David Miller argues that endemic lobbying means corporations control too much of Scotland.

The debate on the left in Scotland in the past decade has revolved around questions of nation and devolution. To what extent was a ‘stateless nation’ like Scotland able to take charge of its own destiny and how would devolution make a difference to this. In the first term of the Scottish parliament the debate continued to be focused on the extent to which a ‘new politics’ were emerging or to which ‘real’ power remained at Westminster.

Such arguments have tended to deflect attention from the practical ways in which power is exercised in Scotland by corporations. While we focus on the ‘machine politics’ of McConnell and the ‘Lanarkshire Mafia’ or the arguments over spin and public disengagement, one question which gets displaced is that of the corporate take-over of Scotland. It is not that any of these debates are unimportant, just that the discussion is held at the level of politics and can fail to see it in the wider context of economic interests and strategies. Economics is treated as a dry and de-politicised arena of expertise, rather than being fundamental to almost all areas of political debate - and so issues of corporate power are kept in the wings.

The process by which corporations exercise power is not always easily visible in public debate especially given a media unable or unwilling to invest significantly in investigative reporting, but also because the level of debate is far too narrowly confined by the ‘auld sang’. Nation, in other words can mystify corporate power.

For some on the left discussion of the power of Westminster may well be code for the power of the Transnational Corporations (TNCs), but it is not enough to leave matters there. Big business does not just rule Scotland via Westminster, it also rules by direct if often low profile and covert engagement in Scottish politics.

How is this power accomplished? The neo-liberal revolution of the 1980s and 90s did not happen merely as a result of the fundamental economic forces. Rather it was consciously planned and struggled for by what Leslie Sklair has called ‘social movements for global capitalism’. These include all sorts of corporate lobby groups and the burgeoning lobbying and PR industry. Scottish based TNCs such as HBOS and Scottish Power are pretty well integrated into the European and global lobby groups. But not as well as the biggest TNCs which operate in Scotland such as BP GlaxoSmithKline, Coca Cola, Pfizer and the like. Their integration into global governance means that the macro level terms of trade and of political regulation are already fixed at the global, European and UK levels via mechanisms such as GATS, and PFI/PPP. In Scotland much of the room for manoeuvre is already constrained by UK and transnational decisions. But it is also clear that Scottish governance is subject to specific corporate influence.

In a devolved Scotland the most obvious way in which corporate actors pursue their interests is by lobbying. But lobbying takes place in the context of already entrenched policy assumptions and a political culture which is already fundamentally oriented to wards the market. This is the product of the neo-liberal shift which has affected all the pro business parties and has shifted the assumptions of government among the ruling elite. This includes not just politicians, but the business community and crucially the Edinburgh establishment which runs the civil service. It is against this background - which is fundamentally favourable to big business - that lobbying for particular policy measures takes place.

Nevertheless lobbying is seen as worthwhile by business interests as evidenced in the burgeoning lobbying and PR market which emerged post devolution. In the first term of the Parliament lobbyists swarmed to the Mound, embroiling Jack McConnell in the lobbygate row - from which McConnell was not exonerated of blame - contrary to the successful spin to the contrary. The privileged access of big business lobbyists to MSPs through the officially sanctioned gateway of the Scottish Parliament Business Exchange revealed more clearly than ever the extent to which the openness of the Parliament had been colonised by business interests. In the new term it is already clear that lobbyists see the newly elected green and SSP members as no barrier to their strategies. SSP MSPs have already been persistently approached by lobbyists - with some even offering steadily increasing donations to charity to secure meetings with the MSPs. One senior MSP confesses to being gobsmacked at the number of MSPs who are routinely schmoozed and lunched by lobbyists - not just those from the private sector it has to be said. Some observers refer to a ‘buddy-ish’ culture, which is not ‘explicit and transparent and something the wider public can get a sense of’. This is reinforced by the corporate swamping of cross party groups. To take one example, the Oil and Gas group has representation from sixteen industry lobbyists, plus two from Scottish Enterprise, one for Aberdeen city council, two from the government funded Energywatch. No prizes for guessing that there are no citizen representatives among the members.

It is no surprise that lobbyists swarm around the Parliament. It has significant power over budgets which some of the big corporations want to get their hands on, one obvious example is the NHS drugs budget which corporations like GSK and Pfizer are anxious to tap. No surprise then that such companies want to cosy up to MSPs on the Health committee as Pfizer did with Margaret Jamieson through the SPBE. The drug companies also have an interest along with other TNCs in keeping the Scottish political system sweet so they can continues to pollute Scotland without major penalties. These include BP, Scottish Power, GlaxoSmithKline, Exxon Mobil, Scottish and Southern Energy and others.

While the wholesale attempt to buy the Parliament has excited some interest in the Scottish media, most of the discussion about lobbying has been confined to the question of MSP conduct and has kept largely away from the conduct of ministers and entirely away from the conduct of civil servants. One result is that politicians - hardly a blameless lot - are forced to take the rap for the mistakes and excesses of the permanent government in the civil service. A more serious problem is that the main target of corporations and their lobbyists is the Executive, meaning both ministers and civil servants.

Here there is an extremely murky world of networks, professional, political and personal associations between lobbyists, ministers and civil servants. Although the civil service are supposed to keep a record of ministers contacts with lobbyists, it is difficult to know how consistently this is done. At lobbygate it was clear that McConnell kept his own diary separate from the official one. In any case the diaries are not open to public scrutiny and there is virtually no information about lobbyists relations with ministers in the public domain. More worrying however is the fact that there is no similar recording requirement for the senior (or junior) civil service to keep a record of meetings with lobbyists - of whatever stripe. Although of course, as some insiders note, senior civil servants are much more likely to be having lunch with financiers from Charlotte Square than with leaders of community groups.

In a previous SLR (issue 13) former health minister Susan Deacon wrote that ‘the operation of the civil service in Scotland is perhaps the greatest untold story of devolution'. The senior civil service is seen by some as the ‘establishment’ and it is drawn from the same narrow upper middle class pool as Scottish business leaders.

Of course there are conflicts between this old ‘establishment’ and the new - the neo liberal tendency which has taken over the Labour Party. This is what makes it hard to grasp the intricacies of corporate power. For example globalising bureaucrats and politicians are likely to come into conflict with the old establishment which has grown up in the small town Edinburgh circuit of private schools, rugby, golf, university and the ‘New club’. Progressives can often mistake conflicts between this establishment and young female thirty something ministers as a straightforward establishment vs. progressive fight. But when the aforementioned ministers are fully paid up members of the globalising Atlanticist club of neoliberals - such as Wendy Alexander (management consultant, alumnus of the British American Project, enthusiastic free marketeer), matters are not so simple. In addition the most enthusiastic beneficiaries of the neoliberal agenda are the finance capitalists that dominate the old and new Edinburgh establishments.

Nevertheless both old and new establishments are strangers to democratic accountability. The old is inclined to express ‘resentment’ at the prospect of new ways of doing politics and this can mean that the minister is seen as a spanner in the smooth workings of the permanent government. But the permanent government has been changing too. There has been a transformation towards business practice in the civil service, in service delivery and in the running of public services like health, transport and water. These developments indicate the fundamental problem of the degraded democratic system we have in Scotland. Big business has already infiltrated the very structure and operating assumptions of the public services - including the civil service. The result is that corporate power is exercised by proxy by the machinery supposed to deliver democratic accountability. The covert politics of lobbying are simply the cutting edge of further concessions to neo-liberalism and big business. Public opinion - meanwhile - remains resolutely committed to properly funded public services, reducing inequality and kicking the private sector out of service delivery. Yet there is no chance of such policies being adopted by any of the big four parties. The problem is that the culture of government in Scotland is unable to respond to the democratic wishes of the people. The system is - in other words - institutionally corrupt.

David Miller is Editor of Tell Me Lies: Media and propaganda in the attack on Iraq, published by Pluto in October.