³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

It is a constant challenge. I have the responsibility of ensuring that I drive a fair work agenda across Government. We are already doing well. We have the highest number of employees being paid the real living wage anywhere in the UK, and the lowest number of employees being paid below the real living wage anywhere in the UK. We also have incredibly strong labour market statistics that give opportunity but also pose a challenge. A tight labour market gives us opportunities to discuss with employers the importance of advancing the fair work agenda to reduce workplace attrition and ensure the continued support of employees.

We will continue to progress that alongside the work that we do with the Fair Work Convention and the Scottish Trades Union Congress. I believe that I am due to meet Roz Foyer soon. I was with her at the anti-poverty summit that the First Minister hosted last week and we had a very good conversation off the back of that.

We will continue to do all that we can to ensure that fair work drives success, wellbeing and prosperity for individuals and businesses, and to ensure that employers continue to understand the importance of demonstrating fair work, not just because it is the right thing to do from a social perspective but because it drives economic benefit to their organisation.

As a result of the Bute house agreement, conditionality will be attached from, I believe, 1 July, when public sector procurement will have fair work principles attached to it. That is an important first step, but we will keep the effectiveness of that conditionality under review and look at whether there will be opportunities to go further. However, we will need to ensure that there is time, from the start of that process on 1 July, to monitor its effectiveness so that we can see whether there are opportunities to reform it in any way.

We have made significant investments to support businesses through and post Covid. We have allocated £500 million beyond the support that we received from the UK Government to do that. We also have the most competitive poundage for non-domestic rates in the UK and the most competitive small business bonus scheme in the UK. We continue to provide business support where we can.

Mr Halcro Johnston is right. My colleague Mr Lochhead and I engage regularly with the hospitality and tourism sectors, and we will continue to do so as it is a vital component of Scotland’s economy. Earlier, we spoke about regional economic performance and placed-based policy making, so we understand the importance of tourism and hospitality and continue to engage with those sectors on the asks that come forward.

I look forward to listening to that.

We have received incredible interest in that consultation. I believe that, at the previous count, there were more than 1,400 responses to it, which is almost seven times the number of responses that we had the previous time that we consulted on an energy strategy, so there is clear interest in it. We need to ensure that we give that proper consideration, but we will seek to publish our final strategy as quickly as we can off the back of considering the consultation responses.

Wellbeing economy elements already run through NSET. Indeed, we have built in a wellbeing economy metric that allows us to continually monitor our progress in the areas that we want to chart, including our sustainability, our child poverty targets and ensuring that we are narrowing the gender pay gap and that more people are going into employment.

The job title has been changed to refocus things and ensure that prominence is given to wellbeing elements. The First Minister has also set me the very clear task of resetting the relationship with business and ensuring that that relationship is strong and that business continues to perform well so that we can deliver the wellbeing elements of what we want to achieve in Government.

There will be no change to NSET. We will be sharpening our focus as a result of the policy prospectus, which covers the areas that I have set out and which come directly from the national strategy, but we are also committed to delivering the priorities in the strategy.

We are working on that now with the investments that we are making and through the energy skills passport to ensure that we offer opportunities for people who work in the oil and gas sector to transition. That will be an on-going process, but we will maintain a focus on ensuring that we give as many opportunities as possible to our indigenous workforce. However, we will also put pressure on the UK Government to ensure that the international labour force—which we must accept will need to play a part—is able to play a part in some areas.

My colleagues will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that we are currently sitting at 21 per cent, despite the challenges that, as Mr MacDonald has mentioned, we have faced with Brexit and the global pandemic. Decisions of the UK Government, which are outwith our control, have clearly hampered our performance.

As I have already outlined, our international network does an incredible job of supporting not only inward investment into Scotland but our exports. I have seen that in the international engagements that we have carried out, as indeed one of my predecessors, Ms Hyslop, was able to do. In particular, the SDI network does an incredible job of embedding itself in target markets, understanding those areas, building strong relationships with business and also understanding domestic business needs for exporting. We continue to support the 1,200 target businesses in Scotland that have the greatest propensity for export in that important area.

We will get back to Mr MacDonald in writing on that question, as it is about something that predates my involvement in trade.

We continue to reflect on that, to ensure that our work as a trading nation is ethical and sustainable. We continue to take the areas that you have suggested into regard, to ensure that, where possible, we do our work in a sustainable way that ensures economic performance that is not too much to the detriment of our net zero ambitions.