���˿���

There are a few parts to that. I will hand over to Andy Park to talk in more detail about facilities.

In general, you are absolutely right. There is a challenge, although it is slightly less pressing than it was a number of months ago. As you know, there were issues with the UK-wide authority regarding testing, for example. That was a challenge. I think that there has been some movement there, but there is more to do.

It is important to make those careers as attractive as possible. We have engaged closely with the haulage sector to understand how we can do that. The rest and welfare facilities for drivers are part of that.

There is also the issue of modal shift and the attempt to get as much freight as possible on to rail, which to some extent lessens the need for heavy goods vehicle drivers. There is work with a cross-industry group, which I lead, to look at opportunities for sending more freight to and from Europe or beyond by sea, rather than trucking it down the length of the UK. We are looking at opportunities to expand the capacity for that. That will relieve some of the pressure on HGV drivers.

Andy Park can pick up on the rest and welfare aspects.

On the Logan report? Yes. I met Mark Logan last week to talk about the progress that has been made. He is leading work on the education side of that. I point out that we have invested in new computer science hardware for schools, the digital start fund and digital skills pipeline projects, and we have also funded the Digital Xtra Fund. A range of support for digital skills is in place.

There is also STACS—Scottish teachers advancing computing science—which is a teacher-led organisation that is designed to spread best practice and advise us on implementation of that aspect of the STER. Work is happening. Obviously, you will have read the report on the STER, which places great emphasis on getting the education piece right first, because everything kind of builds on and follows from that. The review recognises that there is much to be done on that.

Across the range of things that I have identified, we are implementing and making progress. As I said, a few days ago, I had a conversation with Mark Logan to talk about that and other aspects that we are taking forward, such as the tech scalers network.

Absolutely there is. If that did not come across in the reply, it should have. The supply chain development programme that we are taking forward is very much focused on identifying areas of the economy and supply chains in which we can build more resilience and shift to having more capacity and capability in Scotland, particularly in manufacturing. That covers a wide range of programmes, including the work in Scotland to support the building of indigenous local supply chains for floating offshore wind technology.

On hydrogen, we recently published a report that identifies opportunities for manufacturing businesses in the upcoming hydrogen supply chain.

There are opportunities in construction, the timber supply chain, offsite manufacturing for the construction sector, and in life sciences around medicines manufacture. We are, of course, about to open the medicines manufacturing innovation centre in Inchinnan. We recognise that there are opportunities across a whole range of sectors for Scotland to further strengthen our indigenous supply chains and to encourage and support Scottish businesses to take advantage of those.

Of course, the committee will recognise that global supply chains are complicated and that, clearly, with regard to the raw material supply situation and many manufacturing processes, we are not in a position to be able to take over all supply chains, and it would be foolish to attempt to do that, given the complexities that are involved. However, of course, for reasons of economic development and resilience, where we can engage with supply chains, we seek to do that.

Much of our approach is built on the response to the pandemic. As you know, we were successful in building up an indigenous Scottish supply chain for personal protective equipment during that time.

As I said, the priority with regard to supply chains is to look at where there are opportunities for us to be competitive because we have the necessary capability and technology to maximise the opportunities for the manufacture of products within Scotland.

On the food supply chain specifically, Scotland has a thriving food and drink sector, which we are proud of. The Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands is focused on what we do to continue to develop that sector. There are many factors that relate to agriculture more broadly, including climate change and financial support, but the supply chain is a big issue, and, where there are opportunities for us to grow more produce in Scotland in order to support resilience, and where that makes sense for the agriculture sector, that is something that we are focused on.

That is correct.

That is absolutely done. I worked in manufacturing for 30 years, and I understand how this stuff works. We are 100 per cent focused on that, relentlessly.

You will know that it is illegal to specify what you have just asked us to specify because of the World Trade Organization’s agreement on Government procurement, or GPA, rules and our international free trade agreements—the European Union trade agreement and so on. We must have an open market.

We do everything that we can to ensure that as much of the product as possible is manufactured in Scotland. We make that visible. We produce guidelines on that, and we work—I refer to the importance of the investment in Alpha Solway—to ensure that businesses and supply chains have the capacity, capability, expertise and technology to compete in a global market and win contracts.

Alpha Solway has done a great job in winning contracts. It did that fair and square, and it beat competition from around the world. That is because of the support in training, investment and so on from the Scottish public sector.

As I said, all of that has to be done within the rules. That is the legal reality of the system in which we operate. However, as Graeme Cook said, our success in that regard has been quite significant. In Scotland, 47 per cent of the spend in public sector procurement goes to SMEs. That is significantly in advance of anything that is happening in the rest of the UK, where the percentage is in the 20s, and across the EU, where the average is somewhere in the high 20 per cent range.

We have made significant progress in that regard, and the results demonstrate that. However, the focus on that continues to be relentless. We look for every opportunity through the supplier development programme; our round-table discussions with SMEs to understand the challenges for them in accessing the public procurement process; working with partners across the public sector; and the work that we are doing on the Scotland innovates portal, which we have just launched. That invites Scottish businesses with innovative solutions to public sector challenges to put those online so that we can assess them and find a public sector procurement route for them. We look for opportunities through the work that CivTech does in putting out public sector challenges.

We are relentless on all that stuff. We have tremendous focus on it, and I regularly meet procurement officials to take work forward. As members understand, all of that is, of course, done within our legal restrictions.

We do not have the power to tell a local authority, for example—

I will respond to the committee and let it know the outcome of that inquiry. As I have said, if a local authority decides to purchase something, we are not in a position to tell it where it should buy it from. If we did that, others would say that we should not be doing that. I have written very clearly and strongly to make those points to all public sector authorities, and I would be very happy to update the committee on any responses that we receive in that regard.

A big focus of the transition is on the modal shift in transport and the net zero impacts of that. In our recent report on Scotland’s electric vehicle charging market, we identified what needs to be done, but we also very much recognise that that needs to be done in partnership with the private sector. Given the investment required, the public sector can do part of the work, but the bulk of it will need to be done by the private sector.

As a result, “A Network Fit For The Future: Draft Vision for Scotland’s Public Electric Vehicle Charging Network” not only sets out our ambition to work with the private sector to develop the charging network but makes clear what would be commercially viable for the private sector to pick up itself and the gaps that the public sector would then need to fill. We have also, as part of that work, announced the electric vehicle infrastructure fund, which has £60 million of target investment.

However, you are right to suggest that that work needs to move forward if we are to enable that modal shift to happen. We absolutely understand that, and we need to work with the private sector to ensure that the investment is in place to deliver on that.

Does Andy Park want to comment?

To finish off the previous point, work is taking place on building regulations. The 2024 new-build heat standard is being put in place. Work is happening on that all the time and standards have been updated to take account of the factors that we have talked about.

The decline in manufacturing has been an issue in western economies, particularly the UK, over decades, as we know. It was an issue when I studied manufacturing and engineering in 1980 and it continues to be one.

On what we are doing about that issue, it is important to recognise that the solutions are not things that you turn on like a switch—they take a long time. The technology, investment, expertise, accreditations and market credibility all take a long time to build up. From our perspective, it is about identifying where Scotland has the opportunity to have globally leading positions in specific manufacturing sectors and then to double down on support and build on that through a combination of inward investment and, importantly, growing indigenous supply chains and businesses in partnership.

An obvious example is the small satellite manufacturing cluster that has been built up over the past decade or two and is now a world-leading sector. We continue to get additional inward investment into that and to grow those businesses, but there is also a really strong focus from all parts of the public sector to support that ecosystem.

We have talked about the ScotWind investment, to which developers have committed £28 billion. The issue is not getting the developers to commit the money; it is finding somewhere to spend it, because you need £28 billion-worth of capacity in the Scottish supply chain to deliver on those projects.

We are working with hundreds of engineering businesses in Scotland that are part of the clusters in the sector. We are working with Scottish Engineering and others in relation to engineering businesses that have not looked at the energy supply chain or other sectors as opportunities to diversify. That will be done through a combination of information, encouragement, skills support, investment support, networking, accreditation and so on. All that needs to click to get it to work, and we are hugely focused on doing that. NMIS is doing a solid job at the centre of that ecosystem, but a lot of other things are happening around that to make it deliverable.