Scottish Parliament Business Exchange
The Scottish Parliament Business Exchange is promoted as an educational exchange allowing members of the Scottish Parliament to learn more about all kinds of business. All corporate participants are required to sign a letter affirming they will not use the scheme for lobbying. In practice the exchange is dominated by TNCs who pay up to £7,500 to join and three quarters of those taking part in its first round of activities were full-time lobbyists. It is the Scottish 'chapter' of the International Association of Business and Parliament, a company based in London.
In January 2007 it was announced that Devin Scobie had been appointed as the interim executive director of the Scottish Parliament Business Exchange. At that point he was described as Devin Scobie of Caledonia Consulting.[1] Scobie is a former lobbyist with GPC International and has represented SPBE members such as Pfizer as clients.[1]
Purpose
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[2]
References
- ^ SPBE facilitates lobbying forum access to Scottish Parliament Blogs - David Miller - Unspun Spinwatch, David Miller, 9 January 2008.
- ^ Source