Wilful ignorance is a poor response to business attrition

The are three recurring headlines which suggest a significant problem in Scotland, a problem people are not talking about: they are 'Scottish company goes bust with all jobs lost', 'Scottish company acquired by foreign rival' and 'Scottish business warns it may soon cease trading'.

In the last six days it is; a Dundee courier firm (all jobs lost), a precision engineering firm (bought over by Swedish rivals), a 130-year-old ice cream parlour (closing), two brewing companies (split up and sold), a former crown jewel of the oil and gas industry (sold cut-price to Dubai-based company), a specialist construction company in East Kilbride (administration, all jobs lost) and a bar which has been a central Edinburgh fixture for 35 years (at risk of closure).

But are these representative of a trend or are they just the bad news stories we see? Common Weal started last year trying to collect data on company loss. The problem was that it was happening to quickly to keep track of. For example:

On 7 January it was reported that Paisley construction company Taylor & Fraser was bought over by Irish firm Suir Engineering. On 20 January Glasgow-based building services consultancy and mechanical and electrical (M&E) engineering firm Davie + McCulloch is bought by the UK-owned Wallace Whittle environmental engineering consultancy. 21 January Glasgow-based financial advice firm Verum Wealth is bought up by UK national firm Foster Denovo.

On 6 February Glasgow-based Consilium Chartered Accountants is bought over by Birmingham-based Dains Group. 19 February North Lanarkshire property maintenance firm Rodgers & Johnston is bought over by Welsh maintenance company Cardo Group. 4 March Aberdeen-based wealth management company Johnston Carmichael Wealth is bought over by London-based Partners Wealth Management LLP.

Then on 6 March International consulting engineering company Royal HaskoningDHV has acquired Scotland-based maritime engineering company Arch Henderson. 12 March Glasgow-based digital marketing agency Tag Digital is bought over by Texan event specialist company Freeman. 12 March Glasgow-headquartered construction consultancy Soben is bought over by multinational corporation Accenture

Please note that these are only the buy-outs where we lost ownership of a viable business. These represent nine major Scottish businesses whose ownership was lost in little over the first 40 working days of the year. What is not in doubt is that we are losing a lot of Scottish businesses. But there is much we don't know.

We don't know what Scottish presence these business interests have after say five years. Are they still employing people in Scotland or has the business operation been moved overseas? We don't know if other Scottish-owned businesses are growing fast enough to replace these businesses – though running to stand still isn't a great economic strategy.

Of those which remain, we know that overall the Scottish economy exports utterly remarkable levels of its own wealth to the rest of the world (as Common Weal never tires of reminding you, Scotland's 'leakiness' is unprecedented when compared to any similar nation).

But we don't know enough about how or where Scottish wealth is leaking because we know far too little about the ownership patterns of our economy. We do not collect data separately on company ownership, location of shareholders or where profits and dividends are paid. We don't have proper sectoral balances which would let us assess whether it is a bigger problem in retail, or construction, or engineering...

In fact all we know is that the overall position is not good (countries like Scotland simply shouldn't export wealth like we do), it is now pretty difficult to think of a major international business player that is in Scottish ownership – other than some wealth management companies (which by their nature are really owned by whomever's wealth it is).

The fact that we don't collect data on this problem doesn't mean it isn't a problem. In fact arguably it is a problem precisely because we don't collect data. If we had an annual measure of Scottish ownership of and wealth extraction from the Scottish economy it would probably raise alarm bells.

And it would probably result in a very significant challenge to Scotland's economic development elites' obsession with Foreign Direct Investment which actually celebrates the loss of Scottish ownership. Perhaps this is why the data is not collected.

Either way, it is remarkable that every political party considers the economy to be their priority but none of them demonstrate any interest in actually creating accurate and useable data about the nature of that economy. Scotland's ruling classes have become too comfortable with a failing orthodoxy and seem content to continue in ignorance rather than gathering data which might challenge that ignorance.

Scotland needs a National Statistics Agency and that agency must prioritise essential data collection on Scotland's economy. The relentless stream of business failure headlines is deeply depressing, yet we don't even know what it represents. That isn't good enough.