Hansard

I very much welcome the strategy and the opportunity to debate it. I am pleased to see the cabinet secretary in her place, focusing on the gender aspect of her brief.

I have been reflecting on the past few years and, in particular, the youth unemployment crisis that we have experienced and from which, to a degree, we are still recovering. Governments of all hues across the whole of Europe responded to that crisis by appealing to the big multinational companies. They competed to bring new jobs and new facilities to their respective shores, often with cash incentives. A couple of years after that, many of those companies were embroiled in tax avoidance schemes, which led to a huge amount of public outrage. The political response to that was to start to talk about a more responsible capitalism, whereby we say to companies that we expect them to pay their taxes, but if they are receiving public money we expect them also to pay a living wage and to build apprenticeships into their contracts, and not to promote a zero-hours culture or to be involved in blacklisting—in fact, we expect them never to have done so. However, it has always been about bartering with the big guys, and too often the big guys win. We can make demands of them, but if we go too far we push them away and lose the investment in the country’s future.

Can we imagine a different type of economy—one that is built on home-grown businesses that pride themselves on being decent employers, rooted in the communities that they employ and which they buy from and sell to? Realising that ambition requires a change of culture.

Arguably, we do not value businesses enough in Scotland. As a nation, we have a proud history of public service but perhaps we are less proud of people who choose to make their own money and of how they go about doing that. Being pro-business in Scotland tends to mean believing in low taxes and deregulation, when it could be about being an enterprising nation that is confident and engenders skills and a belief in our nation’s great traditions and passing them on to the next generation. Setting up their own business could be good not only for the individual but for their community. That type of attitude has to start in schools, colleges and universities. Only when we get a critical mass in the next generation will we be able to drive the cultural change that we are looking for.

That applies in a number of ways. We need to think about the debates that we have had in the chamber about work readiness and what that means. We often talk about work readiness in the context of matching the skills that come out of our schools and colleges with the skills that business needs, but it is always about the supply chain for somebody else’s business; we never talk about what it means in the context of setting up one’s own business.

In all college and university courses, and in schools, there should be much more emphasis on setting up a business. Young people should be taught about rates and how they work, about tax and what Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs is—and about what would happen if they were to get on the wrong side of HMRC. They should be taught about digitising business and the new opportunities that come from that. They should be taught about markets and how to pitch, turnover versus profit, whether one can recruit to grow and what the balance of risk is. Those are all staple issues for business students, but they should be built into all courses, in all disciplines. They should not just be a unitary extra; students should not be told, “This week, class, we’re going to talk about how to set up your own business.” Those issues should be embedded in the ethos of the work that goes on in our colleges and universities. Setting up a business should be an option for all students. Students in our colleges should be told, “It’s an option for students like you.”

I look at what my college, Edinburgh College, does on a number of campuses around Edinburgh. Mechanics, joiners, hairdressers, web designers and fitness instructors come out of the college every week. They are all predisposed to work for themselves but often that is not an option for them. They could start out with a start-up but they need a bit more help. It does not necessarily have to be a lonely activity. Pairing a web designer with a fitness instructor creates a whole new business model that could be explored. It could be the job of a college, school or university to encourage that type of activity. We need to de-risk the process. Colleges could invest in individuals to help them put their foot on the first step of the ladder, knowing that the rewards of that investment could come back to the college. Colleges could incubate such ideas and encourage people to work together, knowing that the benefits will come back to the college community and benefit everyone else.

I spoke earlier today to a former chair of the Federation of Small Businesses in Edinburgh who is an excellent female role model for women in business in her own right. I asked her what she wants from a strategy that encourages women into business and she said, “More role models.” Funnily enough, I had a similar conversation with an academic at the University of Edinburgh yesterday about the challenges of trying to engage women in science subjects and she, too, talked about role models. We need role models not just at the top of an industry—it is not about the elite—but at every stage of the journey. Yes, Michelle Mone is a fantastic role model for women in business, but Christina McKelvie and Christine Grahame talked about women in their communities who are already running their own businesses and who are also fantastic role models. We need to tell those stories so that women who are thinking about setting up a business can see somebody like them doing the same thing and draw strength from that.

The same applies to women who are already established in a business environment and want to expand their business. They need help to take that risk, employ more people or offer a different product. They need to be able to meet more women like them who have already taken such risks.

The first challenge is to see more women in business, full stop. However, let us not miss out on the opportunity to get it right and have the right mix of women at the forefront of public debate on this agenda. I am sure that the cabinet secretary will take that on board.