Morrison-Ross. Coming back to what has been said about the challenges with the finances, I note that one of the observations that businesses, social enterprises and other third sector organisations make at the moment is that, when they approach South of Scotland Enterprise, they find that it has no revenue left. In fact, I hear that phrase all the time.

Perhaps this is more of a question for Anthony Daye, because the issue might well keep him awake at night. Is it fair to say that your budget is such that you are not overcommitted as such but that your commitments are pretty much already in place? Are you unable to directly support as many businesses over the next couple of years, simply because your revenues are already significantly committed?

There will still be agencies that will effectively have overlapping responsibilities. That is the nature of South of Scotland Enterprise. Even local authorities will still have an element of overlapping responsibilities.

How far do we need to go? Do we need to change those responsibilities? Can we put in place any other mechanism to ensure that somebody at least takes the lead? Often the experience in regional economic partnerships, for example, is that several organisations have similar responsibilities but nobody takes a lead. What mechanism do we need to put in place to make sure that somebody is delivering and taking the lead on that when they have that overlapping responsibility? Some of those responsibilities are quite general and they are not often specific.

Somebody in that circumstance would be in phase 1, which would last as long as the compulsory treatment, but somebody who has not had a compulsory treatment order would have only the six-month period. Is your concern that that six-month period may not be long enough for somebody with a mental health problem to deal with their debt?

Good morning to the panel. Can I raise a number of questions about the mental health moratorium working group? The working group has recommended that only those in compulsory treatment should be able to access a mental health moratorium, which is quite a narrow criterion. It is narrower than the definition in England and Wales. Does any of the panel have a view on that approach that they would like to share with the committee?

Good morning, James. I am interested in the boundaries of city region deals, given that my area, the Borders, is in two, including in one in the north of England, but I will not go there at the moment.

I want to highlight the issue that you raise about the cluttered landscape where several organisations often have overlapping responsibilities and there is no one-stop shop for the customer base. You do not suggest decluttering the number of players in the landscape. Instead, you recommend building collaboration into the design of the bodies. How do we do that, given the fact that we have been here before with the enterprise and skills review in 2016 and interagency competition is probably worse now than it was before that review?

Following up on that point, you talk about the standard moratorium that is in place at the moment. That provides a six-month window, which has increased from the six weeks that it was previously. There is a big debate as to what that timeline should be now. Is six months an appropriate period for the second phase of the mental health moratorium, which our witnesses last week said should be the case? In the work that you do, do you detect that that period of time is sufficient?

You mentioned that the timescale for the wider moratorium was extended to six months. I think that my colleagues will have some specific questions on that. However, there is a fear that, if that is reduced and we go back to the previous timescale, a lot of people who have mental health problems will struggle, if they are not covered by those criteria. How many people will be covered by compulsory mental health treatment, and therefore by the moratorium, if they have debt issues? Have you done any modelling? When you discussed the criteria, what sort of numbers were you talking about?

That is very helpful. You mentioned that you would support a slightly wider definition of the eligibility criteria. What would that definition entail? Would it be the same definition that is used in England and Wales? Are there particular challenges in how we define things? It is quite easy to define compulsory treatment, but widening the definition would make things more challenging.