Meeting of the Parliament 30 October 2024
I will come on to talk about businesses and tax in a minute, as well as inward investment, which is an absolute measure of the confidence that businesses have in the Scottish economy.
The number of projects in Scotland grew, yet again, by almost 13 per cent last year, which was more than double the rate of growth across the UK. Indeed, that compares with a fall across the whole of Europe.
Scotland’s position as a top-performing area of the UK outside of London in attracting international foreign direct investment has been maintained for the ninth year running. That is a real measure of the confidence of international businesses in how the Scottish economy is being run.
Since its launch, the Scottish National Investment Bank has committed almost £650 million and brought in a further £1.4 billion of third-party investment for businesses and projects across Scotland. That has enabled the building of affordable homes and has supported 1,800 jobs in investee businesses, and nearly 58,000 tonnes of carbon have been avoided as a result of the bank’s investments.
The Government has set its sights clearly on establishing Scotland as one of Europe’s leading start-up economies by fostering an environment where innovation and high-growth businesses flourish. Techscaler, the Scottish Government’s £42 million national programme for creating, developing and scaling tech start-ups through education programmes, expert mentoring and a growing network of physical hubs, has had more than 1,000 applications from more than 900 individuals and 700 businesses accepted, and 36 per cent of them have women founders. Scotland’s financial services sector, which Craig Hoy mentioned, is one of Europe’s leading hubs for fintech start-ups and creating that excellent cluster, and it is a consequence of the work and focus on the part of the Scottish Government. It is difficult to characterise those as failures.
Craig Hoy talks about public sector work. I say to Mr Hoy that we are proud of the fact that we have more front-line staff—doctors, nurses, midwives, teachers—in Scotland than the average across the rest of the UK, and we are proud that we pay them a wage that is commensurate with their contribution to the Scottish economy.