Meeting of the Parliament 02 June 2015
That is required. Also required are the involvement and acceptance of all the workforce.
We have talked about skills investment. We have to expand our skills base. For example, we have to burst the gender bubble that says that it is okay for women to work on oil rigs in the North Sea as long as they do the catering rather than the engineering. I repeat the call that we certainly need many more women entrepreneurs.
In defining the focused markets, products and services and sectors that we wish to win, the big opportunity will be capitalised on only if we develop sales and marketing skills as per the action framework. That is a requirement, and it must be supported by our enterprise agencies. We need to develop sales and marketing skills and language skills, and we need to understand international customs. If we do so, the world is our oyster.
I could speak about the issue with passion for days, never mind seven or eight minutes. We have a great opportunity and I believe that the action framework provides the basis for taking it. As I said, there is a need for recurring review. With private-backed public capital investment in new technologies and infrastructure, we can certainly improve. We need a continued focus on investment and people’s skills and on having the right services and products. We need to improve productivity and increase the participation of trade unions, businesses, the third sector and communities. All that will help, as will enhanced population growth—in the current environment, I say that meaningfully and strongly. Consequently, we must also have realistic and proportionate equality of income.
Scotland can do, and Scotland will do.
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