Our surveys have shown that there are a lot of businesses that would like to be exporting. What is stopping them? The principal reason that we are picking up is that the companies do not believe that they have the right products or services to export and do not know where there would be a demand for their products or services.
It is important to get to the right businesses at the right time so that we can maximise the opportunity for those businesses to export. That is why private sector organisations such as chambers of commerce have an important role to play. We deal daily, face to face, with businesses in 20-odd offices throughout Scotland and we are connected to businesses of various scales, in different sectors and with different outlooks. That is a good place to connect but, clearly, we do not connect with all of the broad spectrum of businesses that exists.
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Equally, the public sector—largely through Scottish Enterprise and SDI—connects with a number of businesses. However, the businesses with which those organisations connect are largely the ones that fit their sector and growth criteria. Those businesses might be open to exporting: many other businesses are not touched by the public sector, but will be touched by the local chambers of commerce and connected to other businesses in their area and could equally be encouraged and emboldened to take that step.
I do not know whether we can teach businesses innovation, but it is probably possible to take them a bit further down that line. Mentoring is one way of doing that; we provide that service throughout Scotland. However, we need to get the right mix of connectivity to the businesses where and when it matters and public sector support in order to allow our businesses to take that step. The problem is in how that partnership works; it is not working as well as it could.
To go back to what was said about SDI, UKTI, the Scottish Government and the Scotland Office, businesses do not particularly care about what Governments want to say to each other—they just want them to get matters sorted. The Scotland Office did a great piece of work through the Wilson report last year, but due to the timing of its publication, you had to read through two or three pages about why Scotland should remain in the UK before you got to the meat of the report. Businesses do not have the time or energy for that.
We need to make a functional relationship between the UK Government, the Scotland Office and the Scottish Government work in the best interests of business, and use the best that those governmental agencies can offer to develop Scotland’s international connectivity.