Meeting of the Parliament 29 March 2017
I welcome the cabinet secretary’s remarks and I am pleased to hear that lessons have been learned. I am sure that we can all agree that investment in Scotland is vital for our economy. The memorandum of understanding was about exploring possible investment, and the Scottish Government has a successful track record of attracting investment. In 2015, Scotland was second only to London in attracting investment, and that investment created more than 5,000 jobs and boosted the economy.
Serious concerns have been raised about the MOU, and I agree with Amnesty International’s conclusion that all the Scottish Government’s international relations should have a human rights component. I was pleased to hear the cabinet secretary recommit to the principles of promoting and protecting human rights. That will involve keeping up ethical standards and encouraging companies and other countries to do the same.
However, it has been made absolutely clear that the Scottish Government did not enter into any legal or financial commitments with the companies concerned or reach agreement on any investment. The Government would, of course, rightly have undertaken due diligence if any projects had come from the MOU. The Government should absolutely be expected to make sure that companies with which it makes legal or financial commitments meet certain standards when it comes to human rights.
The MOU that forms the subject of the debate collapsed last November, and I agree that some worthwhile lessons need to be learned, but I might just disagree on what they are. The Liberal Democrats have suggested that basic checks on the human rights record and the financial underpinning of potential investors should be made earlier, although it is clear that due diligence would have been exercised in the case in question if things had progressed.
There is an element of hypocrisy in that approach given that, when the Liberal Democrats were in government at Westminster, they aggressively pursued business links with China and said that no subject was off limits. However, we are used to such hypocrisy from the Liberal Democrats, even on the topic of human rights.