Big business including oil and renewable energy, farming, fishing, finance and whisky dominated Scotland Office ministers’ meetings last year, analysis by The Ferret has found. We looked at all external meetings logged in 2020 by Alister Jack, Secretary of State for Scotland, UK Government ministers for Scotland David Duguid and Iain Stewart, as well as Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross, who was deputy Secretary of State until he resigned in May that year. Analysis showed that almost 90 per cent (168 of 188) of these meetings were with industry bodies and business groups. Scottish Office ministers only met with two charities last year, according to their diaries – The Trussell Trust and the Marine Conservation Society UK.
Former Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and Tourism Fergus Ewing was the key contact for steel billionaire Gupta, holding regular meetings, including an un-minuted, private dinner with the controversial banker at the heart of the Conservative lobbying scandal, Lex Greensill, and Gupta back in 2017. Ministers engagements for 2020 list three phone meetings with Gupta and Ewing not on the lobbying register. A GFG Alliance spokesperson said: “GFG is a significant employer and investor in the UK and as part of its normal course of doing business we engage with a range of stakeholders, including politicians, on a number of topics that relate to our businesses. We have strong links with the Scottish and Welsh governments because of the plants and jobs in Scotland and Wales.”
TRADE unions face a looming dilemma over whether to support workers who refuse Covid jags and so clash with their employers and colleagues, a leading public health expert has warned. Andrew Watterson, professor of occupational and environmental health at Stirling University, said unions had so far been urging vaccination take-up, and for making key workers a priority. But as lockdown restrictions ease and working from home ceases to be the norm, the same unions now have to consider how to handle members who refuse vaccine. In a paper published in today’s Scottish Left Review, Prof Watterson was also critical of how the vaccination programme had been rolled out in Scotland and the rest of the UK to key workers.
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SCOTLAND’S employers are being urged to ensure their workers are being put first as they handle the challenges of returning to the workplace now that restrictions are being eased. Trade unions have been monitoring how workers have been handling the return to their jobs and have found mixed results. Dave Moxham, deputy general secretary of the STUC, warned: “With hospitality especially beginning to re-open there has been quite a lot of stress being reported to us. “There is a quite a degree of uncertainty over levels of pay and hours. “We’re like everyone else – when it’s safe we want re-opening, but we want it to take place gradually and most of all we want employers to treat staff, many of whom have been off for months and months and months, with a kind of sensitivity which we think they deserve.