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 specific 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]]