Hansard

As other members of the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee have done, I thank the clerks and the Scottish Parliament information centre for all their assistance, as well as everyone who gave evidence to the committee’s inquiry into business support. As Gordon Lindhurst said, the inquiry focused on business support to SMEs at a local level, with a particular focus on the business gateway service. The inquiry was timely, given that it is a decade since that service, which was previously delivered by local enterprise companies, was transferred to local government.

In the context of some of the remarks that have been made about our inquiry, I commend all those who deliver business gateway on a daily basis. Committee colleagues and I visited a number of businesses and business gateway offices across the country, and we were generally impressed with the level of service that advisers on the ground deliver. Of course, there is always a danger on such committee visits that we get to see all the good stuff but, nevertheless, it was impressive to see the range of work. During the visits, we learned of the different approaches that councils take, which is an issue to which I will return in a minute.

It is important to stress that the inquiry was not an evaluation of the quality or content of business gateway services per se, but an evaluation of and an inquiry into the nature and structure of the service in the context of wider support for business. On one reading, the issue has nothing to do with the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee, because the business gateway is a local service that is delivered by local government with local government revenues. However, it is legitimate for Parliament to inquire into how critical services such as business support are delivered.

We know that authorities provide the service in different ways, and we heard good reasons why Glasgow does not do the same as other authorities. However, one reason why we wanted to look at the issue and why we discovered that it is important is set out in one of our key recommendations. We concluded that it is

“regrettable that there has been a drift away from the original intended purpose of Business Gateway”.

COSLA has explained why that has happened, but our point is that it has happened

“without any strategic plan or review”

to inform the change. We went on:

“The policy intention for Business Gateway to act as the entry point for businesses ... has not been fulfilled.”

COSLA does not agree with that, which is fair enough because, of course, our findings are open to challenge. The Government’s response, as well as COSLA’s, provide plenty of challenge.

I welcome the broadly supportive tone of ministers’ response to the committee, although there continues to be confusion over whether and how the enterprise and skills review engaged with the topic. Rhoda Grant made some remarks to that effect a moment ago. In the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Economy and Fair Work’s letter to the committee, he said:

“The Enterprise and Skills Review did not explicitly involve Business Gateway and that is a matter you note. That Review was a discussion about improving national systems and as such would not have been the right forum to account for the local nuances of the Business Gateway offering.”

However, the Scottish Government said in its response to the committee’s recommendation 52, on the drift away from the original rationale:

“The Enterprise and Skills Review concluded that the division of responsibilities between national agencies and locally delivered Business Gateway was right.”

I am not sure how a review that explicitly did not look into local service delivery could have concluded that the division of responsibilities is right. There is quite a lot of retrospective fudging of what the enterprise and skills review said.

COSLA provided a robust challenge to some of the committee’s findings. That is welcome. It has to be said, as Dean Lockhart said, that we were frustrated by the difficulties associated with obtaining and collating data on performance. My dear colleague Jackie Baillie will bring light to bear on that concern of the committee.

Contrary to what COSLA asserted in its response, the committee never alleged that

“Local Government is not accountable”,

per se. What we found was that, from the information that was available to us, it was not clear how the service could provide the kind of information that would allow for accountability, not just to councillors and officials but to the wider community, which expects a good service from business gateway.

Likewise, the committee did not argue that business gateway should be subsumed into some wider national programme; rather, we argued that there should be better alignment.

That is why the Irish experience appears to us to be very instructive and why the visit to Dublin was of such keen interest—and that was not only because it was my first trip to Ireland travelling on my new passport, because I travelled directly from Dublin to the European Court of Justice to hear our article 50 case, or because I was in the company of my dear friend Jackie Baillie and Gordon MacDonald and we had a wonderful day in Dublin.

The Irish experience is interesting, because the EU has identified Ireland, Finland and Denmark as three of the top-performing countries for business support. In Ireland, a service has evolved that provides what appears to be a good integration of national programmes, through Enterprise Ireland, with the work of local enterprise offices, which are embedded in local councils. Service-level agreements and funding are agreed with Enterprise Ireland, but—an important point—local councils have substantial discretion and freedom to develop and pursue their own priorities. A consistent framework of accountability and alignment appears to deliver a good service.

I welcome the commitment from ministers and COSLA to take note of the Irish experience. Business gateway is and should remain a local service that provides locally based business support to those who need it, but our inquiry demonstrated that quite a lot of work could be done to improve delivery and to ensure that there is better integration with national services.