Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee, 23 Feb 2000

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 23, 2000

Official Report 240KB pdf

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Industry and Parliament Trust

The final item on the agenda is consideration of a verbal report from Nick Johnston and Elaine Thomson on the Industry and Parliament Trust.

There is general agreement that an organisation such as the Industry and Parliament Trust would be useful. It is strongly supported by Henry McLeish, among others. We talked about how it might operate here and how it might be set up. We will invite representatives from other parties to join the working group on the trust.

There appears, however, to be another group of people who are interested in setting up an almost identical body. Some of the assumptions that were made about what might be available in terms of assistance from the University of Edinburgh might not be true. We should not make any firm decisions on the matter until all parties are brought together. Scotland is too small a place to support two such bodies that want to achieve similar things. It is important that we have a unified group, which would be productive in developing and continuing the dialogue between Parliament and business, giving politicians access to some of the day-to-day processes of companies and bringing people from the business community into the Parliament.

Bearing in mind this morning's discussion, we should try to avoid the creation of organisations with duplicate functions.

Elaine and I were the only people from the parties who were at the meeting. We are keen to have representatives from all the parties, including the minority parties, if they want to get involved. I have asked Richard Lochhead—as he is on the Confederation of British Industry working group—whether he would like to get involved and he expressed some interest.

We should not progress further until we find out about the other group. Elaine and I will do that and report back.

That is acceptable. We cannot overstate the need to avoid the duplication of bodies.

Thank you for your attendance.

Meeting closed at 12:40.