Meeting of the Parliament 29 March 2017
Not just now.
The oddest thing then was that everything went quiet for months. However, we discover that the deal is off: cue more outrage at us from the Scottish Government. However, what was strange was that the Scottish Government had not even picked up the phone to the Chinese. If it mattered that much, why was no effort made? However, that did not stop the fury about the deal that was off, with Scottish Government members condemning us while sitting idly at their desks in the Government’s tower.
I mentioned that SinoFortone had invested in Wales: £2 billion for two green power stations in Anglesey and Port Talbot, which would generate electricity from plant waste to power homes and grow prawns and vegetables. There was also a reported £700 million takeover bid for Liverpool Football Club and £100 million towards a £3.2 billion Hollywood-style Paramount theme park in Ghent planned by a Kuwaiti family. The group also claimed to be involved in London’s Crossrail company, holiday parks in Cornwall and the Lake District, a proposed science park in Cambridge and regeneration schemes in Huddersfield and Stoke-on-Trent.
However, here is the sting in the tail: all of that has come to nothing—zilch. It was all media puff to create an impression of financial strength and credibility. It was reported by The Independent that the First Minister’s signature had given confidence in SinoFortone to the people at Liverpool FC who were looking for an investor. Mr Zhang generated a cloud of publicity in one part of the country to build credibility to sign a deal in another part, which would help with the next deal. All the way along, the group gathered up schemes that it had absolutely nothing to do with. The Scottish Government was part of that sham because it had not bothered to check. The only purchase that SinoFortone seems to have completed is that of a £2 million pub—The Plough, at Cadsden in Buckinghamshire—and even that was funded by a loan from the taxpayer-backed Royal Bank of Scotland.
Sir Richard Heygate—remember him?—signed the agreement alongside the First Minister. However, he now admits that SinoFortone turned out to be—these are not my words—“all bollocks”. He has walked away, but to this day the Scottish Government stands by the agreement with SinoFortone and the China Railway No 3 Engineering Group. Scottish ministers were naive to lend any credibility to that enterprise; it shows how careless the First Minister was to put pen to paper on a deal with Chinese companies that she knew absolutely nothing about.
Scotland’s reputation on human rights has been tarnished by this shambles; the prospect of investment from sound Chinese and other sources has been diminished; and the time of officials and businesses has been wasted by a company that had no financial track record and tried to use everyone else to build one. Our economy secretary presided over all that. He should apologise to everyone for this shambles and he should be censured by the Scottish Parliament for this shambles.
I move,
That the Parliament notes that 21 March 2017 marked one year since the First Minister signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese companies, SinoFortone and China Railway No.3 Engineering Group; notes that extensive parliamentary questioning has revealed that Scottish ministers did not undertake basic checks on the companies prior to signing; further notes that China Railway Group was blacklisted by the Norwegian state pension fund and condemned by Amnesty International, and SinoFortone has been exposed as having no serious investment record; censures the Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work for failing to exercise basic diligence initially and then subsequently criticising opposition MSPs for raising basic questions; calls on the Scottish Government to apologise and take steps to alert public bodies in the UK that they may have gained false assurance about the financial credibility of SinoFortone from the First Minister’s signature on the memorandum of understanding one year ago, and further calls for the working practices of the department and the sign-off protocols of the Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work to be revised to make sure that basic checks on the human rights record and financial underpinning of potential investors are made at an earlier stage.
15:59