Scotland's National Strategy for Economic Transformation Programme 1: Entrepreneurial People and Culture Equality Impact Assessment (Record and Results)

Screening

Policy Aim

The vision of Scotland's National Strategy for Economic Transformation (NSET), published on 1 March 2022, is for Scotland to be a wellbeing economy, thriving across economic, social and environmental dimensions. The strategy sets out an ambition that Scotland's economy will significantly outperform the last decade, both in terms of economic performance and tackling structural economic inequalities.

Analysis of the available evidence has identified six interconnected, transformational Programmes of Action to shift the economic dial and deliver our vision. Together, they tackle long term structural challenges, build on our economic strengths and position Scotland to maximise the greatest economic opportunities of the next ten years in a way that will transform the very fundamentals of how our economy works.

The policies covered in this Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) are those detailed in NSET Programme 1: Entrepreneurial People and Culture.

The aim of Programme 1 of NSET is to establish Scotland as a world-class entrepreneurial nation founded on a culture that encourages, promotes and celebrates entrepreneurial activity in every sector of our economy.

Within Programme 1 on Entrepreneurial People and Culture, the following projects in particular are expected to make a significant contribution to addressing and mitigating existing and potential future inequalities in Scotland's labour market and economy:

Project 1 - Embed first rate entrepreneurial learning across the education and skills systems by promoting the best available project-based entrepreneurial learning across the school and post-16 education curricula. This means building new partnerships between business and our education system, offering schools, colleges and universities a network of relationships with high-quality start-ups and individual entrepreneurs - providing young people with inspirational mentors and role models. This work will focus initially on schools in areas of multiple deprivation. It means embedding entrepreneurship in the Young Person's Guarantee, adapting the apprenticeship system to make it work for start-ups and early stage scale-ups and working with the university and college sector to build entrepreneurial campus infrastructure.

Project 2 - Create major, new world-class entrepreneurial infrastructure of institutions and programmes providing a high intensity pathway for high growth companies, expanding the scope of the current tech-scaler programme to become "start-up scalers", world-class incubation and developmental environments for all high growth start-ups, supporting this network through the creation of a national system of "pre-scaler hubs" to stimulate the early stages of high growth entrepreneurship and provide the expanding scaler network with a steady supply of promising new businesses, developing and aligning private sector incubators within this new our national entrepreneurial infrastructure, and in doing all of this focussing rigidly on the need to ensure barrier-free access to support programmes for under-represented groups.

Project 3 - Attract and retain the very best entrepreneurial talent from at home and abroad. Making the best use of international networks and diaspora to attract talent and investment, leveraging Scotland's strength in corporate sectors (such as financial services) in order to develop innovative, industry-led pathways to redirect talent into building new companies, building strategic partnerships with ecosystems in other countries to create company exchange programmes, new commercial partnerships and international trade opportunities for Scottish businesses and supporting universities to attract entrepreneurial students from around the world by providing post-education pathways that help retain their expertise.

Project 4 - Build an entrepreneurial mind-set in every sector of our economy, expanding the application of entrepreneurial thinking and approaches to public service reform, ensuring people working in the public and third sectors have an opportunity to undertake entrepreneurial training as part of their ongoing professional development, building on the success of our CivTech programme by leveraging public procurement to stimulate more business start-ups and support Scottish scale ups, making engagement with CivTech a mandatory part of the way in which the big change programmes of Government are delivered, proactively promoting business start-up opportunities to those at risk of redundancy through the Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE) programme and implementing metrics to reward entrepreneurial approaches and activity within public sector bodies.

Who will it affect?

The NSET recognises that, whilst the economy impacts everybody, the impact is not felt equally for people with one or more Protected Characteristics. Therefore, we recognise that people falling within these groups will need additional support to ensure they are able to participate in our economy. Actions identified in NSET are intended to drive Scotland's overall economic prosperity to the benefit of all our people.

Several of the actions in Programme 1 target measures specifically towards supporting people with particular Protected Characteristics, recognising that barriers to entrepreneurship continue to exist for certain groups of people.

Equality legislation covers the Protected Characteristics of: age, disability, sex, pregnancy and maternity, marriage and civil partnership, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, race, and religion or belief.

Specifically, the EQIA assesses any impacts of applying a proposed new or revised policy or practice against the needs relevant to a public authority's duty to meet the public sector equality duty. The needs are to:

• Eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation;
• Advance equality of opportunity; and
• Foster good relations.

Actions targeted in Programme 1 look to support people with Protected Characteristics as well as considering wider factors such as socio-economic background. This latter group is particularly important to recognise in the wake of the pandemic and the ongoing cost of living crises.

The following table highlights the stakeholders and people this policy will impact.

What will prevent the desired outcomes being achieved?

Social And Economic Barriers And Negative Attitudes Towards Entrepreneurship As A Career

We know that the effects of COVID-19 and the cost of living crisis have, and continue to, impact disproportionately on those who were already experiencing inequalities. In addition, whilst the adverse economic impacts resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic are still unfolding, the pandemic has had a particular impact on reducing resources and resilience among businesses across Scotland, with an increase in corporate debt and some business still continuing to focus on survival.

What this also means is that for some the option of starting an entrepreneurial career may not be viable or attractive as it has been before. The latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor found that:

"Among non-entrepreneurs in Scotland, this belief in their abilities to undertake entrepreneurial activity has declined by 20 percentage points since 2019. In contrast, the perception of good start-up opportunities is now higher than in 2019 having strongly recovered from a sizable slump in 2020, but the fear of failure among those that perceive good start up opportunities remains high, especially in the North-Eastern region." ^[1]

To encourage more people to choose entrepreneurship as a career, thereafter enabling them to access better employment opportunities and widen their range of viable career choices, we will offer support to help them overcome existing social and economic barriers to starting a business, thus leveraging entrepreneurship to create attractive and accessible pathways to improved social justice and economic fairness.

Programme 1 recognises this by targeting particular equalities groups with appropriate additional support.

This support will be monitored and adjusted as/if required, taking account of changes in the economic environment in order to ensure it continues to benefit those groups identified as being most at risk of poverty and exclusion.

Not Embedding Entrepreneurial Thinking And Mind-set

Achieving the desired outcomes on entrepreneurship will be dependent on, and will involve a need for entrepreneurs, private sector and the public sector to take action to adopt new behaviours and thinking to embed entrepreneurial learning and thinking.

This shift in approach will not occur organically. To ensure this is achieved, Programme 1 targets training, education and the implementation of metrics to reward entrepreneurial approaches and activity within public sector bodies.

Unclear Signposting Of Support Programmes

With numerous entrepreneurial and educational programmes on offer in the Scottish business and start-up ecosystem, it is important that public sector, enterprise agencies, academia and industry work together to provide clear information to the public on what support is available and how to access it.

This clear signposting of support and information should be accessible, clear, and shared across Scotland, so that everyone is able to benefit from what is on offer and key messages are not lost.