The Strategic Forum met 20 times between November 2007 and April 2015 to consider topics of strategic importance to the Scottish economy and to align actions in addressing these issues to deliver the maximum impact.

Topics covered at meetings of the Strategic Forum, many discussed at more than one meeting over this period, include:

• State of the economy

• Economic Strategy or Recovery Plan

• Key / growth sectors including tourism, oil & gas and food & drink.

• Innovation

• Leadership and ambition

• Skills

• Workforce / place development

• Higher Education contribution to growth / post-16 education reform

• Youth employment

• Internationalisation

• Digital economy

Minutes for meetings have been place in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICE) under 58315.

The Strategic Forum fosters a culture of collaboration between our economic development and skills agencies. Economic strengths since the establishment of the Strategic Forum were recognised in the recent Enterprise and Skills Review report. However, to deliver the step change necessary to realise our ambitions for Scotland to become a top performing OECD nation a refreshed and enhanced approach is required, as requested by stakeholders within the Ministerial Review Group. The Enterprise and Skills Review report, arising from Phase I of the Review, sets out this framework.

The decisions reached by the review will further drive alignment by establishing a new statutory board to coordinate the activities of SE, HIE, SDS and SFC, improve the measurement of their impact on delivering outcomes, establish a new vehicle to focus on the specific enterprise support needs of the South of Scotland and protect HIE’s delivery of support in the Highlands and Islands. The review also made decisions to promote Scotland as an open and international economy, streamline the innovation landscape and undertake a review of the learning journey focused on sustained employment.

The Review builds on successes delivered by the Strategic Forum which has a remit to provide strategic leadership and set the direction of travel for public and private sector bodies. It explores the most significant, cross-cutting strategic issues and agrees how to respond. By establishing shared future priorities, the Strategic Forum has provided a platform to develop coherent, united leadership within member organisations and to wider Team Scotland partners with which individual bodies closely engage.

The co-chairs of the Strategic Forum, when its remit was last revised in 2014, were the Cabinet Secretary Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth and the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning.

Core Membership includes the Chairs and Chief Executives of the main economic development and employment agencies: Scottish Enterprise; Highlands and Islands Enterprise; Scottish Funding Council; Skills Development Scotland; and VisitScotland. Scottish Government directors with lead responsibility for each of the agencies, along with the Chief Economist and Director General Energy, Enterprise and Digital are also members.

Ministerial membership of the Strategic Forum has evolved with portfolio responsibilities. It is co-chaired by Cabinet Secretaries with responsibility for the economy and for education. Membership has included the Cabinet Secretary with responsibility for infrastructure and the Minister with responsibility for enterprise or business. Depending on agenda topics, other ministers have attended individual meetings.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-03752 on 10 November 2016. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) use performance measures to help monitor the contribution they make in terms of their economic and social impact on the longer term goals of Scotland’s Economic Strategy. These performance measures are set out in their Operating Plan.

The 2016-19 Operating Plan can be found here:

http://www.hie.co.uk/about-hie/policies-and-publications/operating-plan.html

The current Executive Management Team comprises:

• Ron Smith – Chief Executive Officer

• Derek Banks – Finance and Commercial Director

• Jules Matteoni – Operations Director

• Mike Stewart – Business Development Director

• Sonia Rafferty – Human Resource Director

The Chief Executive Officer, Chief Commercial Officer and Finance Director appointed by the previous owners left the business in September 2015, August 2015 and May 2016 respectively.

The passengers numbers as reported by the CAA between 2011 and 2015 are listed in the following table.

Source: CAA

The volume of freight transported through the airport in each year since 2011 is:

Source: CAA

There are currently no Scottish Development International staff in the Innovation and Investment Hub in Dublin. When our London Hub opens in 2017, the 8 people working for Scottish Development International and the 3 people working for Scottish Enterprise in London will transfer there.

The Hub in Brussels is supporting the development of a new approach to the way Scotland deploys its resources in Brussels. This builds on the existing partnership between staff in the Scottish Government EU office and the 9 people working for Scotland Europa in Scotland House in Brussels.

Scotland’s Economic Strategy (SES) is directed towards achieving the Scottish Government’s central Purpose of creating a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth. Progress is measured through the National Indicators and Purpose Targets contained in the National Performance Framework (NPF).

The NPF was updated in March with additional indicators added to reflect the strategic approach of the SES. These included new measures of natural capital, access to local greenspace, underemployment, gender pay differences and payment of the Living Wage. The methodology used to monitor progress towards the Productivity and Solidarity Targets was also updated, to allow for a better assessment of progress towards the productivity and inequality ambitions contained in the SES.

The Scottish Government refreshes the economic strategy periodically, in light of changing economic circumstances. The latest version of Scotland’s Economic Strategy was published in March 2015. There are currently no plans to review the published strategy. However, while not planning a further Economic Strategy review at this stage, the Government will continue to monitor the developing economic situation post EU referendum, to ensure Scotland’s economic strategy is aligned to Scotland’s economic needs.