£1,657,566
The amount of public money spent by quango that gives business advice on a private firm that gives business advice.. before running out of cash
Scottish Enterprise (SE) hiked its outlay on international advisers Deloitte from £151,124 to £1,657,566 between 2018 and last year.
The bil l emerged months before its chief executive Steve Dunlop was forced to admit the Scottish Government-funded organisation faced a humiliating financial crisis.
SE, which is supposed to help businesses manage their cashflows, said Deloitte was hired to provide advice on a range of services including “business modelling” and “due diligence reviews”.
We revealed this month how SE had been forced to freeze grants and cut internal travel and recruitment.
Opposition politicians reacted furiously to the latest example of how the quango spent its £ 340million budget.
Scottish Labour finance spokeswoman Rhoda Grant said: “The amount of public money given to Deloitte by SE is eye-watering.
“This has been revealed at the same time that SE has announced they cannot provide support for any new projects due to financial pressures.
“It’s high time Audit Scotland investigated SE to see if f inancial mismanagement has occurred.”
Greens MSP Ross Greer said: “It doesn’t inspire much conf idence when the government agency responsible for delivering business advice and support has spent so much of its own budget on outside business advice and support, before running out of money.
“SE should be supporting sma l l a nd local businesses across the country, not ploughing more public cash into mult inational taxavoiding corporations and arms dealers.”
We have previously told how SE gave more than £ 3.6million to Ama zon, de spi t e criticism of its tax affairs. Meanwhile, US arms giant Raytheon, which makes systems for smart bombs in Glenrothes linked to the use by others in alleged war crimes in Yemen, has been given £200,590, wh i l e E d i nbu r g h - b a s ed Leonardo MW, which produces technology for F-16 fighter jets, received £7.5million. A spokeswoman for SE said: “Deloitte has worked with Scottish Enterprise on a number of projects in recent years, including an ambitious piece of work to enhance economic development support.
“That project involved working with our staff and customers to help design a much simpler model for supporting economic development by delivering streamlined processes, new s y s tems and improved technology, as well as better use of data, to help us target and understand the biggest oppor tuni t ies for future economic growth both in Scotland and internationally.
“This will allow us to work with many more companies and make us much easier to work with and, at the same time, will free up resources that can be r e invested di rect l y into Scotland’s economy to help support quality jobs.”
Earlier this month, SE boss Dunlop had been forced to email staff ordering them to freeze all future support grants and slash internal budgets.
Opposition politicians have heavily criticised the apparent financial mismanagement at the taxpayer- funded agency, claiming it could cripple small businesses and impact on economic growth.
Dunlop’s memo – seen by the Sunday Mail – explained “unforeseen factors” had left the organisation financially crippled with over a month remaining of the financial year.
He then pulled the plug on new spending commitments unless “legally committed”, halted the hiring of staff and cut all travel unless absolutely necessary.