£780k for Named Person training
YOUTH Scotland, another umbrella group, received £781,000 of public cash in the last financial year.
It trained 213 people in the Scottish Government’s controversial Getting It Right For Every Child doctrine, the bedrock of the SNP’s Named Person scheme that aims to assign a state guardian to every child.
The charity made an operating loss of £53,000 – and then lost a further £23,000 on a hedge fund investment portfolio worth £695,000.
According to its 2015-16 annual report, some of its stake was in Vanguard Group funds.
In 2009, Vanguard members voted down proposals to ban the fund from investing in companies that ‘contribute to genocide or crimes against humanity, the most egregious violations of human rights’.
Campaigners have voiced concern over Vanguard’s investment in companies such as PetroChina, the publicly traded arm of China National Petroleum Company, widely condemned for helping to finance genocide in Sudan. Yet, in 201 , Youth Scotland chief executive Ian McLaughlan signed up to a submission to the Smith Commission on devolution which called for powers over human rights to be handed to Holyrood as they are ‘the very principles that underpin’ the existence of the Scottish parliament.
Vanguard has also ploughed an additional £7.8million into Arrow Electronics, which helps kit out military hardware such as drones and tanks, taking its total stake to £253million.
Youth Scotland said it has since sold its Vanguard funds.
A spokesman said a ‘new external investment manager’ was in place and there was now a ‘newly revised ethical investment policy which aligns the investment criteria to the charity’s purposes’.