Scottish Parliament Business Exchange
SPBE claims
Members sign up to, and programmes are planned and delivered, under certain key principles
*Non-lobbying and non-partisan
*Mutual trust - access to learning with respect for highly sensitive information (commercial/political)
*Transparent and open
*Responsive to the interests of MSPs Policies safeguarding these principles include:
*letter of undertaking from participants and hosts respectively, relating to placement programmes
*acknowledging, where appropriate, specific programme topics subject to commercial confidentiality
*publication by The Exchange of programme costs
*guidelines to MSPs from Clerk to Standards Committee on registration of interests
*surveys of MSPs' interests and circulating of programme ideas for MSPs' responses
Source: [1]
The Reality
This organisation has institutionalised corporate links with the Scottish parliament. Their are 44 MSPs in contact: 25 involved in programmes, 6 at planning stage and 8 showing general interest. Apparently they see no conflict of interest with this contact. As to what the nature of the programmes are there are no details in the SPBE website [2] (http://www.spbe.org.uk/)]
Members
- BAA Scottish Airports,
- British Energy,
- BP,
- ConocoPhillips, *Chevron Texaco, *Deutsche Bank AG, *Essentiagroup, *IBM, *Lloyds TSB Scotland, *Scottish Council Development and Industry, *Scottish Enterprise, *Scottish Financial Enterprise, *Scottish Parliament, *Scottish Power plc, *Shell International, *Scottish and Southern Energy, Shepherd & Wedderburn W.S.,Pfizer Ltd, *The Royal Bank of Scotland Group, VisitScotland, SELECT, ArupScotland, General Medical Council, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh; Highland Airways.
Spinwatch Resources
- David Miller, a question of privilege Spinwatch, Nov-Dec 2002
- David Miller, Corporate power, institutional corruption, Spinwatch, September/October 2003
- David Miller, Taking The Risk Out Of Devolution Spinwatch, 6 September 2004
http://www.spinwatch.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=304
External links
SPBE website [2]]
