Rhaibd i ddweud i ddweud hon. Siaradol gystal yma'r 5th aclleg Allevir gymrygiadau a G credits Cymru, can I welcome all members and our witnesses and can I remind everyone please to turn off or at least turn to silent all mobile phones and other electronic devices We have apologies this morning from Gordon Macdonald and I would like to welcome Bruce Crawford joining his as a substitute Item 1 on the agenda are members content that we take items 5 and 6 in private. Item 2 on the agenda are members of the committee content that reviews of evidence heard and consideration of draft reports for our inquiry into internationalising Scottish business should be taken in private at future meetings. Are we agreed? Thank you. Item 3 on the agenda are the committee content that responsibility is delegated to the convener for arranging for the SBCB to pay under rule 12.4.3 any expenses of witnesses in the inquiry. Is that agreed? Great, thank you. Item 4, we are now moving to our evidence session this morning on internationalising Scottish business and I would like to welcome joining us this morning Professor Jim Love, Professor of international business and innovation at the enterprise research centre and Gary Clark head of policy and research Scottish chambers of commerce. Welcome to you both and thank you for coming along this morning. We have about 90 minutes for this session so hopefully that will allow us enough time to get through a range of topics. We've seen written submissions from you both so I'm not going to ask you to make opening submissions but we'll try and tease out in the questioning some of the topics that you both cover in the papers that you've given us and I'd ask members if they would to be short and to the point in their questions and responses that are short and to the point would be helpful and while I think it'll be useful if people could have directed their questions at one or either member of the panel I think if you want to come in and respond to a question that's been directed to the other panel member if you just catch my eye I'll bring you in as time allows. I wonder if I could start off with yourself Gary Clark on behalf of Scottish chambers of commerce and just pick up a couple of the points that are in your written submission. You make the reference that in relation to calculations made by SCC the volume of Scottish exports between 2006 and 2011 arose more slowly than inflation in other words they declined in real terms now of course that was a period when we had an economic downturn and that might be partly responsible for that but you go on to talk about how businesses in Scotland you feel are underperforming in terms of exporting. What do you think that is? What is the major reason why you think Scottish businesses are not performing as well as they should be? I think that that's a very interesting question. Certainly looking at the evidence that we have examined over the course of the past particularly past year or so looking at international trade among predominantly SMEs we're looking at the evidence that suggests that for example within the UK only about 5 per cent of exporters of goods are businesses based in Scotland so clearly that's below where we would expect to be in terms of a UK standpoint. I think there's been additional evidence this week I've been looking at the report from N56 this week which is a lot of good evidence in there as well about really comparing Scotland's performance as a small region or nation against other small European nations and regions and certainly it does not compare favourably because you would expect small nations and regions to export and internationalise more than Scotland is currently doing. I think that there are various reasons for that and clearly we sit within a fairly large free trade area within the United Kingdom and clearly the majority around about two thirds of goods and services being exported from Scotland are going to that UK market with the remainder going to overseas markets around about just under half of them going to the EU. So certainly there are opportunities there I think internationally. I think we do need to get culturally more thinking more internationally and I think that that's one of the reasons why in addition to direct support for businesses to internationalise because we're finding that whilst not many businesses currently export there are a significant number of businesses who would like to export so how we provide support to those businesses to get them exporting is important but also getting the culture right and that goes right back to the education system curriculum for excellence has been positive in terms of foreign languages in the curriculum and that brings forward not just the language skills but also the cultural awareness of international countries around the world so that's certainly very important we'd like to see more done along those lines as well so I think it's very much a holistic package to get this right we need to support businesses who want to export but equally we need to get the culture right as well. Maybe I could bring Professor Loving just on the same question. What's your sense of how Scotland performs compared to other parts of the United Kingdom other nations like Wales and Northern Ireland or other regions of England are we are we doing better or worse? It's difficult to tell actually exactly how Scotland compares with other regions of the UK because it's difficult to get trade data on other regions of the UK by and large Scotland is perceived as being relatively international in its scope it's usually perceived by the rest of the UK as being outward looking and international but we don't have any particular details of the evidence on that there has been some work done looking at trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK and Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland the data there is so uncertain it's difficult really to come to any clear decision on this so it's really impossible to say for sure of Scotland's more or less export oriented there is some evidence though that the proportion of firms and especially small and medium sized enterprises that export in Scotland seems to be a bit lower than that in the UK as a whole the reason for that isn't entirely clear and it's a bit surprising given Scotland's outward orientated past but I don't know the reasons for it but it does seem to be a persistent tendency I mean could it be simply distance from markets I mean presumably businesses in the south of England are closer to continental Europe and therefore there's an accessibility issue that makes trade easier that probably is part of it given that Europe continental Europe is such an important part of the of exporting but the north point is that we shouldn't necessarily think about internationalisation just of being about exporting and exporting is the key one of the key ways by which small firms usually become international in scope but there's other ways of becoming international through outsourcing through being part of the global value chains of large multinational firms for example so there are other international dimensions here and while Scotland's physical location might be an issue and if you're transporting particularly weighty goods for example I doubt if that can really be the explanation why fewer firms in Scotland export than say in Wales or Northern Ireland I don't believe that firms in Northern Ireland have any more of a problem there than firms in Scotland do. Thank you. I'm sure we'll tease some more detail out on these issues as we go through the morning. I want to come back to Gary Clark though with a slightly different question. We took evidence last week from SCDI and we're talking about how they used to run trade missions until 18 months ago and now they've ceased that programme the funding came to an end and we now see trade missions run by SCDI. From the perspective of your members what's the view on that development? Was SCDI valued as a trade mission organiser? Has the fact that they've ceased doing that being seen as a positive or a negative move? I think what's important for a lot of businesses is to ensure that mix of public and private sector support when encouraging businesses towards greater degrees of exporting and internationalisation. I think that, certainly speaking to a number of our members, they certainly feel that SCDI has a strong role to play, particularly in creating initial connections, but that business to business support is absolutely essential towards developing longer term connections. That's why trade missions run by SCDI or Chambers of Commerce for that matter are very much valued by business, because it is about that private sector business to business support rather than the public sector, which are very good at making initial connections, but maybe certainly we've had feedback anecdotally that the structure of the trade missions isn't as useful sometimes because it isn't focused on business to business connection and also ensuring that the private sector has that understanding that it isn't just about making a single connection, it's about sustaining connectivity over a long period of time. I think that that's where SCDI and the Chambers had a particular strength in terms of trade missions, which SCDI have not so far certainly anecdotally from speaking to some of our members being able to replicate them. Are Chambers of Commerce actively running trade missions at the moment? Do you have a programme? Most of the trade missions undertaken by Chambers are done by the local Chambers of Commerce. For example, Aberdeen has a number of trade missions going to Africa this year, other chambers across the country, Glasgow has always got good connections with the US, Germany, they've run trade missions there very recently. Also, at the Scottish Chambers level, we have done some trade missions last year, we went to Mongolia this year, we're going to Turkey. Do those trade missions run by the Chambers get public sector support from SDI? No. Certainly not the ones that we've operated at the Scottish Chambers level. Some of the local projects may get some support, I don't have the information on that, but the Chambers trade missions that we have operated nationally have not received support from either SDI or UKTI. Without using the SDI network, when you're going to a particular country, are the SDI people on the ground there? Are they involved in setting up a programme, setting up meetings? We would certainly try and use them where available, but we would also focus very strongly on the chamber of commerce in that country. Chambers of commerce across the globe have a very wide brand present in pretty much every economy, and certainly we would use that as our first port of call. I think that you've got a question on this as well. I'm familiar with some of what happens around chamber-led trade missions. Can you describe a little bit what the geography of that is within Scotland? In other words, you've mentioned Aberdeen and Glasgow as two particularly active chambers. Are there other chambers that have an international perspective in the same way? What does their focus tend to be on? Edinburgh Chamber has been quite for a number of years in terms of the international trade focus, but they are coming back on to developing an international trade club, and they are looking at trade missions as part of that, both inward and outward trade missions. As well as the outward trade missions, it is important to focus on inward trade missions as well. We certainly feel at the Scottish chamber's level that often we get approached very late in the day to participate in inward trade missions, largely organised through SDI, but sometimes SDI bypassed the new end-up dealing directly with the individual governmental agencies from the nations involved. We certainly think that there is scope for that to be more structured. Across the chamber of commerce network, there is an increasing focus on trade missions across many various areas. Inverness Chamber, for example, had a trade mission across to Amsterdam to take advantage of the air links between the cities there, and it was very much replicated across the chamber network to a greater or lesser degree. A number of those words were recently with a trade mission organised by UKTI and SDI in Saudi Arabia. One of the things that we heard about was an arrangement between the Asharkia Chamber, the Eastern Chamber in Saudi Arabia and Aberdeen Chamber. Are there other chamber-to-chamber? You talked about business-to-business connections being important. Are there chamber-to-chamber connections that operate on an international basis and that are helpful? Absolutely. I mean, thinking about the ones that have taken place most recently, Aberdeen is a very obvious example with oil and gas industry. The international focus has always been very strong, so there is the West Africa Business Group, which Aberdeen and the Grampian Chamber of Commerce Facility, linking in with clearly largely the sort of oil producing states in West Africa and Nigeria, through to Angola, etc. They are increasingly looking this year more at East Africa as well, to take those areas on board and the potential that exists there. Also, as you know, the Eastern European areas—North America, South America—are being developed very strongly there. Glasgow recently developed some very strong connections with the Chamber of Commerce across in Chicago. Edinburgh Chamber has good connectivity with some of the chambers in Germany and in Switzerland. There is a wide variety of different things going on in the network, and one of our challenges as a network is to ensure that we bring that together into a coherent offering, which is taking a very positive, excellent local services and ensuring that those are as widely available and as widely publicised as possible across Scotland. I think that that is one of the things that I am keen to understand is how you respond as a network and how you identify gaps in the market, if you like, and therefore how government agencies involved in SDI and others can help to identify and address those gaps in the market. Do you have thoughts about that? Are there areas in which chambers cannot reach jobs that chambers cannot do that SDI needs to address? I think that there is absolutely a role for Government in increasing internationalisation and in reaching across the globe. We would certainly think that, within our network in Scotland, if you are looking at trading in any country in the world, there will probably be someone who has been there and done that. One of the things that we are looking at is how we make sure that that knowledge and experience is transferred. We have looked at, for example, the various mentoring services that we offer in order to try to share some of that knowledge more widely so that, if anyone is looking at a particular market or maybe does not have a market in mind but has a product in mind and would like to attach a market to that, there is someone that they can go to with experience. I think that Government has a role to play in that both directly in terms of facilitating contacts overseas, in terms of supporting whether financially or otherwise, Scottish businesses are getting out into the overseas markets and overseas businesses are coming into the Scottish market. Government definitely has a role to play there, but it needs to be with a prominent private sector role in that as well. If I can ask Jim Love, if there are good examples from elsewhere in the UK of how Government and private sector partners work together to promote export and trade? Yes, there are. The principle route clearly is through the work of UKTI throughout the UK. The key thing here that I think is important both at UK level and at Scottish level is to understand that attempts to engage in internationalisation and exporting will work much more effectively if you appreciate the key difference between firms that export and don't is whether or not firms are innovative. There is a huge positive link between innovation and exporting that runs from innovation to exporting. At the UK level, this is an issue because heather to export promotion and work in support for innovation have been carried out by separate agencies, UKTI for exporting and now Innovate UK, formerly Technology Strategy Board for innovation. It is now being recognised that those agencies have to work much more closely together and one thing I think that the devolved administrations have a possibility to do is to integrate that support much more actively in a way that hasn't been done at Westminster level because of this clear link between innovation and exporting. I've got a few members who want to come in and check buddy for some. Just basically following on that, we're interested in what the UKTI and the innovation fund are doing at the UK level. Clearly, we're focused on what we can do here. I wonder if we can just expand upon the relationship between—I'm confused. Who does what? SDI, SEDI, SCC—not just in terms of promotion, promotion is very important, but the organisation, the products and the services. In looking at your survey, Gary, I don't know how big the survey was and perhaps you can share that with us. 55 per cent of respondents do not currently export and then we'll look at the influential factors in terms of funding, finding customers, agents, distributors. Who's doing what and how do you coordinate your promotion plans with SDI and the SDI and how do we highlight the problems that are stopping people exporting? I take the point in terms of innovation. It's very important to have new products and services. Who's actually driving it? How many times do you get together to come up with some sort of cohesive strategy and who's doing what instead of overlapping? I think that the plan is not to overlap. I mean, nobody should be—in fact, it actually happens, doesn't it? Well, it shouldn't happen. There shouldn't be any overlap in terms of provision of service. As you see, a coherent service and replication is not something that we should be doing. Chambers certainly have run trade missions when they have felt that what, for example, SDI were offering is not what their members would value and they were convinced that they could offer a far more productive service to their members and therefore that's what they're doing. At that stage, it should be the public sector who would step back and say, with the private sector delivering something, let's see how we can help them to deliver it more effectively, because there really shouldn't be any replication of the public sector that should step in while there's a market failure. We've heard this before about who's responsible for what. We had another scenario with the public sector supported organisations about who's responsible for what. When did you last meet together with SDI and SDI to agree a strategy to avoid the overlapping in terms of how we push and thrust Scottish export? I don't think that we've all met the three organisations together. Certainly, we've met with SDI and we continue to meet them regularly in terms of their offering and how that can best fit with the offering of chambers. Clearly, we also meet with SDI on a regular basis as well through the group of six and other mechanisms, both one-to-one and otherwise. At the end of the day, what we want is the best possible service for business. For example, south of the border, the Government had taken the view that we should embrace the worldwide brand that is chambers of commerce and look at accrediting more chambers of commerce overseas in order to provide that kind of long-term stable connectivity between the UK and other countries. Now we're talking about more engagement with chambers of commerce. There's all the worthy things. Maybe it's frustration on my part. I see three horses running on this course when there only needs really to be one shared focus. I absolutely agree that there has to be a role for all those organisations in terms of the development of Scottish businesses and the internationalisation of Scottish businesses because they all have connectivity that we need to exploit. It isn't just a monopoly of SDI, it isn't a monopoly of the private sector. It's about developing the right kind of balanced partnership between the public and private sectors to ensure that that takes place effectively. I wonder if Jim could make any comment. I like an important part. All the surveys that I've seen about small businesses trying to break into the export market, this is not uniquely an issue in Scotland throughout the UK. One of the things that it raises is that we don't know who to ask, where to go to for support in the first instance. They're confused about it, they don't know where to start, they're worried about the risks and the costs involved and they desperately need advice here. Once they get into the right framework and this is either SDI in Scotland or UKTI in the UK, they often get good advice, but the trouble is that they don't know where to go. They're crying out for a one-stop shop and at the UK level that's been talked about for at least 20 years, it hasn't really happened yet. Again, I'm more interested in what happens, what we can actually do up here and do more effectively, but thank you for that. It just confirms what some of us who have been involved in business believe. Okay, thanks. Bruce Crawford, do you have a supplementary on this? The whole concept of working together more effectively. Just like both Gary and the Professor Jim Love's views on how effectively SDI and UKTI work together in this area, I've certainly heard other evidence at other committees where this area could be strengthened and we could have a better approach and better co-operation, so it would be useful to get some of that stuff on record if we can. I think that certainly our experience seems to be that the relationship exists but it's disjointed. Certainly SDI will essentially provide a number of UKTI products within Scotland to businesses who are looking for that. They provide very important support in terms of direct support to individual businesses, where those businesses fit with SDI's criteria, but there are also occasions where sometimes you'll approach SDI about something and be told, no, we don't have any funding for that, but then you'll go to UKTI and say, yeah, we have got funding for that. I walked in the one door, there's SDI, there's UKTI services being provided, why don't I get a consistent answer? Why do I have to go to two places for that? So I think that there's definitely scope for the relationship to be far more smooth and streamlined within Scotland. Certainly the UKTI brand is pretty much invisible, speaking to most of our members. SDI is what they recognise as being the sort of governmental support for businesses, but UKTI do provide some very useful products as well and some of those are provided through SDI, some of them magically you have to know to approach UKTI direct and that's if you know they exist and operate within Scotland. From my experience with working with people at UKTI, they typically tend to regard trade support as having been devolved and that's pretty much it. That's regarded as something that's been devolved to the Scottish Government through SDI. So effectively, although they are still responsible for the whole of the UK in terms of that area, as far as I understand it, they effectively are saying over to you, Scotland. To our extent, yes, me UKTI are responsible ultimately for Government's trade support, but they've set aside a block grant for that activity and they expect most of that to be done by SDI. Although I did read their own submission, they do say that they have a strong working relationship with SDI and I'm sure that's true, but I don't know what that means practically on the ground. Gary, it's wrong what it means. Any idea how we can make things better other than getting them here to talk to you? Clearly, they need to talk to each other more and there needs to be a greater understanding. I remember giving evidence to a House of Lords committee actually sitting in SDI's offices in Glasgow and they didn't seem to have much of a clue as to UKTI's role in Scotland and those are some pretty senior individuals in the House of Lords. I should say that we're going to get both UKTI and SDI probably together in front of the committee to give evidence, so we can tease these issues out with them both. John Lamont, are you following up the same issue? I'm interested in how you get people to cooperate and whether there's an unintended consequence of devolution that we end up having a fight about who's responsible for what rather than it being something coherent. I wonder if you want two things, comment on the relationship between not Scottish Government and Westminster, but the Scottish Government and Scotland office in relation to this, but it should facilitate and support business as opposed to getting a barrier to it and as there anything that needs to be done there and secondly I have to confess my every instinct is that state intervention is a good thing, but I wonder whether in this case when you talk about business and innovation, where people are doing it themselves we should be finding a way of facilitating it and leaving them to their own device and I wonder in terms of the point that you make about innovative companies will export, the state can't do that or are there things that can be done that would encourage companies, I think you reflect some of it earlier around education so on, to be innovative and therefore more likely to export. A sceptical colleague of mine, not in here but someone who I would have thought would have said yes of course there is a role for government actually said you know if companies are good companies and you create good strong companies they themselves will find a way to export so I wonder whether do you have a view on whether unintended barriers are put in place because of the nature of government in Scotland and secondly how do we facilitate and support without creating hindrance for people. From our point of view it's about well our surveys have shown that there's an awful lot of businesses out there who would like to be exporting. Now what is stopping them from doing that? I mean the principal driver that we are picking up is a lot of those businesses saying well I'd like to be exporting but I don't believe I'll get the right product or service that in order to export and I don't know where that product or service where there would be a demand for that. So I think that what is important is getting to the right businesses at the right time in order to maximise the opportunity for that business to export. Now that's why I think that private sector organisations like Chambers have a very important role to play because we're dealing face to face with business in 20 odd offices across Scotland right the way across the country on a daily basis so we're very connected to businesses of different scale different sectors and different outlooks so that's a good place to connect but clearly we don't connect with the broad spectrum of businesses out there equally you've got the public sector largely through the likes of SE and SDI who are connecting with a number of businesses but largely the businesses they are connecting with are those businesses which fit their criteria of sector and growth so those may be businesses which are open to exporting but equally there will be a lot of businesses that aren't touched by the public sector who will be touched by speaking to the local chamber speaking to other businesses in the local area who could be encouraged and emboldened to take those steps now the innovation is you know is that something we can teach businesses you know I don't know I think there is there's probably an element that you can take businesses a bit further down that line mentoring is one way of doing that and that's a service we provide right across Scotland but I think getting that right mix of the connectivity to the businesses where it matters and when it matters and having public sector support to allow our businesses to take that step and it's about that partnership and how that works together and I don't think it is working together as well as it could at the moment in terms of you know back to the SDI UK to you I think and Scottish Government and Scotland office you know businesses don't particularly care about you know what governments want to say to each other they just want it to get assorted and you know when you look at the the great work that has been done I mean for example Scotland office did a great piece of work through the Wilson report last year but you know due to probably the time it was published you had to read through about two three pages of you know why Scotland should remain in the UK before you actually got to the meat of what that report was about you know and businesses don't have the time or the energy to do that so it's about making a functional relationship work between the UK government Scotland office Scottish government that works in the best interests of business and uses the best that those particular governmental agencies can offer in terms of developing Scotland's connectivity internationally. In terms of my view in the matter it comes from what the the academic research tells us about the link between firms productivity and growth exporting and innovation these things are clearly linked so it is indeed the case that if you have lots of highly productive good firms they will tend to naturalize self-select into export markets I don't believe for a minute though that means that there's no room for government support here the trick is to can we identify firms which have all the characteristics of those that could do well in export markets but don't currently export their innovative of other good attributes and find a way of targeting those and give them appropriate support which often means lack of information about export markets they don't understand how to do these things they don't know how to get into exports and that's where government support can be useful because it's a market failure that's exactly why organisations like SDI UKTI exist does that mean there's a problem potentially through devolved administrations well possibly in the sense that there can be a lack of links between support at the UK level and support at the devolved administration level but it also gives a potential opportunity for joined up policy making which maybe doesn't happen at UKT at UK level like support jointly for firms which are innovative but not yet exporting that's a bunch of market-ready firms who aren't yet exporting but could do if they perhaps got some more information so that's the kind of thing that could be done more easily perhaps in Scotland than at UK level to join up government support so would you envisage government agencies not so much being available to give advice or support but actually surveying business and saying oh you look like a candidate and actively perhaps through the chamber whom so have a identifying going speak to him have you thought about because otherwise they'll be hiated it's exactly that because if you can identify the characteristics of firms which are more likely to become exporters and we can now do that from the available data we've got on surveys and identify the characteristics of firms which for example export occasionally but don't export continuously if you can identify those characteristics of firms that look like firms that are doing this but don't yet do it they're target ready those are firms to which you can target support and say yeah we can we help you here rather than a shotgun approach to all firms in scotland most of which will never export nor should they do so so it's a question of using limited resources in a targeted way and we have to some extent the data now to to to identify characteristics of firms that can be supported effectively okay and ended up a very elongated thread but i'll remember to go in on different subjects but one last supplementary from Richard Lyle a small question you you basically said that you know there is a problem and replied to to check body you said the fact that you know it had his analogy the three horses running at the same time i'm not a betting man but would you agree that possibly we need a national exporting board or something like that that you know one agency controlling everything or people that can feed into to discuss with other companies and and get you know the scottish brand is well known in the world well respected salmon all the different other things you know from my own region turnips teakates turnips waivers you know logs you know that's a plug for turnips but basically at the end of the day you know do we not need something to manage this whole and get everybody involved to promote the scottish brand yeah i mean i think i think that does need to be a sort of coherent strategy in terms of exporting and that strategy needs to encompass all the different areas i mean you know i i you know i don't think that you know whether it's chambers or scdi or sdi or whoever you know competing against each other is is not you know in a in a horserace is not is not the most productive use of those horses but pulling together you know whether they're pulling a carriage or something like that you know is you know that that is that that is how it should work because all of those agencies have a role to play and certainly in terms of the direct connectivity with businesses i mean certainly the private sector does have a role to play because if you're a business looking to export you'd probably much rather speak to another business who's been there and done that rather than speak to a civil servant who's been sent round to speak to you about exporting so there's a role to play for for all of those organisations and more but yeah has to be drawn under a coherent strategy you still have an old word in the UK government the board of trade a number of years ago i sadly i can remember that you know do we not do do we a simple quick yes or no because i know the community inside of my eyes to hurry up a yes or no in a national exporting board or national exporting agency with expertise to pull all of us together i think first and foremost we need a coherent strategy and then you know the the structures that follow that are probably less important but we need that coherent strategy that everyone has bought into and then we can look at structures around that thank you thank you thank you okay we need to move on bring in denith robson thank you good morning gentlemen um maybe if i start with the self-carry clerk um you you mentioned the wilson review and basically you uh i sincerely hope you found the the the time and the the will to maybe go through that review um after the first three pages have you got any particular comments that you like to make with reference to the wilson review i think the wilson review did highlight a number of the areas that we have already talked about you know for example the relationship between the public sector and private sector when it comes to delivering internationalisation support to businesses also the connectivity between the UKTI and SDI and the fact that that is is a connection which in many ways seems to be broken or at least disjointed at the moment so i think i think the wilson review does touch on a lot of those areas and it touches upon you know the need for care and support for for business and it is it's pointing to solutions and we're not quite there yet so i think it's got a hugely important part to play in the discussion and and certainly from you know speaking to both both Scottish Government and UK Government ministers over the past year or so since the publication of the report all have spoken very highly of it and i think it should inform what we should be doing but you know is it a solution in itself i don't know if i'd go that far but it certainly it talks about a lot of the right areas and it gives us the kind of guidance as to the areas we need to address and i think those are areas that are coming to discussion this morning as well you think that that basically that in itself is there in giving you that platform for a dialogue i think it's value you know i think it does have a very strong value in terms of particularly the relationship between between government i mean that is you know something that's come out of the scotland office clearly the scotland office you know want to be part of this agenda want to be part of the solution you know i think it needs governments both north and south of the border to be working together you know and there's a lot of positive stuff goes on between between the governments um smith commission et cetera has proposed a lot more closer working between scottish government and uk government so i think there's definitely potential solutions there in terms of how the government's worked together and i think wilson is is particularly strong in that regard it's from the wilson and maybe move to yourself professor love one of the suggestions from the wilson review was the the creation of this sort of single portal and you mentioned earlier i think it was an answer to bruce crofford that there's a lot of agents there's a lot of especially small businesses out there they don't know where to go they've got absolutely no idea there's this sort of plethora of of information and agencies et cetera do you think that the creation of a single portal for signposting would actually help especially the small and medium-sized businesses i think it might if it were done effectively the difficulty has been that the the idea of having a single portal to help sms in terms of both internationalising and innovation has been talked about at UK level and at Scottish level for many years there's never quite materialised because i know i've heard civil servants talking about it for at least 20 years it's never quite materialised and that's partly because of the diffuse nature of the knowledge about these things in the chambers the federation for small business so on and so on yes the idea of having a portal in which they could get the basic information they need to find out where to go i think would be very useful but then you'd have to make them know that that single portal exists and that seems to be for some reason terribly difficult if it could be done i think it would be very effective yes so if all the agencies had in their top line of any of their webpages go to that'd be useful yes absolutely would i think garrie you got an opinion on this i mean i think i think a single point of contact is is absolutely essential i mean you know as we've already discussed you know there may be different places to go once you get past that point but there needs to be many many routes into that portal and then that single portal needs to put you towards where you need to be so it's a case of many routes in and potentially many routes out but but that portal in the middle would certainly be of value so if governments have been slow to move on this and bring this forward do you think the private sector maybe should look at it and create it and manage it potentially it's something that the private sector could do i think though well i think i think though that you know given the the wide nature and the fact that you know it isn't all about the private sector and it isn't all about the public sector that hopefully there would be some kind of partnership involved in that but certainly you know we would certainly be up for that discussion because we did not enable and i think you've both mentioned this a few times now actually about mentoring now surely you know if the chambers are providing mentoring sdi are providing mentoring se are providing mentoring would it not be better that if someone was looking for some degree of mentoring that they could go to one specific area and find out that the best area or agency to provide that or even direct business to provide that mentoring because at the moment it's a mess well there's a lot of mentoring around i mean certainly we would we would argue that a mentoring scheme is very strong as delivered strong results for se and for our other partners in mentoring and it certainly delivered strong results for the businesses concerned and i'm coming back to access in terms of where do you go how do you know it exists for especially the sme sector yeah i mean certainly the chamber network are promoted very strongly and it's a service we offer not just to chamber members but to any business in scotland and there's various arms of that that we would run a programme in conjunction with with scotish enterprise we're on a programme in conjunction with highlands islands enterprise we've got collaboration in one area then which is mentoring at the moment yes so can that be extended into the other areas then if we've already got this area of collaboration and partnership down mentoring why can that not be then embraced to look at the broader aspect of perhaps this set exporting what we're talking about today we would certainly be up for for those discussions and certainly in terms of providing support to get businesses trading internationally is something we're already doing and having some success in if we can do that on a wider basis we'd certainly be open to those discussions thank you thank you thank you um thank you very much and i actually wanted to ask you a bit about mentoring your mentoring scheme obviously when you speak to businesses so it works for it works very well and you refer to it a lot in your submission how much is your partnership with se worth in terms of the mentoring scheme of se i think the contribution from from se is somewhere in the region of about 200 to 250 000 pounds per year and what's your input into it match funded from that is european funding and our input into it is providing mentors for the scheme we've got over a thousand business people who mentor other businesses throughout scotland okay so what's the overall value of it well we've done some analysis of that certainly i don't have all of the figures to hand but i think certainly last year we engaged with over 800 businesses throughout scotland and provided one-to-one mentoring matches with those businesses i don't have figures for last year but i think um turnover um or sorry additional um gva from our interventions in 2013 was somewhere in the region of about 90 million pounds no sorry 50 million pounds okay and how do you monitor the scheme because it is delivered by chambers of commerce that operate independently across the country so how do you monitoring where it's working well and where it's not working well we have a central um connections database um to administer business mentoring through the scottish enterprise and islands and islands enterprise schemes across scotland um we have targets for each of the individual chambers and partners participating in the scheme um and we ensure that those those chambers meet those targets consistently across the country the reason i ask is that during one of the round table sessions that we had with businesses there was a senior businessman that had said that he had come forward as a mentor and certainly looking at his CV he had a lot to offer and the particular chamber of commerce didn't get back to him for a year why would that be because they were making a match or is it just he's fallen through the net so to speak i couldn't comment on individual circumstances but obviously the process of matching a mentor to a business is something else that we do as part of that that service and it's it's a very delicate balance getting the right mentor for the right business and making sure that the match is productive in the longer term i i don't know the results of i don't know the circumstance of that individual case but if you want to send me the details of it i could look into that and get back to you sure okay what proportion of your mentors themselves have a lot of export experience because one of the most interesting you know statistics that came out of of this review was that so many of scotland's exports are actually delivered by a very small proportion of small number of firms so does that cause you a challenge in terms of your mentoring because there can't be that many people you know entrepreneurs medium-sized businesses who are exporting according to our static statistics mentoring services that we offer are not specifically targeted at exporting they can't address exporting and we have a bank of mentors with international experience who we can draw upon in order to to match with any business who is who does have international expansion plans but this is your mentoring scheme is probably your biggest collaboration with the government agency is it in terms of value i think at the moment probably yes so but you say you don't actually have a specific aspect of that mentoring scheme kind of ring fence so to speak for exports or encouraging exports not currently it's the terms of the scheme are we deliver that scheme in collaboration with scotland enterprise and clearly scotland enterprise have targets that they want to meet from that scheme as well as targets that we want to meet from that scheme so there isn't within that scheme a specific target in terms of international expansion thinking in terms of you know if we want to grow exports in this mentoring scheme is the thing that you've referred to in you know several answers is kind of your success story and it's obviously your biggest collaboration with government that perhaps if we do want to improve our export performance then we should look at things that are working and how we can improve them in terms of boosting exports so ring fencing or a more specialized stream might be might be a way to go do you have other mentoring schemes which are more specialized that those schemes we operate with scotland enterprise and islands and islands enterprise are two of our mentoring schemes and very much focused on the objectives of of sce and high we have other schemes that we operate with the british banking association within the private sector mentoring we have other schemes with high cast in terms of specific accountancy related mentoring and also with sport scotland which is very much obviously based upon delivering increased knowledge and experience among sports clubs but not for the exports not at the moment enough if we'd be delighted to to offer that kind of service across scotland with the right partner okay thanks very much okay okay i think thanks i think chick really's got a follow-up on this and you've pre-empted a question i wanted to ask in terms of your mentoring in terms of export can i just extend that back into sce and highs account management system do you have a view on the expertise export expertise that's available in the account management regime in the enterprise agencies the feedback that we have from members who are within the the account manage scheme of sce and high would has been fairly positive but it's a limited number of businesses clearly that that account managed system is is engaging with but i think overall the feedback we've had has been has been reasonably positive in terms of uh in terms of the account management process limited it's engaging with a limited number of our members yes okay thank you back to Jim love's point earlier about linking exports and innovation is that something that in your experiences is delivered within the enterprise companies and does it impact on the ability of members who are account managed to take forward innovation into international markets well again you know the account manage system seems to work reasonably well for those businesses who are within the system but i think from our point of view the problem is that there are a huge number of businesses with potential who are currently not within that system and you know particularly there are areas of the country maybe the more rural areas largely who often complain that they feel as if Scottish enterprise in the case of the lowlands isn't engaging very much within within their region and businesses feel a bit kind of left out because they they may not be in their account managed system they may not be in the right sector but they might be a very strong growing business for example sce doesn't engage with with retail businesses because that's not a key sector for them but you know we engage very regularly with retail businesses and clearly a lot of retail businesses have high exporting potential okay thank you can i maybe pick up a couple of points we haven't really covered so far we we professor love we talked briefly about benchmarking scotland against other parts of the UK earlier on in your research did you find examples of successful export growth in other parts of the UK where they were doing things that we could perhaps learn from the it's more a question of things you wouldn't want to learn from i mean i think it says yeah and the key one was really the one i mentioned i think i was talking to Joanne Lamont was really about the the the policy level the fact that there hasn't been greatly joined up policy on the link between innovation and exporting i know i've said this several times i think i'm going to say it again because it really is so important the evidence is so overwhelming about this that if you were devising a set of policy options to support firms which were innovative and exporting you wouldn't set up the system that currently exists certainly Westminster level because different organisations handle different aspects of policy if there's some way of avoiding that that's the way i would go i don't have specific examples from other parts of the the UK because we were looking at the UK as a whole comparing it with other european countries and other parts of the world as opposed to looking at the different regions of the UK okay thanks i'm a question for gary clark on that on a different subject you mentioned earlier the smart exporter initiative now originally i think that was delivered partly by scc but is now delivered entirely by scolish enterprise in house has that been a helpful change has that made it better or made it worse i think in terms of of smart exporter i think there's a lot of good stuff in there and it was something that we looked very closely at time we were involved in for some time but it's positive and it was reaching potentially more businesses but i don't think it's been maybe 100 successful in terms of reaching the broad scale of the businesses we need to and i think perhaps more targeting along the lines that professor love has mentioned already is maybe an area that would deliver more consistent results was it more successful when scottish chambers were a partner in it i think there are various reasons around our involvement and disengagement from the scheme that were not directly related to the success or otherwise of the scheme that's a very diplomatic response and that intrigues me yes to know what was what actually happened essentially it was a structural issue within the way we had set up an arm of the business to engage with with smart exporter and that wasn't particularly sustainable from our point of view so it wasn't a commentary on the on smart exporter as an objective and we did continue to to to be involved in smart exporter delivery in the highlands and islands area thereafter all right thank you i'm just on that point i'm just wondering you know is evidence based in terms of whether or not the smart export has been a success or not i mean do we actually have that as a measured something that was monitored measured and we have that evidence based i think i'd like to see more clear evidence of that well i mean certainly the anecdotal feedback has been certainly fairly positive there was a good amount of goodwill certainly initially in terms of the areas that smart exporter was looking to engage in and the types of businesses that smart exporter was looking to engage with but as with a number of government schemes i think it would be good to see a more regular update in terms of progress against target yeah so you're happy for us to try and seek that evidence and get that a baseline yeah absolutely absolutely i think i think that's the you know that that should be a standard across the board no matter no matter what i think you know you know we've already mentioned our mentoring scheme i mean that's something that we provide analysis and feedback on certainly to to our partners in Scottish Enterprise and Islands and Islands Enterprise every year there is a measurable outcome in return for that and targets are either met or they're not and thankfully they always have been and exceeded in most cases so i think any any scheme that the government is operating particularly where that scheme is targeted at a national objective i think we need to see the progress along the way okay keep writing two very quick questions one of garrion in terms of a inward investment of course is is a step to turning around and exporting goods i just wonder what involvement you've had with the the brick countries and if jim could comment on the situation with regard to europe the fact that we're not a member state and a lot of information does not flow directly to scotland in fact we have evidence of economic circumstances where we've not enjoyed the benefits that flow through westminster and we're dilatory in getting the information i wonder if you could address these international first of all the inward investment and then the lack of in terms of inward investment i mean certainly we have met with a number of usually delegations coming into the country with some mixed results and as i mentioned earlier that i feel that certainly a lot of the engagement that comes into the country in the interest that is shown in the country is not particularly well handled once it gets here and we end up getting a phone call about you know two days before a meeting and you know could you pull some businesses together and meet with this delegation yeah we'll do that but we could do it far more effectively in a more structured way if you know we had a lot more advanced warning of that if we saw our role in a particular part to play in that in those dealings with with with officials and businesses who are coming to our country and i think at the moment that's not handled particularly well from a central level i think that is a role for government to coordinate and then engage with all of the organizations that they would need to engage with to ensure that that delegation has the best possible spread of connectivity across the country i think in some cases it works very well i think in other cases it just doesn't work at all so it needs to be far more consistent in terms of how we engage with businesses and and governments looking to to find out more about our country and the opportunities that exist here in terms of specific engagement with with overseas nations we've had a reasonable degree of engagement with with china and with india i think less so with brazil and i know that our chief executive chief executive is due to meet with russian consul in coming weeks but obviously it's a very specific situation there at the moment in terms of ember investment i mean there's so much evidence that ember investment is hugely beneficial uh that in terms of technology employment all the spillover effects both at uk and Scottish level yes if there's anything that's prohibiting scotland somehow being involved in that process of getting information that needs that's hugely detrimental but i couldn't comment on what those processes are there's also a link there between ember investment and exporting of course because so many of the bigger biggest exporters are themselves foreign-owned firms operating in scotland we've talked quite a lot about structures and about programmes and so on in addition to those things that that we've discussed are there any cultural inhibitor to engaging with exporting that we should be thinking about in preparing our report on our inquiry any wider concerns or considerations i've certainly mentioned very briefly some potential cultural issues i think there's two strands of that i think there's the cultural issue in terms of whether a business believes it has the right product or service to export and whether it's maybe assumption that it doesn't is is an accurate assumption and whether there's perhaps more thinking it could do there and i think that comes back to the innovation point that professor love has already mentioned i think in terms of our international outlook you know we certainly believe that that's something that ought to run very much more through the education system that encourages people to to think more internationally and whether that's languages in primary schools as the curriculum for excellence is seeking to do which we very much welcome through to in terms of certainly secondary education but perhaps before that looking at how we introduce businesses more into the the curriculum and again the wood commission has got a lot to say there that we agree with through to universities where you know we're very much keen to ensure i suppose two things number one that as many students at Scottish universities have the opportunity to go abroad and and partake in international experience as part of their degree course we would like to see that pretty much compulsory where that's possible and we'd also like to see a far more open doors policy from the UK government in terms of foreign students coming into our universities and particularly in terms of post-study visa issues allowing those students to remain in country for a period of time after they complete their studies in order that they can become far more engaged in the working in Scotland developing connections in Scotland so that they could either you know hopefully hopefully stay here but if not then go back into the world with a knowledge and connectivity to take with them that involves Scotland so i think there's all sorts of cultural areas behind there largely in the education system i think that's where it would manifest itself there i think need to be worked through more fully and of course as professor love has mentioned very attracted by the you know the idea that you know we need to get businesses thinking more innovatively that's very helpful i put the same question to Jim up but in particular i wonder about the capacity of digit when you talk about innovation is there a correlation between businesses which are digitally which are trading online at home if you like and thinking online at home and those which are up for export abroad is that a cultural issue as well that i can say that there is a very direct connection between that because we've done some work using survey data which is exactly on that issue it certainly is the case that firms which have a clear online presence in their activities are much more likely to export firms that don't the question is which one comes first it may well be that firms who who wanted to export did that in the first place but it's also the case that firms that are clearly about a very clear online presence are much more likely to get orders coming from abroad for that reason so they may find themselves feeling almost becoming incidental or accidental exporters because they got their order coming in from it and suddenly they find themselves being an exporter but firms that have a clear strategy or online strategy are much more likely to be persistent exporters and firms that don't if you can make a comment in your previous point about the cultural thing for years i've seen evidence on attitudes towards enterprise and entrepreneurship in scotland it seems to suggest that we are people of all ages a slightly less well inclined towards entrepreneurship enterprise in this country and other parts of the uk in europe which i'm constantly surprised at i've never really quit honestly why i also remember in the 15 years that i worked at strathclyde university long time ago we had huge numbers of foreign students coming into the university could occasionally accommodate them had tremendous problems in trying to encourage our students to go out to spend a year abroad that may have changed i led scotland a long time ago but it was a constant source of irritation that we could never have get our students to go out to other countries even for six months or a year when we had streams of European kids coming to Oregon universities let's ask a follow-up on the point gary clack made about foreign languages in schools there's a constant source of frustration to me that in my children's primary school the only language available is french nobody in the world speaks french it's not it's not well apart from the french obviously but in terms of in terms of international trade french is a very minor language i mean we should be surely be teaching spanish or arabic or mandarin or even german a far wider international reach than french does i think spanish is is becoming if not the norm certainly far more more common these days and it is on offer at that you know a far wider range of um schools and obviously into primary school as well now but yeah i mean i think there's there's two areas there i mean i think it is useful to develop a knowledge of a language that will be of use in business and you know yeah if you're going to be doing business in france or um a number of french islands across the world then you know you you will find french you will find french useful but you know clearly you know spanish um portuguese uh russian mandarin you know etc you know are going to be far more directly useful so i think there is a certainly a case to say that uh you know it would be useful to to to focus on those languages um that said i do think that there is nonetheless whatever language it is uh that is spoken i think going alongside learning any foreign language is that developing understanding of um cultures which are different to our own um and i think that is possibly as important um as the language skills themselves particularly in developing business relations across the world because you know when you're um we've you know we've met with you know as i mentioned earlier a number of chinese delegations and um you know knowing where to sit in the room and and knowing what to have on the table and knowing you know to hand your business card over with both hands and all the rest of it is is culturally you know as useful to know um as as language as the language skills themselves so i think there's there's wider areas there in terms of rather than just the particular language it happens to be thank you patrick harvie thank you convener i'm tempted to suggest we invite the french consulate to a future evidence session before we finish the inquiry um i'm glad that the last answer talked a little bit about the cultural aspects of other countries because the question elicited some comments about our own culture and attitudes to entrepreneurship for example but this cultural issue is obviously about the the the other side of the equation the other side of that relationship some of our earlier sessions have touched on the ethical context of internationalising business and the issues that may arise around for example countries with a very poor record on equalities and human rights what are the issues that would arise for example for women running businesses trying to engage with certain countries what are the issues in relation to countries which have problems with racism or indeed with corruption and bribery or with poor human rights and labour standards in the supply chain i wonder if you could comment on the issues that are thrown up which businesses in scotland may encounter whether as barriers or whether there are ways of of engaging with those issues in a constructive way as as part of the the development of an international relationship between businesses here and overseas i mean i think that's the hugely interesting question and i think it opens up a whole series of possibilities in terms of how businesses look at what they're doing internationally and the role that they have to play in that and clearly i think that you know in many cases there is a role for business well first of all there is a responsibility i think upon business to understand the the situations that you've just described and how they might exist an impact upon doing business in another country what the ethical concerns may be in terms of a scottish business doing business in that country and i suppose on the flip side of that how a scottish business doing business in that country could perhaps assist to develop the situation positively within that country and i think that's going to be very difficult for an individual small business to do but i think that a wider questions internationally i think that is an area certainly where you know we do look for guidance i think from governments certainly within scotland in the UK your organisations have engaged with this set of issues probably struggling to think of any direct connectivity we've had in that regard recently i mentioned an upcoming meeting that our chief executive is having with the consulate general of russia and clearly there'll be a lot of issues i think within that meeting both in terms of the specifics and generality to put it that way of the way that the russian government currently conducts its business in terms of the enterprise research centre whose purpose is to engage in academic research and policy research into the growth of SMEs in the UK we do have a strand of activity which is looking at the role of women directors in business and black and other ethnically owned businesses in the UK we haven't addressed the issue of the ethics of exporting or internationalising but i agree it's an incredibly important issue the key thing i guess is the extent to which any individual smaller medium-sized enterprise suddenly finding itself with an order from abroad would know what what are the ethics of engaging in this and it's i think that's a really interesting one that they need help for that kind of thing and the one-stop shop we've been talking about but i think the one way of perhaps handling that because it's unlikely any individual small firm would instantly know what all the ethical issues are of a particular country or not necessarily know what all of the ethical issues are but individuals consumers make choices and many choose to be informed about fair trade issues around labour standards or environmental performance when they make their choice about how they're going to spend their money it seems reasonable that even a relatively small business might have some consideration of these issues i think it's absolutely right but they also need to know where to go to get information about that as well that's a key thing i think yeah thank you just on the last question there's a great book called mind your manners which explains cultural differences it's worth a read everyone's exporting to a whole range of countries the second thing is i've just been privileged to be involved with chinese business people from dan dong province who have opened up an international business language school in the boat glasenock house near newcomnock anyway my question is is on air passenger duty can you assess the impact that air passenger duty has had on Scottish exports and what you would like to see happen to it well there's certainly been a number of studies done i mean in particular two studies by York aviation which i think took place in 2011 and 2012 i think from memory which detailed the damage essentially to the Scottish economy that was being done through the imposition of one of the highest aviation taxes in the world upon Scotland and indeed the whole of the united kingdom and i think that there's a report from pricewaterhousecouppers that came out last year which went into further detail on that in the UK basis i mean from my point of view it is pure and simply a tax on connectivity a tax on on internationalisation and a tax on exporting the sooner it's devolved and abolished the better perhaps a quick question here with with reference to sort of connectivity throughout Scotland at the moment in terms of road rail you know we've sort of just touched on air there i'm just wondering if you've got a particular view as to whether or not this is in itself a barrier to some companies actually exporting because of that the difficulty of actually getting goods to the appropriate sort of where it would report air or rail links gary i think it can be it's already been mentioned in terms of scotland's geography and of course in terms of of air links we are certainly seeing a far wider range of direct air services than we had a few years ago but still to go down to to london rather than i think most of our exports particularly goods are either you know stuck on to containers and either you know stuck on to the backs of lorries or stuck on to a boat but increasingly we are looking at the aviation sector for exporting i was at the conference of our colleagues at the British chambers of commerce a couple of weeks ago and they were talking about or to be more specific the chief executive of Heathrow who had a very particular pitch to make was talking about the delights of exporting longoustines from Inverness to china and pretty much the only way that that could be done in a way that was was by air certainly i had a very specific solution to that particular problem as you might expect but yeah i mean that is one example of one of our major industries i mean food and drink makes up 18 percent of our export trade an example of how we need to think far more dynamically in terms of how we get goods to market and in a condition that is acceptable to the seller the consumer and indeed in the case of the longoustines to the product themselves encouraging you know some of the small and some of the medium size firms to share like container containers for persons for shipping because obviously it's a huge expense and sometimes it may be the product itself there's no way to fill a container i'm not aware of i'm not aware of anything specifically within the chamber on that i know that certainly within the food and drink industry there are some examples of that uh yeah i mean that's yeah very good point i mean you know there's a lot of good product comes out of comes out of our end whether that's um soap or uh beer or whiskey or whatever um but yeah i mean getting it uh getting those products across scotland the UK in the world um certainly relies upon something that chambers would look at in terms of assisting would certainly be be happy to look at it i'm not aware of us being involved in anything specifically at the moment on that in Scotland thank you thank you um rhescrofford being talking about barriers challenges areas where things can be done better could just flip that round other way and what are we doing well what is our unique selling point and how can we make that even better well we've already mentioned food and drink you know 18 percent of our exports we've got iconic brands um not just in terms of the Scottish brand but in terms of the the individual brand identities within that whether that's in the whisky industry salmon um you know shortbread um you know there's examples of that right the way across scotland i think we do that exceptionally well i think we perhaps do need to develop further in terms of that national brand and what that brand means and again going back to N56 um and that was clearly one of the highlights of that report in terms of how we um successfully build even further in scotland's brand that's something we would certainly agree with within within chambers and we've been talking about that for for a long time um so there are huge opportunities there i mean just while we're on the subject i think going back to a point that that professor love mentioned earlier about um those businesses who export by accident you know in our survey that we did last year we certainly found that um around about 25 percent of businesses are businesses who will specifically design a product or service for the international market and about 75 percent of businesses are those who are just responding to you know demand and become exporters by accident i think within a defined brand that sees scotland as an outward looking um exporting trading nation um entrepreneurial um supportive of businesses large and small across all sectors i think getting that buy-in will help to create that mindset that helps deliver the sort of innovative thinking that we need if we're going to get that 75 percent who export by accident up to 75 percent who export as a deliberate business strategy thank you from my point of views speaking as someone who used to live in oringston and he did his phd in scotch whiskey i'm not going to disagree with food and drink being terribly important but the other angle i think we sometimes miss is the importance of the knowledge economy in scotland's point of view and indeed scottish universities which i think we sometimes forget such important global players our universities punch massively above their weight internationally and we sometimes forget i think how important they are in essentially exporting knowledge Scottish based knowledge through the huge number of foreign students who come to scotland study here and then go back to their own countries and through the the research that Scottish universities do which is hugely influential worldwide and i think we sometimes forget just how important the universities are to us i wonder if these are two strengths food and drinking universities do they actually have a synergy and working together given that they're the the big things we do and we're very good at it you know it would probably quit a useful thing if we could get them closer together to feed off each other and drive from that base yeah indeed i mean i'm sure but there certainly are links but what they are if they could be made better i'm sure that that's the good idea i can't believe the universities in scotland wouldn't be keen on doing that they are to my assurance certain knowledge are pretty on to whenever we'll bunch okay thank you very much okay i think that probably about covers our session so can i on behalf of the committee thank uh professor love and gary clark for coming along has been very useful to the committee and we'll be bearing all this in mind when we come to write our report at this point we go into private session and we'll have a short suspension thank you


Conditional statements are statements made in logic these will be the reason we're talking about them is because we will be using them in proofs in upcoming chapters. There are two parts to a conditional statement the hypothesis which just like in science is the maybe I think I believe that if I water the plants they'll grow taller and let me check it out now so this is the perhaps if you're 16 the conclusion would be then it is legal for you to have a driver's license so in a conditional statement the hypothesis is the if portion of the statement the conclusion is the then portion of the statement there are there's a way to represent conditional statements symbolically as well if P then Q where P is the hypothesis Q is the conclusion if P then Q and the logic symbol for if then is this arrow symbol now there are a whole bunch of statements that go with conditionals if P then Q you see the statement here if P then Q converse statements are reverse it if Q then P a converse statement for if you are 16 then you may have a driver's license is if you have a driver's law if you it's okay for you to drive have a driver's license then you're at least 16 an inverse statement involves the negation of these the inverse notice it is in the form in the order again of P first and Q second however now we've got the not symbol so it's not P if not P then not Q that statement looks like if you are not 16 then you may not have a driver's license if you are not at least 16 it's not legal for you to have a driver's license contrapositive is the knots again with the Q first not if not Q then not P if it is not legal for you to have a driver's license then you are not at least 16 years old so that's an example of the conditional the converse the inverse and the contrapositive


Live from Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Summit Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage here in Bahrain for the exclusive coverage of AWS Summit and their announcement and their execution of a new region, which should be online here in early 2019. I'm John Furrier, your host with SiliconANGLE Media theCUBE, extracting the signal from the noise, meeting all the people. First time in the Middle East in the region should be a big impact, having a digital footprint in size of Amazon Web Services, bringing energy and entrepreneurship and innovation and economic revitalization and enablement. We love the coverage, we're meeting a lot of great people. Our next guest is Simon Martin, who's the ambassador of the British Embassy here in Bahrain. Simon, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for joining us. So, okay, so I want to just kind of get your perspective. I met the US ambassador yesterday last night at dinner. He's kind of new to the area in the job. But he's already well-informed, I can tell you. He's well-informed, birthed by fire, thrown in the deep end. You've been here for a few years. Yeah, that's right. Take a minute to talk about the environment here, because we're first time here, we're learning, we're observing. I'm certainly surprised. My daughter was asking me, you know, what are the women like there? We had a women's breakfast yesterday, 70 plus people, the energy, the diversity. Interesting culture, feels like very open. What's your thoughts? Well, very much so. Bahrain has been at the sort of crossroads of international travel for hundreds and hundreds of years. The UK's relationship with Bahrain, the former one goes back just over 200. And that was all to do with trade. Manama means the place of sleep. And it was a place that people used to stop to rest on their way across the Arabian subcontinent and towards the Indian subcontinent and so on. So it's a place which is naturally welcoming of foreigners and outside ideas. And I think that's what Amazon have found here. So there's an awful lot of change going on in this part of the world. Bahrain is a relatively small economy compared to its neighbors. It was the place that oil was first discovered in the Gulf, but actually once they discovered it, they realized it actually had rather less than most of the neighbors. And therefore it's an economy which has had to adapt to keep growing in contrast. Mainly the dependence on oil, other oil rich areas. Yeah, right, is that right? So that's been the mainstay of the economy for some time, but there is not yet the potential for the growth that's needed in order to help develop an economy with a necessary modern infrastructure, a growing population, the need for quality employment for young people, which is something that we've heard a lot of in the last few years. Talk about your history. How long have you been in the job you're in? What's the background? What are some of the things that you've done in the government in the UK? Yeah, well, thank you. So I've been here for three years. Before that, I was working actually for Israel Highness, the Prince of Wales. And in that role, visited this part of the world on a couple of occasions and saw the impact of that very important part of our relationship, our Royal Family's relationship, but the Royal Family's in this part of the Gulf. And it just opened my eyes a bit to the importance of having multifaceted relationships. And again, this is what we're now seeing here, that Amazon Web Services with the cloud region that they are building here have brought a new dimension to the flag I'm going to wear here. To the Bahraini economy. So talk about the multifaceted pieces. What I'm fascinated by is the Dubai dynamic, right? You know, I see Dubai, a lot of events there, blockchain events, AI events, a lot of tech events. Feels like New York to me using the American metaphor. It's kind of like a Silicon Valley kind of vibe. But they all have been working together for years. What's the historical relationships? How have they changed? And how does cloud computing make up for that? How does it play into it? Well, of course, there's been a very collaborative and yet competitive relationship between the different, particularly the finance centers of the Gulf for many years. The economic success story of Dubai is very well known. Bahrain has continued to develop, but without the resources that underpin the UAE's success, has done so on a more progressive way. But this is always going to be a much smaller economy. And Bahrain has to compete in niches in which it has a competitive advantage. And what we have now happening here is creating a wonderful new niche opportunity for Bahrain. But of course, I don't think I'm letting out any secrets to say that each of the countries in the Gulf would love to have been hosting the new cloud region. So Bahrain had to try incredibly hard to present an environment in which to host this kind of investment, which requires regulation, it requires openness and ease of doing business. And it also requires an openness to developing the labor force, to support not only Amazon, but all of the train of companies that we're expecting to invest along behind it. Well, Simon, I really appreciate your experience and the candor here in the cube, certainly for us it's a new area. And you have certainly a perspective for the Royal family in the UK and now being here.  And you can go back when I was a young kid growing up. I remember the pound and the French franc and all the different currencies going on and then the EU comes together. And now you have Asia and cryptocurrency. So you have a whole nother cloud computing generation coming where that might reimagine the political landscape, might imagine the economic relationships. These are opportunities but also threats. And so how people handle it is interesting. So when you look at that kind of dynamic, you got a little bit of uncertainty and opportunity at the same time. Depending on how you look at it, the glass half full or the glass half empty. How should executives and government officials start thinking about this new model, this new marketplace? London, certainly the center of the action and connects now into Bahrain, could be a different dynamic, frictionless, digital. People living in cross borders, these are new dynamics. What's your thoughts on this new melting pot of digital impact? Well, of course everybody wants a piece of it. Everybody wants to be at the center of the new melting pot. And for Bahrain, they're looking to be the center of it within this region. But of course, the Dubai Finance Center and Abu Dhabi and Kuwait and so on are also very keen. And no one is expecting to be the dominant player. And certainly from Bahrain's perspective, it's very much about creating the environment in which companies will see this as a good place to start. The Gulf region is a coherent region with an incipient single market and so on within the GCC. And so naturally investors from the outside are going to look at one place to start. And so what Bahrain has done, and I think it's been very well founded, this has taken place over the three years that I've been here, is to dramatically increase the ease of doing business and then find proportionate ways in which the government can support new companies to get them established. So you mentioned GDPR, how's this going to affect a company in the Gulf? Well, I was at the launch of a very interesting new big data software project by one of the, in fact, British owned new startups in the FinTech Bay here, which is supported by the Economic Development Board. Their starting point is that the product that we are selling out of Bahrain is GDPR compliant, which gives you an idea of the way in which even from this relatively small island in the Gulf, the global perspective is being taken. And certainly with digital currency that know your customer anti-money laundering is a big thing too, you got to get that right. Absolutely. So they have an opportunity with FinTech. Final question for you, as you look out and see the human capital market and the future of work is a big conversation we're always having. And certainly I live in Silicon Valley where everyone's no secret that there's migration out of Silicon Valley due to the prices of living there, but yet concentration of entrepreneurship, people are going to have engineering teams all over the world. So you have a dispersed workforce now crossing borders and not just the domicile issue, that's one, taxes, where to domicile outside, either the US or other countries. So you have the combination of diverse workforces. This is a big opportunity too, challenge and opportunity. It is, it is. And of course there are not just big changes now, there's constant fluctuation in the way the workforce and the populations in this part of the world within the Gulf are changing. Look at vision 2030 in Saudi Arabia, the big increase in the Saudi workforce, both through the policy of Saudiization and through the creation of many more opportunities for women in the workforce. That's affecting Bahrain. But Bahrain has always been a place where people come to to work and sometimes to work remotely, sometimes to live here and work across Saudi Arabia. So the Bahrainis feel that they're very attuned to these challenges. But I might just mention as well that this is not just about economics. And what impresses me about the reform program you see going on here is that the idea is that we will create a broader and wider spread opportunity, particularly through the opportunities for young professionals working in AWS, but also in the environment all the way around it for all communities in Bahrain. So not just the wealthy, not just the sort of Ivy League equivalent graduates. And so that's why the academy that they're setting up here. And the network as they merge in social networking is going to bring people closer together. Okay, great to have you on. Final question is as people look at this moment in time, maybe an inflection point shot hurt around the Gulf if you will of Amazon. Certainly they did this with the CIA in our country. They set successes coming in and kind of changing how things do, reimagining value creation and value capture. What do you see as the impact of the AWS region have in this area, in its geography? Just your thoughts on what the impact's going to be. Well, of course, this is a virtual world and a cloud region is a virtual concept. So it's easy to say, well, it shouldn't take an Amazon web services cloud region to transform the way in which governments work here. In practice, what AWS have seen wherever they have established cloud regions, it's a magnet for other businesses to develop around it and it provides the reassurance that governments need to take that step forward. I don't know whether you heard Max Peterson in his presentation this morning saying he was amazed at the speed with which the entire Bahraini government system has embraced the move to the cloud, which indeed my own government is doing as we speak. And this I think is going to be one of the really big, the really big impacts, which will allow governments to get smaller and more efficient and more transparent. And serve their citizens in a different way and a better way. But one last thing, John, because you may not have heard about this is we're hearing a lot about the shift towards renewable energy in this part of the world. And people say, why on earth would we need renewable energy, which so much of the world's petrocarbon resources are based here. But of course, if you don't burn them, you can sell them. And that's a very simple economics. The fact is that it has taken longer than other parts of the world for the transition to renewable energy, even though we have so much sunshine and at times quite a lot of wind. The government here has just put out a tender for a 100 megawatt solar farm. And the driving force behind that is because AWS have said, we want to power our cloud region from renewable energy. And this is an example of industry and the big investors actually applying a positive force to speed up the direction of government policy already. And it's something that has been well-comformed. And it's happened fast. This private partnership, public relationship, that's a success story. And I think there are lots of other ways we will see this happening. As I say, you can't have over 2,000 people here, all focusing on cloud technology without bringing an awful lot of extra attention to and focus on what else is going on in Bahrain. From my perspective, the Bahrain government is saying we welcome this publicity and we look forward to explaining ourselves. And I think we'll see a lot of further development in this area. Well, Simon has a great point, sustainable energy and the trade off between industry, private industry, trying to make money but contributing technology and a co-creation with the government. I mean, data center's hot here. You need cooling. You got sun, power, you have to have a solution. Absolutely, yeah. You can't burn it, you can sell it. So, good opportunity. Simon, Martin ambassador, the British ambassador to the embassy here in Bahrain. Thank you for sharing your insights and color commentary. Pleasure to meet you, John. Appreciate it. Hey, live coverage here. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, bringing you all the new observations. Our first time in the Middle East region, well-coherent structure, great economics, great society benefits, cloud computing, Amazon Web Services region opening up in 2019. Exclusive coverage. Stay with us for more after this short break.


Intestinal permeability can be affected by a number of factors, and many people experience on a daily basis. Watch this video to find out what those factors are, and in the next video I'll show you how to heal a leaky gut. Intestinal permeability, the leakiness of our gut, may be a new target for disease prevention and therapy. With all of its little folds, our intestinal barrier covers a surface of more than 4,000 square feet, that's bigger than a tennis court, and requires approximately 40% of our body's total energy expenditure to maintain. Mounting evidence implicates the disruption of intestinal barrier integrity in the development of numerous ailments, such as inflammatory bowel disease. Here, researchers measured intestinal permeability using blue food coloring.  You don't have to end up in the ICU to develop a leaky gut, though. Simply taking some aspirin or ibuprofen can do the trick. Indeed, taking two regular aspirin or two extra strength aspirin just once can increase the leakiness of your gut. These results suggest even healthy individuals should be cautious with aspirin use as it may result in gastrointestinal barrier dysfunction. What about buffered aspirin? It doesn't make any difference. Both regular aspirin and buffering produced multiple erosions in the interlining of the stomach and intestines, put a scope down people's strokes. And you can see extensive erosions and redness inside 90% of people taking aspirin or buffering in their recommended doses. How many hours does it take for the damage to occur? None. It happens within five minutes. Acetaminophen, sold as Tylenol in the US, would be a better choice, unless you have problems with your liver, and rather than making things better, vitamin C supplements appeared to make the aspirin-induced increase in gut leakiness even worse. Interestingly, this may be why NSAID drugs like aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxen are involved in up to 25% of food-induced anaphylaxis. In other words, increasing the odds of life-threatening food allergy attacks by more than 10-fold, presumably because these drugs increase the leakiness of the intestinal barrier, causing tiny food particles to slip into the bloodstream. Okay, but why can exercise increase risk too? Strenuous exercise, like an hour at 70% of maximum capacity, can divert so much blood to the muscles away from your internal organs that it can cause transient injury to your intestines, causing mild gut leakiness. But this can be aggravated if athletes take ibuprofen or any of the other NSAID drugs, which is unfortunately all too common. Alcohol can also be a risk factor for food allergy attacks, for the same reason increasing gut leakiness, but cut out the alcohol and your gut can heal up. What other dietary components can make a difference? Elevated consumption of saturated fat, which is found in meat, dairy, and junk, can cause the growth of bad bacteria, which make the rotten egg gas hydrogen sulfide, which can degrade the protective mucus layer. It is said to be clear that high-fat diets in general negatively impact intestinal health by disrupting the intestinal barrier system through a variety of mechanisms, but most of the vast array of studies cited on the negative effects of high-fat diet and gut leakiness were done on lab animals or in a petri dish. You don't know for sure until you put it to the test. Rates of obesity and other cardiometabolic disorders have increased rapidly in parallel with a transition from traditional lower-fat diets to higher-fat diets. We know a disturbance in our good gut floor has been shown to be associated with a high risk of many of these same diseases. As studies using rodents suggest that a high-fat diet unbalances the microbiome and impairs the gut barrier resulting in disease. To connect all the dots, though, we need a human interventional trial, and here we go. A six-month randomized control feeding trial on the effects of dietary fat on gut microbiota and indeed higher-fat consumption appear to be associated with unfavorable changes in the gut microbiome and pro-inflammatory factors in the blood. And note this wasn't meat and dairy. The researchers just swapped in refined carbs in place of refined fats, like a white rice and white flour for oil. These findings suggest countries westernizing their diets should advise against increasing intakes of dietary fat, while countries that have already adopted westernized diets should consider cutting down. So far, we've discussed things to prevent a leaky gut. What about foods to heal a leaky gut? That's what we'll cover next.