Business: New Deal for Business Group minutes: December 2023

Attendees and apologies

• Dr Poonam Malik, Head of Investment - Strathclyde University (Co Chair)
• Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA)
• Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC)
• Business in the Community Scotland (BiTCS)
• Confederation of British Industry (CBI) Scotland
• NSET Delivery Board Co Chair
• Scottish Tourism Alliance (STA)
• Scottish Financial Enterprise (SFE)
• Prosper
• Federation of Small Businesses (FSB)
• Institute of Directors (IoD)
• Fraser of Allander Institute (FAI)

Items and actions

Welcome and Scottish Budget update 

Cabinet Secretary: welcome CBI Scotland to the Group. Appreciate both Group and subgroup members progression on delivering recommendations. Welcome engagement and submissions on budget asks. Want to assure members those asks are being considered in detail and ability to honour those asks where possible despite one of the most challenging budgets to date. Want to reaffirm commitment on NDBG. 

SRC: welcome engagement with DFM to date. Keen to understand if further engagement will take place.  

 

Agree Terms of Reference and membership

Cabinet Secretary: agreed at 5 October meeting that Group pivots to a governance and assurance role. Agreed frequency would move to quarterly. Keen to see more detailed updates from subgroups at future meetings. 

COSLA: small edit to change spelling of COSLA representative name.  

Dr Malik: with moving to assurance and governance role, keen to ensure lines of communication remain open to ensure those progressions are taking place. While the SG team is planning this we should consider the collective responsibility for delivery of NDBG at both subgroup and Group level.

NSET Co-Chair: one presentational - guessed what SCS is most in the business community might not. The other more substantive - putting some emphasis on reporting against the deadlines to achieve the short-, medium- and long-term actions should feature in this remit - a key part of assurance.

Cabinet Secretary: group has now formally agreed the revised Terms of Reference.  

 

Progress updates from each of the sub-group leads

Dr Malik: thanks to both core Group members and all members within each of the individual subgroups for their work on progressing recommendations to date. 

Cabinet Secretary: What is coming through from subgroups thus far, is that there is a much deeper, regular and structured engagement between business and SG. More to do, but certainly improvements are happening.

 

Subgroup 1 Regulation update

• the Regulatory Review Group (RRG) chaired by Professor Russel Griggs OBE was re-established on 26 October and met to consider and agree its work plan on 30 November 2023. Over the next six months, the RRG will provide Scottish Government officials and Ministers with advice relating to regulation implementation within public health, circular economy and climate change, tourism and consumers policy areas. The next meeting of the RRG is scheduled for 25 January 2024.
• SG has commenced work to review and develop a new Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) and toolkit. Officials have been collating feedback from across the organisation to identify challenges with its effective completion and opportunities to ensure it is purposeful in informing policy development. Officials will meet with external stakeholders on Subgroup 1 early in the New Year to consider findings and plan delivery by April 2024
• Officials have developed a revised policy development cycle, which has been considered and informed by stakeholders on the Regulatory Improvement Advisory Group (RIAG). The RIAG will further consider at its meeting on 18 January 2024 ahead of further engagement on it across the Scottish Government

 

Members Feedback

SRC: pleased RRG has been reinstated and a refreshed positive approach to some of these challenges such as alcohol marketing consultation. There may be differences of opinions however the approach to this work is welcome. 
Dr Malik: noted 3 subgroups below this subgroup, when we get updates from each of the subgroups, need to ensure the updates are aligned with each other and how that information is presented, and which action is taken against which recommendation. 

 

Subgroup 2 Business Partnership update

• last met on 28 August to agree workplan and will meet again in January to discuss the cycle of policy and co-design
• a fully prioritised delivery plan is being drafted at request of members
• we have already completed recommendations 46 and 48
• we are also in discussion with Policy Profession colleagues to include a New Deal for Business session as part of the Policy Development curriculum
• a communications plan is being drafted for internal and external channels. The team has already presented to various internal colleagues on the New Deal. Further sessions are planned with individual areas 

No immediate feedback 

 

Subgroup 3 Non-Domestic Rates update

• the subgroup met on 3 October in response to a specific request from some members that opportunity be provided for views to be shared in advance of Budget.  A meeting on 24 November enabled members to share any further thoughts they had on priorities for Budget in light of the UK Autumn Statement
• the meeting on 3 October also provided members with an opportunity to further discuss and agree the forward workplan
• five short-life task teams have been established to discuss particular issues linked to recommendations.  These tasks teams have now all met once, and agreed actions and next steps which are being progressed  
• SG officials are also developing a survey to gather views on the impact of the extension of the proposal-lodging deadline from 31 July to 31 August 2023. The sub-group has agreed to meet quarterly going forward.  The next meeting is scheduled for 31 January 2024, at which members will be offered feedback on each of the task teams as well as updates regarding other recommendations

 

Members Feedback

SRC: keen to understand what role the Tax Advisory Group has in feeding into the budget discussions

Dr Malik: keen to know if there are any immediate concerns or challenges in progression of these recommendations 

 

Subgroup 4 – Wellbeing Economy update

• a Steering Group has been set up to oversee delivery of the Wellbeing Economy sub-group recommendations, has agreed Terms of Reference and is next due to meet on Friday 15 December. Actions for delivery in first six months, updates include:
• engagement with business in relation to labour market participation and just transition plans: officials have held 6 meetings so far with business organisations, flexible working stakeholders, enterprise agencies and sector representative organisations to discuss health & work and flexible working; engagement on JTPs has started and will continue over coming months to support plans being published in 2024 
• create a description of Wellbeing Economy that is meaningful for business: Nathalie Agnew is leading on this action with a view to sharing a draft description with Steering Group members, followed by further consultation with business and other partners. This action underpins business-to-business engagement through the actions that follow
• actions for delivery within 18 months, updates include: A summary report of metrics that businesses can use to measure, monitor and evaluate the impact of their actions. Links to the work of Subgroup 5
• agreed plan to better establish the business case for supporting a Wellbeing Economy and for business-led activity to communicate and publicise it: an engagement plan will be developed to accompany the production of a description of Wellbeing Economy and metrics for businesses to use 
• publication of an SME, Third Sector and Supported Businesses Action Plan in public procurement

 

Members Feedback

Dr Malik: keen to understand if procurement plan only applies to the Scottish Government or wider public sector such as the NHS. 

 

Subgroup 5 – Sharing Key Metrics Update, Professor Mairi Spowage

The work of sub-group 5 focuses on 3 broad areas:

• metrics on the Economic Climate: SG Office of Chief Economic Adviser (OCEA) has produced a new Monthly Scottish Economic Bulletin that includes a sub-section synthesising information on business climate and conditions. OCEA has also developed a draft set of business resilience metrics that will be published quarterly from the New Year and will feed into BRIA templates.
• metrics on the type of support businesses are searching for and information on key sectors and market opportunities to align with NSET.  OCEA has discussed how to progress this with the Business Support Partnership with agreement to develop use cases in the New Year.
• co-ordination of survey questions: The survey questionnaires currently used by sectors / industries will be reviewed and discussed by the sub-group at its next meeting. 
• the sub-group will next meet on 6 February.

 

Members Feedback

Dr Malik: substantial amount of data is collected across the economy, keen to ensure the NDBG work is aligned to the overall objective of NSET. Keen to consider a way we can design these metrics to ensure the data reflects the various streams of work. 
FSB: there is an AI technology (based in Manchester) being piloted with a local authority south of the border, to survey the public/businesses called MiToken which is a CivTech platform that might be able to support in Scotland.  
COSLA: through the business support partnership there is a the “master customer record” project which pulls together a wide range of publicly-available data about businesses in Scotland into one comprehensive source. The sub-group had a presentation on this earlier in the year.
SFE: need to consider risk of over measurement which could clog up decision making. What data is driving decisions and what data is just being collected.  
DGE: 10,000 SG officials and many are using data in different ways to engage with business. This Group can find the best possible sets of data to allow us to understand pressures and needs for business. 

 

Metrics to measure success of New Deal for Business – presented by Professor Mairi Spowage, FAI

• the actions in the Implementation Plan should lead to measurable improvements in business confidence and deliver improvements in the process by which business is engaged in policy development
• we could measure the overall success of the actions included in this Implementation Plan by reporting on a package of business environment metrics that focus on business engagement, business sentiment and business confidence.  The challenges of attribution were noted 
• SG already have the National Performance Framework, the Wellbeing Economy Monitor and the National Strategy for Economic Transformation measurement framework and so important to consider how these new metrics interact
• engagement in Policy Process: Sub-groups should consider whether there is scope to collect and record management information on business engagement on a systematic and ongoing basis to see whether an indicator can be developed around this. One option is to develop an indicator around the refreshed BRIA process.  This could be, for example, number of business and business organisations responding to consultations on BRIA or number of BRIAs including detailed economic assessment of impact. This could be reported on a quarterly basis
• business sentiment: data can also be collected from businesses on their views on engagement with the Scottish Government – the Fraser of Allander Institute has a survey that cann report on this annually. There are options for harmonising questions on business sentiment which sub-group 5 has already agreed to explore. It may be possible to use business sentiment in media to create a metric
• business confidence: there is a range of information on business confidence indicators from the Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) and Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) that could be compiled monthly

 

Members Feedback

SFE: we haven’t had measurement and reporting of  of engagement, confidence and sentiment from business and without seeing in improvements in these we won’t see improvements in economic growth and productivity.

Dr Malik: we want to measure progress and to know about the eventual outcomes, but we may not need to measure the outcomes directly.

Professor Spowage: There is a cluttered landscape on indicators and measurement frameworks across Government so keeping metrics closer to the actions may be preferable.

 

AoB

• Group agreement for Nora Senior to be invited to join New Deal for Business Group 

 

Actions:

• engagement with the Group on the Scottish Budget
• change Terms of Reference from SCDI to Prosper 
• change Terms of Reference COSLA representative spelling
• NDBG Secretariat to seek advice for Group on what role the Tax Advisory Group has in feeding into the budget discussions
• NDBG Secretariat to share metrics slides with the Group for written feedback
• NDBG Secretariat to formally invite Nora Senior to join NDBG