Hansard

I will come to all the points that Mr Simpson raised but, by way of context, it is important to say that there are a lot things that we do in investing in the private sector and I think of those in three categories. The first category is the proactive investment for growth that we make, whether that is through the new Scottish National Investment Bank, Scottish Enterprise and the other agencies or schemes such as the Scottish growth scheme. That is where the bulk of the money goes. That is us saying, as a country, that we want to invest in companies that can do good things for Scotland and where we see a role for us. The way in which those schemes operate—the objectives, principles and means by which they make choices—is all laid out in detail. The new bank has a set of missions, which is a new approach: mission-driven investment. That is category 1 and it is a lot of what we do; it is certainly the majority. Category 2 is a much more reactive set of support, which is for companies in crisis. Because of Covid, this conversation is very different from the one that we would have had even just over a year ago. We have obviously had to put very significant funds into companies this year to support cash flow. That is lifeline support the likes of which we have never seen before. We have provided much of that in grant form but, in addition, the UK Government has had some significant loan schemes that companies in Scotland have been able to access. However, there are potentially further challenges ahead for many companies. That second category—reactive support that we have had to provide in this emergency situation—also draws from a series of principles. An example that I will say a little bit more about is the pivotal enterprise resilience fund, which had a very clear set of principles and was starting to help us to make choices about which companies we see as key and where we needed to do something specific. That is an important part of the overall picture. As you say, there are then the high-profile, one-off cases, which are often policy driven. They do not form a blanket category of businesses that we choose to invest in. Instead, we intervene in response to particular situations. For example, in the case of Ferguson Marine, the contractor had failed but island communities still needed the lifeline services. At that point, the Government made a choice about the right way to get the ferries completed, save the jobs and give the yard a future if possible. That was very much driven by a contractor failure; we had to respond to that failure and work out what to do. A range of options were appraised, which eventually took the Government to a final decision to take Ferguson Marine into public ownership. The BiFab case was different. It was about how the overall market for renewables and the supply chain could continue to operate in Scotland, and a deal was done to support the involvement of a new investor. Sadly, as everyone knows, that has not worked out as was hoped, and an administration process is going on. The sale of Prestwick airport was driven by different things again. It is a strategic asset for the whole of Scotland and there was a strategy to take it into public ownership with a clear intention to return it to the private sector. Those cases were all different and they were driven by different things. They do not form a category of cases where people decided to do things for a blanket set of reasons to do with private investment. Those one-off cases are driven by extensive internal and external advice. Audit Scotland has been able to look at all those transactions in detail, both at the time when they happened and subsequently, and everything that we do is underpinned by the requirements of the Scottish public finance manual. We have been in conversations with Audit Scotland and the committee for some time about how we can crystallise all that into a single framework. I will give you an update on that. We have always believed—and we still believe—that the Scottish public finance manual underpins everything and, over the past couple of years, a lot more detailed guidance has been put into it to help people who make decisions, particularly on loans, equities and guarantees. The principles work that we have done in the context of Covid has added another dimension to the ways in which we can think about the choices that Governments need to make. As I hope Audit Scotland would recognise, we are continually in dialogue with it on the matter, and we are learning, drawing from experience and continuing to improve. We have a set of principles that we will integrate into the SPFM, which will help to guide the decisions that Governments need to take. I can say a bit more about the principles if you like, or maybe I should pause there and check whether you want to go back to anything that I have said.