Scottish multi-millionaire Sir Tom Hunter is frustrated. Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme to promote a new report commissioned by his foundation on Scotland’s economy, he said: ‘The general consensus in business up here is that the current government don’t really listen to business. They make policy in isolation, which makes bad policy, and that’s not good enough for Scotland in my opinion.’
Sir Tom, who famously started out selling trainers from the back of a van before going on to make hundreds of millions in retail, wants to see Scotland’s private sector given the tools and assistance it needs to turbo-charge the economy. His paper, produced by consultants Oxford Economics and entitled Raising Scotland’s Economic Growth Rate, aims to stimulate the debate needed to make that happen.
The paper addresses low productivity, poor business birth rate and a lack of success in businesses scaling up, pointing out, for instance, that Scotland’s business birth rate came ninth out of 12 UK nations and regions in 2019.
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