Economic Recovery Implementation Plan: Scottish Government response to the Advisory Group on Economic Recovery

Executive Summary

The report by the Advisory Group on Economic Recovery validates our overall strategic approach to the economy while sending a strong message about pace, partnership and
the emerging priories caused by the COVID crisis. Our response to the report commits
us to developing new partnerships and strengthening existing ones as we take forward its 25 recommendations. We will also go further. The economic crisis provides an opportunity to re-imagine Scotland and to begin building a greener, fairer and more equal society:
a wellbeing economy.

This is an opportunity we will seize. Our wellbeing economy will be built on the principles of sustainable economic growth, accompanied by tackling inequalities, and delivered as
a green recovery to meet our climate change targets and wider environmental objectives.

Our first priority in this economic crisis has been to protect jobs and businesses and
we have provided over £2.3 billion of support over recent months. Our next priority
is focused on restoring business and consumer confidence, offering ongoing support to protect and create jobs, accelerating investment in green technologies and infrastructure, and supporting all parts of Scotland to recover, and to weather the full impact of BREXIT.

Businesses are the engine room of our jobs and growth prospects. Successful and thriving businesses, whether SMEs, large corporates, social enterprises or not for profit businesses, are key to our success. Our approach to economic recovery ensures that we will work with business to create the conditions needed to deliver on our ambitions.

In this report, we set out the actions we are taking across six main themes to secure
a jobs-focused and socially just economic recovery:

• Protecting jobs by supporting business recovery and sustainable, green growth
• Creating jobs through business engagement and a partnership approach
• Supporting access to good quality jobs through employment, skills and training
• Boosting local job creation through resilient people, communities and places
• Creating jobs and a Just Transition through investment-led sustainable growth
• Monitoring our progress and outcomes

Throughout all of our actions and across the themes, we will strengthen our focus on tackling inequalities and wellbeing to create a socially just economy. We are also making a further explicit commitment, in addition the 25 recommendations to embed equalities and human rights at the heart of our approach to the economy.

In addition, our response to the Enterprise and Skills Strategic Board’s report^[1], published alongside this report, sets out in detail, how we will work alongside our agencies and partners to implement and deliver on the specific recommendations on measures to mitigate the labour market impacts of COVID.

This report should be seen as a broad endorsement of the full suite of recommendations set out in the Advisory Group report; the Annex provides a detailed response to each recommendation.

However, it is only the start of our journey to a longer term economic recovery. In this report, we set out a focus on the more immediate actions we need to take to support Scotland’s economy and protect jobs to create a basis for a strong recovery. In the coming weeks we will publish more detailed plans in our Programme for Government, our Infrastructure Investment Plan and our Climate Change update. The Programme for Government, will set out our further thinking and development of the broad wellbeing economy commitments we want to take forward for an economic recovery and social renewal for all of Scotland.