RECENT reports that the Highlands and Islands might lose their dedicated enterprise agency through a shotgun merger with Scottish Enterprise (SE) appear unfounded.

Nicola Sturgeon seemed clear when asked about this at First Minister’s Questions a couple of weeks ago: “Highlands and Islands Enterprise [HIE] does a fantastic job. It has done a fantastic job over the last 50 years, and I can give the assurance to the member that we will make sure it is in a position to continue to carry out those functions and provide the excellent services it does to the Highlands of Scotland.”

That rules a merger out ... doesn’t it? Surely no Caledonian Sir Humphrey crafted this response to leave wriggle room. At the very least there has been ministerial discussion about HIE merging with SE, which is reasonable enough for any government committed to securing the greatest possible value for the public money it spends. In the present year HIE has a budget of £79.5 million and a staff of 300. SE’s budget is more than £300m and employs 1,270 people.

Despite considerable numbers of jobs already having been shed, it is understood ministers believe there are still areas where the agencies duplicate work. HIE was established in 1991 as the successor body to the Highlands and Islands Development Board (HIDB). It was created by Harold Wilson’s Labour Government in 1965, largely to address the Highland problem of chronic depopulation. Its first chairman declared: “The board will be judged by its ability to hold population in the true crofting areas.”

The HIDB and HIE have been a force for good, overall. However, success through an increase in population in many areas has brought its own problems. HIE latterly had to walk a tightrope: on one hand promoting the area as smart, successful and a place for the those with energy and ambition; on the other justifying its continued separate existence with an alternative narrative referencing the continuing fragility of many communities.

This was addressed by a former HIE chairman, the historian Professor Jim Hunter, in evidence to the Westminster Scottish Affairs Committee meeting on Skye in July. He said the island had been a remarkable success. Before the 1840s, nearly 24,000 people lived there. “By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the comparable figure was around 7,000 and, had the demographic trends of the previous 120 years persisted, there would be virtually no-one left in Skye today. Instead, there has been a very substantial recovery, with Skye’s population having again passed the 10,000 mark.

“However, nothing like this has so far occurred on Argyll islands such as Mull and Islay, on much of the Argyll mainland, in north-west Sutherland or in the Outer Isles.” He suggested the Scottish Government might refocus HIE’s mission.

He mooted a “more imaginative option” that the Government establish an entirely new agency, headquartered ideally in the Hebrides, whose remit would be to “replicate in still struggling parts of the Highlands and Islands the marked upturn achieved elsewhere”. That would be more imaginative than any merger.