Business Scotland in need of sound leadership

cross key sectors of the economy, activity is slowing. In America and Europe the worry is not so much a “double dip” recession but of a period of prolonged low to zero growth, stretching years ahead. This is the challenging background against which Scottish Enterprise, our leading economic development agency, now has to operate.

Not since the 1970s has Scotland’s economy craved a powerful voice and a champion of enterprise. But SE is not the power it was. It has been shorn of functions and its budget chopped. Today it seems but one agency in a labyrinth comprising SE, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Strategic Forum, local council enterprise agencies, the Scottish Local Authority Economic Development Group, Regional Advisory Boards, Business Gateway and local panels. To adapt Kissinger’s quip about Europe, “When I want to speak to who’s in charge of Scottish business, who do I ring?”

A Scottish Parliament report last year bemoaned this bureaucracy and the apparent lack of co-ordination between all these agencies. But there is another concern. SE’s work is now so focused at the micro level that a double vacuum has opened up. One is at the overall strategic level. And the other is at the level of the small firm. It is small firms that critically need help now, from basic advice on getting started to presenting a proposal for a loan.

What business Scotland now needs above all is leadership: a powerful voice and a champion dedicated to supporting business and which can galvanise and pull together all the little forums and agencies. And it needs a dedicated minister at cabinet level – encumbered with other, often conflicting responsibilities – to lead on business issues, from planning to inward investment and development support. No-one should be in doubt of the risks to our prospects and well-being. They have never been greater in our post-war history. The business imperative needs to ring loud and clear.