Scottish Food and Drink Federation (Jim Hume)

Scottish Food and Drink Federation

September 11, 2007 12:00 PM
By Jim Hume MSP

Ladies and gentleman I'm delighted to be able to sponsor what will be my second reception in the Scottish Parliament, this time on behalf of the Scottish Food & Drink Federation and Improve.

I would take this opportunity to thank all those involved in organising it including the parliament event and catering staff, SFDF, Improve and of course not forgetting all of you who have come along this evening. Thanks also to the other speakers this evening who are Ian Gibson of Walkers Shortbread and my parliamentary colleague, Maureen Watt, Minister for Schools and Skills, both of whom we'll hear from a bit later.

The Scottish Food and Drink Federation represents food and drink manufacturers in Scotland, an industry which employs around 50,000 people. It generates sales of £7.57bn and £3.57bn of exports. Skills and workforce issues have been, and continue to be, a priority for SFDF and its members. High skills levels throughout the workforce are vital for companies in the industry to remain competitive, playing a key role in productivity improvements, profitability and innovation. And that's of course where Improve comes in as the sector skills council for food and drink manufacturing in the UK.

Significant skills shortages are emerging in important sectors of our economy and at the same time tens of thousands of young people are not in education, employment or training. Let's harness the hidden talent. I'd like to see more done to support and encourage this group into training in schools and colleges. I visited Dumfries and Galloway College just recently as part of my summer tour and heard how the college works with the local enterprise company in identifying skills beneficial to the area's economy and thereafter efforts made by the College to extend the relevant training to local schools with vocational training, modern apprenticeships and other initiatives.

The bottom line is that investing in skills and training makes a real difference, and by offering vocational training to our young people both in and out of school early on we're creating a diverse skills base for the future.

If I could go slightly off message for a few minutes, my own professional interest in the food and drink industry lies in local procurement of good and services. This, in my view, represents an excellent opportunity to deliver economic development within Scotland using the wonderful produce on our doorstep thereby sustaining, expanding and creating Scottish food and drink manufacturers. To refer to a local example East Ayrshire Council's school meals pilot used local produce for its school meals. The pilot proved so successful that it's being rolled out to other schools in the local authority area and has been put forward as a model for best practice. The small additional cost of £30,000 was paid for through the Hungry for Success Initiative and the pilot generated £160,000 for the local economy. The result was that small and medium sized businesses were successful in achieving guaranteed contracts for an academic year and were then able to plan for the future and take on new staff. Such a commitment by the public sector to Scotland's food and drink industry together with a successful skills strategy is surely one very large step towards making Scotland a leader in achieving economic success in food and drink.

In rounding off I'd like to mention two key points.

Put quite simply, there is a very real opportunity to use in particular the public sector in supporting the food and drink industry in Scotland and thus tonight's theme - Creating Opportunities, Building Success - is all the more appropriate. I hope that the Scottish Government will use the tools at their disposal to encourage this shift.

Finally, the Scottish Parliament will debate the national skills strategy tomorrow and hence the nature of this evening's reception would seem very timely. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how the skills agenda will be delivered whatever form the future Scottish Enterprise Network takes.

Ladies and gents, please enjoy the evening - I'll now hand over to Ian Gibson of Walkers Shortbread.

A liberal voice for the South of Scotland