David Miller argues that the signs of undue corporate influence on the Scottish Parliament are already visible

It is hard for even jaded cynics not to be amazed at the apparent naivety of the MSPs involved in the Scottish Parliament Business Exchange (SPBE). This is the body which fosters closer connections between MSPs and business, and has been criticised for allowing big business privileged access to the Scottish Parliament. First Margaret Jamieson admits that she has signed a 10 year confidentiality agreement with US drugs giant Pfizer. Then Elaine Thomson was revealed not to have known that the ‘lawyer’ shadowing her had no legal qualifications, and was in fact a lobbyist working for Saltire Public Affairs, the lobbying subsidiary of law firm Shepherd & Wedderburn. Thomson’s failure to even inquire which clients her shadow worked for shows an alarming naivety. She along with four other MSPs is on the board of the SPBE. The thought that it might be abused by lobbyists seems never to have crossed her mind. Fellow MSP and board member David Davidson also exhibited a tenuous grip on the real world of lobbying, saying a lobbyist simply ‘gets your message across’. The Exchange by contrast is about ‘information exchange and understanding’. Every PR textbook notes that lobbying is all about ‘mutual understanding’. This is a veritable definition of lobbying. Getting ones message across is part of the lobbyists’ repetoire, but lobbying also depends crucially on building understanding of procedures and personalities, fostering relationships and on intelligence gathering. Two years ago it was revealed that BP had hired an intelligence firm that spied on Greenpeace in Germany using an undercover infiltrator pretending to be a left wing filmmaker. Yet no-one seems concerned about their lobbyist shadowing Scotland’s only Green MSP.

Lobbying is equally concerned with the management of corporate reputation. Pfizer, in common with many other pharmaceutical giants, are adept at controlling information about their activities, but sometimes the truth does leak out. One example revealed in the Observer by Greg Palast, is the case of faulty heart valves manufactured by a Pfizer subsidiary. Rather than instruct that they be removed from the market (and from the hearts of patients unlucky enough already to have had one fitted) Pfizer ‘ordered the defects to be ground down, which weakened the valves further, but made them look smooth and perfect’. When the valve’s break, ‘the heart contracts - and explodes. Two-thirds of the victims die, usually in minutes’. When the scientist whose name helped promote the valves discovered this he threatened to go public. A Pfizer executive telexed the scientist: ‘ATTN PROF BJORK. WE WOULD PREFER THAT YOU DID NOT PUBLISH THE DATA RELATIVE TO STRUT FRACTURE.’ The reason for not publishing?: ‘WE EXPECT A FEW MORE.’. According to Palast 800 had exploded by 1998 and 500 people had died. No wonder they wanted Margaret Jamieson to sign a confidentiality agreement.

The participating corporate lobbyists are extremely positive about the SPBE. ‘An invaluable insight’ says The Saltire lobbyist; ‘fascinating and valuable’ echoes the man from BP. Nuclear firm British Energy, which has just received a £650 million subsidy, courtesy of the taxpayer, says on its website that the Exchange ‘provides great opportunities for Scottish business’. Indeed. However, it is only supposed to allow MSPs to educate themselves about business, rather than provide ‘value’ and ‘opportunities’ to big business.

After marvelling at the incredible contortions of MSP defenders of this scheme, we should direct our attention to its progenitors. The SPBE was set-up by the Chief Executive of the Scottish Parliament Paul Grice and the presiding officer David Steel. They have not seen fit to defend the Exchange in the media, but it is their stewardship of the project which raises the most serious questions. Margaret Jamieson may have been naïve, but she assumed that the Exchange had cleared confidentiality agreements. They hadn’t, because, as Paul Grice put it at the unofficial launch in June 2001, "a strong guiding principle... is that we should set the Exchange up with a minimum of rules and regulations". This failure to police the conduct of the corporations involved has led predictably to the current fiasco. David Steel too has been unusually silent. He was more expansive at the unofficial launch. In an agreeably chummy get together he described to the assembled MSPs and corporate lobbyists his ambition for the Exchange "to go deeper than just a few days of junketing - no, that’s not the right word [laughter from audience] - the few days of mutually beneficial contact". Steel also noted that the Exchange had "broadened out beyond just business and industry and into all community organisations of every kind". This has turned out to be false. Five of the eight participants are from multinational corporations and one is a commercial lobbyist representing multinationals; the other two represent enterprise quangos.

Defending the Exchange before the Standards committee recently Grice rejected criticism of his pet project. He claimed that the undertaking by participants not to lobby is a sufficient safeguard, despite any clear definition of what lobbying might entail. In fact, Grice is on record recommending the lack of rules and regulations as a positive feature of the Exchange. As lobbying is the full time function of the Exchange’s corporate members it is rather like suggesting that a fox can shadow the chicken house so long as it acts like a mouse. Grice’s defence required him to dissemble in the worst traditions of Sir Humphrey and the British civil service. In the Grice lexicon words can apparently be stretched to mean the opposite of their dictionary definition. The Exchange does not allow privileged access to big business because "The rules of the Exchange give the members safeguards so that they can have a constructive exchange. There is no privileged access in any sense of the word" (my emphasis). But the fact is that the scheme is dominated by multinationals and that there is no comparable access to MSPs (up to 26 days a year or a day a fortnight) for any other interests. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the following synonyms for privileged: favoured, advantaged, indulged, special. Readers can judge for themselves which of these senses apply to the scheme.

On the question of openness Grice noted that "The MSPs knew exactly whom they were dealing with. We put a press notice out saying who the people were. In no sense was anything hidden. That openness is another safeguard" (my emphasis). A press notice there certainly was, but it noted only that Fiona Burns was a ‘policy adviser’ at Shepherd & Wedderburn the law firm. Actually, she works for Saltire Public Affairs, its lobbying subsidiary. Such lack of transparency is par for the course in the world of lobbying, but it is worrying that the Chief Executive feels the need to endorse the lobbyists slippery use of language. Moreover the MSP involved in the exchange, Elaine Thomson, who also sits on the board of the SPBE, appeared to be slightly less than ‘exactly’ aware of who she was dealing with. Here is what she said to BBC Newsnight:

Again, readers can judge for themselves the extent to which this MSP knew ‘exactly’ with whom she was dealing.

The affair needs to be seen in a broader context. Most observers (on the left and the right) agree that the power of business has increased in the last two decades. Many suggest that this means a diminution of, if not abolition of, the nation state. One of Blair’s admirer’s talks of replacing it with the ‘Market State’. All over the world we are seeing business take a greater role in governance. There are a myriad of corporate front groups and ‘partnership’ schemes set up to pursue the interests of Trans-National Corporations. From this perspective the SPBE is simply the local face of a wider global trend. Both the EU and the UN have similar partnership arrangements with big business. The UN’s ‘global compact’ for example allows corporations to use the credibility (and the logo) of the UN in exchange for non-binding pledges to improve their human rights and sustainability activities. At the Johannesburg Summit earlier this year environmentalists condemned the Global Compact for the respectability it gave to companies, some of which (including the oil and pharmaceutical industries) continue to engage in unsustainable practices. The relevance of this for Scotland is that the developing relationships between government and big business across the globe are finding local expression in Holyrood. Was this the purpose of devolution?

Some are now arguing that the SPBE should be brought under the control of the standards committee and that is surely right, but it is not certain that this would stop the Exchange functioning as a means for multinationals to gain privileged access to the Parliament. The current standards committee proposals to register lobbyists would not affect five of the six lobbyists in question because they work inside companies and are specifically exempt from the register, which is aimed only at commercial consultants. This is, as standards convenor Mike Rumbles has said, a ‘structural’ problem. The only alternative to abolishing the Exchange is to radically alter its functions and ethos. If it is to give MSPs experience of the ‘real world’ in which most Scots live then they must be able to visit small business, the public sector, charities and pressure groups. What chance of MSPs ‘shadowing’ Greenpeace ‘actions’ or living with the homeless on the streets for a week, in order to build ‘mutual understanding’?

The SPBE affair certainly shows that there is a need for some Scottish Parliamentarians (and their officials) to learn more about business. But if they are to guarantee their independence and credibility they must demonstrate they are not just receiving one side of the story. Otherwise there is a danger of MSPs complying with a corporate agenda for Scotland, the very opposite of the promised rhetoric of a new open and accountable system of government. Remember, it was the business community that was most hostile to the democratic movement that delivered devolution. As things stand the Exchange promotes an ideal atmosphere not for education about business but for education by business. In a word - lobbying.

David Miller is co-author of Open Scotland? Journalists, spin doctors and Lobbyists (Polygon)