NICOLA Sturgeon has asked the Scottish public to set the priorities for Scotland’s National Investment Bank.
The First Minister announced the consultation yesterday when she was speaking at an international conference on inclusive growth in Glasgow.
Sturgeon said she wanted the public to help suggest how the bank should “support Scotland’s economy”.
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The establishment of the bank was first announced by the FM in the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government in September.
Benny Higgins, the CEO of Tesco Bank, was appointed to lead the work to develop an implementation plan, and he has convened a small advisory group of academics and economists, to support him.
While Higgins has been asked to consider market failures and opportunities, capitalisation, regulation and other factors, as well as governance and operation models, the First Minister said the public had a role to play.
She said: “The Council of Economic Advisers identified a national investment bank as an important means of delivering infrastructure development, finance for high growth businesses and strategic investments in innovation.”
“Our Programme for Government committed to the establishment of such a Bank and I am delighted that Benny Higgins is leading the implementation work.
“Today, we are launching a consultation on the details of how best the bank can achieve those aims and support Scotland’s economy.”
Scottish Tory shadow economy secretary Dean Lockhart MSP said the National Investment Bank was “simply another desperate attempt by the SNP to distract us from the mess they have made of our economy.”
He said: “It is a re-hash of a policy first announced several years ago, and then repeated again when they launched the Scottish Growth Scheme last year.
“Not a single penny has been received by a business under the scheme, and Scottish companies will understandably be sceptical about when they can expect to see any benefit from this latest plan.”
Labour’s economy spokesperson Jackie Baillie said the SNP hadn’t thought through the purpose of the bank. She said: “A Scottish Investment Bank was a Labour manifesto commitment in June, and formed the centrepiece of the SNP’s attempted relaunch in the Programme for Government. Whilst imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the SNP appear to have only sketched this out on the back of a fag packet.”
Meanwhile, the First Minister said she would press on with plans to explore a citizen’s income scheme, accepting that the fact finding mission might prove it to “not to be feasible”.
Sturgeon said: “I should stress our work on this is at a very early stage. It might turn out not to be the answer, it might turn out not to be feasible. But as work and employment changes as rapidly as it is doing, I think it’s really important that we look and are prepared to be open-minded about the different ways in which we can support individuals to participate fully in the new economy.”
Speaking to reporters after the event, Sturgeon added: “We’ve heard the IMF today talk about the opportunities but also the challenges of the digital transformation.
“If countries are serious about leaving nobody behind in these transformations, we have to be open-minded to new approaches, so a citizen’s basic income might turn out not to be the right answer here, but I think it would be wrong to be close-minded.”
The First Minister also announced measures to establish a Just Transition Commission to advise the government on how to make the move to a low-carbon economy “as equitable as possible”.
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