One of my columns last month focused on the need for an Industrial Strategy, to deliver that elusive "potential" Scotland talks about but struggles to realise.
I wrote that a successful strategy needs to make hard choices on where to focus, be clear about how to align broader policy – particularly around skills and investment – and provide clarity and stability, so that businesses, investors and others have the confidence to be part of that journey.
It must importantly also resist the temptation to chop and change course in pursuit of short-term headlines rather than long-term results.
So I was interested to see the launch of the Roadmap for Scotland’s Green Industrial Strategy last week. It’s not, by its own admission, a strategy. What it does well is to articulate the challenge and the need for urgency, and paint a picture of what good could look like. There’s a lot about the "Why", but not much on the "How". Its main recommendation is the establishment of a new First Minister-led Scottish Industrial Strategy Council.
Read more: Here's how Team Scotland can achieve its goals in business
It’s not clear how this will interface with the First Minister-led Scottish Energy Advisory Board, which is intended to bring government, business and others together to set strategy for the industry.
Nor the First Minister-led Scottish Economic Leadership Group, formed only last year to oversee the National Strategy for Economic Transformation (NSET), and which itself replaced the First Minister’s Council of Economic Advisors.
This is separate from the NSET Delivery Board (which replaced the previous Enterprise and Skills Strategic Board) and from the New Deal Business Group announced last month to great fanfare.
You get the picture, reorganisation to create the illusion of progress, and to grab a headline.
If the existing, or previous, "high-powered" First Minster-led groups couldn’t fix this, what’s different about this one?
Meanwhile what is actually needed is some serious work on an Industrial Strategy.
Even just focusing on "green" industries, and higher education, as the roadmap does, there are many questions that need answered.
Renewables is an expensive business. Total investment across the sector – in ports, manufacturing plants and vessels – quickly runs into many billions. It’s also very competitive internationally, so we need to make sure that investments made are in the right places, where Scotland has a genuine competitive advantage we can maximise. Hard choices on where to focus, and being clear and explicit about where we won’t.
Which technologies do we have genuine world-leading capabilities in? Where do we have the potential to grow world-leading businesses from Scotland's current SMEs, and where should we seek inward investment from existing world-leading manufacturers to accelerate cluster building?
University spin-outs, exploring new technologies, are part of the mix. But the heavy lifting – literally – of building Scotland’s renewables industries will be done by our existing energy supply chain and engineering SMEs. How will they be supported, funded and encouraged to grow, and do so quickly?
Will the Withers skills review deliver the right talent at the right time to support our growth, aligned to the priorities laid out in the Industrial Strategy?
How will barriers to deployment – consenting, permitting, grid connections – be accelerated to unlock spend in the sector?
And how will our effectiveness at delivering the Strategy be monitored and measured?
The good news is that much of this work has already been done.
Read more: Scotland’s business activity rate for young people is highest in UK
NSET already includes clear actions on investment, skills and building out the supply chain. These just need to be delivered – and the last thing we need is a "refresh" of NSET as the roadmap calls for (it's always easier, and more media-friendly, to review or refresh something than it is to actually do the hard work to deliver it).
The Scottish Offshore Wind Energy Council in taking forward the work of the Strategic Investment Assessment is already doing a lot of the industry-facing work on what needs to go into the Strategy with industry bodies Scottish Renewables and Scottish Engineering in the tent.
Detailed work has also already been done by government on some potential opportunity areas, for example hydrogen electrolyser manufacture.
Meanwhile the First Minister’s Investment Panel is working on capital investment attraction.
All of this just needs pulled together in a coherent single document so that everyone – government, agencies, regional economic partnerships, further and higher education, investors, industry groups and businesses – is clear about direction, challenges, solutions, actions, support and measurements.
That clarity will give confidence to Scottish businesses and international investors to rise to the challenge, knowing that government is aligned behind them.
Results are delivered when the hard work is done – witness Scotland’s leading performance in inward investment and export growth, the result of clear strategies, well delivered, that everyone in Team Scotland is bought into. We need the same for our industrial strategy.
Ivan McKee is an MSP and former Minister for Business, Trade, Tourism and Enterprise
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel