The new Scotland Act offers a window of opportunity for fresh thinking about how to grow the economy, Ross Martin says.

Given the background of the man who leads the Scottish Council Development and Industry, this clarion call is one worth listening to.

The former Heriot-Watt student president and Fife high school teacher has been in the vanguard of the economic debate since he became deputy leader and education chair of West Lothian council 20 years ago. As director of the Scottish Forum for Modern Government then of the Scottish Centre for Public Policy, and a government adviser on school reform, towns partnerships, and business improvement districts, he was the Scottish Council Development and Industry’s ideal new chief executive in 2013. “We are all sectors and geographies,” he says. “That’s what makes us special.”

Last month the SCDI unveiled its economic blueprint ‘From Fragile to Agile’, based on the views of its unique membership spanning public, private and voluntary sectors across Scotland. The title and the timing suggest serious intent.

Mr Martin says: “The point of the Scotland Act coming through is that Parliament and government is being given responsibility for driving economic growth, and that has to be done in a way that recognises the different contributions of different parts of the economy. It’s a big shout.”

The blueprint calls for ‘city regions deals’ for Edinburgh and South East Scotland, Aberdeen City and Shire, and Inverness and Highland, following the lead of Glasgow and Clyde Valley, to “ accelerate the reversal of 100 years of centralisation within the UK”.

The Forth Bridge crisis and the recent floods should be a wake-up call, Mr Martin says. “It demonstrates that when an engineering issue or a climate issue can cause such havoc, how fragile our economic infrastructure is.”

The manifesto calls for independent commissions for productivity and infrastructure, a network of technology hubs, and a new partnership approach to trade and investment, claiming these are “the areas of underperformance in the Scottish economy”. It also identifies “a critical need for substantially better information about what is happening in the Scottish economy”.

Mr Martin cites Holyrood’s emphasis on child care and education as a long-term economic driver. “There needs to be a much more direct and understood link between the impact of social policy interventions and economic outcomes....we need to reshape the interface between public and private sectors, child sector is predominantly public sector but it doesn’t have to be.”

He says the key is to “get both governments working on a common economic platform which...targets resources in an efficient way”.

“Looking at taxation in the round there needs to be more agility and flexibility in the system, so different market conditions in different city regions at different points can be accommodated.

“The Scottish government would argue they are making progress on that. We have sampled our membership’s view on more power at city regional level and there is support for at least a discussion about it, and a willingness to engage on the issue, which is interesting.”

Aberdeen city and shire, for instance, could use local taxation powers to respond to the oil downturn, in Edinburgh it could be a tourism tax, in Glasgow an environmental tax, Mr Martin says. “We need to look at all the possible areas of tax and have a sensible discussion with the economic leadership of each city region.”

It is an agenda which Mr Martin drove forward during his seven-year directorship of the Centre for Scottish Public Policy, creating the Scottish Cities Alliance, which the Scottish Government later entered as a partner, and which is now hosted by the SCDI.

He says: “Having been five years in Lothian region and five years in West Lothian, I saw the absurdity of not planning economic infrastructure on a travel-to-work basis.” Congestion charging in Edinburgh, for instance, could have helped fund a proper tram network, while dualling of the Rosyth-Kincardine road would have mitigated the Forth Bridge crisis. The new Scotland Act, he says , should be a cue for action. “There is a small window of opportunity and we need to grab it.”

The former Labour councillor cites “the Blair government’s arbitrary target of one in two going to higher education” as doing no favours to vocational training, which urgently needed “parity of esteem with the academic route”.

The innovative work at the likes of Forth Valley and Ayrshire colleges and the Scottish Waterways Trust’s Canal College showed what could be done, Mr Martin says.

“It is part of the productivity puzzle,” he adds. “”Walk round any town centre during the day and you see young people of school or immediate post-school age wandering about aimlessly, they need to be given some opportunity to be productive members of society.”

In public services, he says, “we end up with uniform provision regardless of circumstances...slowly there has been a recognition in health, education and all the rest of the public services of the need for a recognition of different circumstances and therefore a different type of provision, though to the same standard”.

He adds: “Police Scotland was further down the decentralisation route than any other service and it has been put into reverse, from my point of view that is a real shame.”

Expect to hear more on this in future from the former board member of Scottish Police College and chair of Lothian and Borders Police Authority.