Hansard

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate, and I thank the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee for its report.

It was interesting to read how other businesses’ experiences compare with mine when I sought help from organisations including business gateway and its predecessor local enterprise companies. Over time, I had dealings with several local business gateway offices and local enterprise companies. My experiences reflect what was said in submissions to the committee’s inquiry and in its findings, which is that the picture is a very mixed one. It can be a very strangled route to finding the service and potential funding stream that relates to the issues that a business might have, either in start-up or expansion.

A wide variety of potential businesses and business experiences present at business gateway, so I recognise that there is disparity in its responses, with business gateway faring better with people who are at the basic beginner level than it does with those who already have business experience.

I have tried on several occasions to use the services of business gateway, but I found navigating the system to be quite frustrating. Although I found that the advisers were willing and able, there was a lack of clarity about what they were supposed to be delivering. I have never really got past the first couple of meetings with business gateway. In my experience, it does not move fast enough to keep up with a business plan. Very often, businesses cannot wait as long as is required to work through the business gateway process.

The whole point of the public bodies that work on business support is to encourage entrepreneurship and ensure that good business ideas get the best opportunities to succeed and add to our economy. Given that the biggest proportion of businesses that do not make it will falter within the first five years, it is crucial that those public bodies get it as right as possible at the inception.

The initial business plan is important, but as any businessperson will tell us, it rarely resembles the actual pathway on which the new business eventually travels. Any help and advice that is offered needs, therefore, to mirror that adaptability and flexibility. That is something that business gateway and other agencies need to consider and improve on.

The advice and funding landscape is cluttered. Moreover, it can be confusing and frustratingly slow moving, with too many hoops to jump through for what I think can be quite basic advice. Progression on to Scottish Enterprise business support offerings is not always signposted, and if people have not travelled the path before, that can delay progress. Some very good funding and advice avenues are available, but signposting towards them is often not apparent, as is reflected in the committee’s report.

The aim, of course, is to encourage entrepreneurs—the risk takers, job creators and wealth creators—in order to feed a prosperous and sustainable economy in as diverse as possible a range of sectors. Scotland has a fantastic legacy on the world stage and we should be very proud of it. We can—as has been proved—punch way above our weight. However, as recent statistics show, and as has been mentioned already, our level of new-start businesses trails behind that of the rest of the UK, despite the investment through business gateway and Scottish Enterprise.

There are support networks out there. The trouble seems to be lack of visibility of services and lack of continuity between the offers from those services, which leads to confusion when people are seeking the most appropriate support. I note that the committee says in its report that business support agencies need to be more integrated, which would lead to more partnership working. I agree with that. It is not just about initial support for a new-start business; it should also be about support for growth throughout a business’s evolution. Again, however, that pathway is not clear.

Good advice is available on how expansion can be funded, on support for marketing and on innovation and technology, but unless a business knows how to navigate the system, it can miss out on that important support.

As has also been noted today, the business support network has not been properly audited. That has to change, too. In fact, the whole system needs to be audited, streamlined and made more fit for purpose.

A person who has the spark of an idea and the bravery to pursue it needs encouragement, and the pathway should allow them a resource that allows them to deliver from that spark right the way through to being a global leader, if that is their ambition. Our number of new-start businesses that are registering is lower than that in the rest of the UK, and the number that are reaching “big business” status is low. We can point to a Scottish economy that is heavily reliant on SMEs, with few big businesses.

Rhoda Grant mentioned that—although I slightly disagree with her in that one of the main stepping stones for an SME that is seeking to become a bigger business is for it to capture projects in the public procurement process. The Scottish Government can definitely do better in that area. Too many public projects end up being awarded to companies from beyond these shores, with our companies not being given opportunities to deliver them and become bigger.

The journey of an entrepreneur is a difficult one. It usually takes several attempts and involves much personal risk and sacrifice along the way. It probably requires an injection of personal equity and loans against property, and it probably means that the entrepreneur is the last person to be paid at the end of the month—if they get paid. It also means inordinately long hours. After all that, if the person succeeds, is still there after five years and has reached the position in which they can begin to reap the rewards of their bravery and effort, we find that the Scottish Government wants to tax them more than such people are taxed in any other part of the UK.

The system is not entrepreneur friendly and is not best designed for business growth. The truth is that rather than punish businesses for daring to be successful, we need to encourage them to take risks, because in order to support our public services we need to grow the tax base and develop a well-paid workforce—we need to increase the tax take by developing the economy. We need to give businesses the very best start and the chance to succeed on their journey.

The current support system is cluttered and clumsy. It needs to be reviewed and streamlined, with clear definitive objectives. Being a business owner is a hard enough road; the least that we can do is give people the best possible start.