Meeting of the Parliament 11 September 2025
Kenny Gibson’s party seeks to introduce new frontiers and barriers. It is very difficult to talk about stability and certainty from the position of the SNP benches.
The document “A Trading Nation”, which was published in 2019, was important. It was a serious bit of work, and it sought to set out clear steps. That is why I was genuinely surprised when I saw the latest update, because it has more maps in it than numbers. That is a problem.
In the 2019 document, which came after Brexit, there was a clear articulation of what had to happen. The strategy sought to increase from 11,000 the number of jobs that are derived from exporting, but there has been no update on that number. It sought to integrate Scottish Development International with the rest of the business support regime, including Business Gateway. To be fair, I thought that the Deputy First Minister set out some useful things in her speech, but we could use more clarity about how that integration will be carried forward. The strategy discussed expanding the GlobalScot network to 2,000, which is another bit of information that it would be useful to get a progress update on. Furthermore, a ministerial trade board was set up but, unfortunately, it met most recently 18 months ago, as far as I can tell.
If the Government is serious about trade, it has to be serious about the progress that it is making against what was a substantial bit of work. As I alluded to in my intervention on the Deputy First Minister, on page 13 of the 2019 document, under “Monitoring and evaluation”, the bottom line is very clearly set out, and it says that the approach sought to increase exports as a proportion of gross domestic product to 25 per cent.
Kate Forbes rose—