What happens at a party conference?

Party conferences are a crucial time in which ministers, special advisors, backbench MPs, MSPs, Members of the Welsh Assembly, local councillors and other stakeholders are brought together to thrash out policies, set priorities, swap gossip, discuss the latest intrigues and normally party into the early hours. Stripped of their civil servants, who are not allowed to attend, it is a time when Ministers are truly open to new ideas and reasoning. Conferences, therefore, present a unique opportunity to reach the political establishment.

It's not just politicians who decamp to the British seaside for Conference season. At each conference businesses, industries and charities exhibit and take the opportunity to lobby politicians on salient issues. While most people don’t see past the big set piece speeches by the party leaders and guest speakers, away from the main hall, there are fringe events held by all sorts of organisations. These are largely informal forums where a panel of speakers debate a particular issue and take questions from the audience.

For the parties themselves, the annual conference has the overriding merit of giving them a week-long media boost with each party determined to reap the maximum benefit by communicating a clear and simple message. David Cameron used it to prepare his party for a General Election, delivering a speech based heavily around the theme of 'optimism' and committed to the party to abandoning ID cards, giving more freedom to GPs and giving head teachers more powers. In contrast Gordon Brown focussed on health, education and crime. His speech was relatively light on policy although he did announce an increase in funding for medical research, more university grants to be available to be available to poor students and the 'deep cleaning' of hospitals over Christmas and New Year. For the Liberal Democrats, the conference offered Sir Menzies Campbell an opportunity to reassert his authority after what has generally been agreed to have been a dismal year.

Despite this, conferences more often than not fall into the trap of ratcheting up the razzmatazz, rolling out the platitudes and cliches and ramping up the rhetoric for the visiting media where enormous feats of stamina are witnessed each night as delegates party into the small hours.

12 October 2007

Behind the Scenes: Parliamentary Relations at Scottish Enerprise

The role of the Scottish Enterprise Parliamentary Team is to encourage closer working relationships between Scottish Enterprise (SE) and the Scottish Parliament, Westminster Parliament and the European Parliament to the benefit of the Scottish economy and to ensure a greater understanding of SE’s role in economic development. SE is Scotland’s main economic development agency. Its goal is to help stimulate a stronger Scottish economy by helping more businesses to grow faster and be more competitive, making Scotland a more attractive place to live and work.

Scottish parliamentary members play a key role in scrutinising how SE meets its objectives, and delivers value for the public money it spends.  Parliamentary members influence and shape the policies, legislation and Executive budgets, which form the operating environment within which SE carries out its work for the Scottish economy.

It's not just the Scottish Parliament which influences SE's environment, although it has the most direct day-to-day effect.  Many of the policies, laws and budgets which impact on the work of SE start life in the European Parliament and the UK Parliament at Westminster.  For example European legislation is responsible for dictating the amount of hours we work through the working time directive; and the UK Parliament deals with reserved matters that have a direct impact on Scotland such as macro-economic policy and energy policy.

SE's work with the Scottish Parliament has included case study visits around sectoral issues, presentation in Parliament, committee appearances and responding to consultations.  SE also meet MSPs face to face to discuss the priorities of the SE network to give them a better understanding of the challenges and constraints in which SE operates.

At Scottish Enterprise we believe that building relationships with the parliamentarians is critical to our success.  The benefits to the relationship approach are considerable; we believe the value added that can be achieved through enhanced relationships with these key influencers is a critical factor in delivering our strategy Smart, Successful Scotland.

Michael is the director responsible for SE’s globalscot network and also Parliamentary Liaison with Holyrood, Westminster and Brussels.  For more information about globalscot please go to www.globalscot.com.

12 October 2007

The Bill Briefing: The Abolition of Bridge Tolls (Scotland) Bill

The Abolition of Bridge Tolls (Scotland) Bill is currently the only Bill for consideration in The Scottish Parliament. The Bill was introduced by John Swinney MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth and it is the first Bill to be tabled by the new SNP Government and fulfils one of its manifesto pledges.

The Bill seeks to abolish toll charges on the Forth Road Bridge and the Tay Road Bridge which, due to the removal of the toll from the Skye Bridge, are now the only remaining tolled bridges in Scotland. Supporters of the Bill believe it is unfair that the only tolled bridges remaining are both accessing Fife and view this as unjust to people living in the communities of Fife, Tayside and the Lothians.

Bridge tolls have proved to be a controversial issue in Scotland in the past with a long running campaign being mounted against the Skye Bridge tolls. The Skye Bridge tolls were part of the first ever PFI deal and were successfully scraped only after the then Scottish Executive bought the bridge from its private owners at a cost of £27 million.

As neither the Forth or Tay bridges are privately owned there would be no need for such a payment. However the Government would need to fund one off redundancy payments for toll collecting staff, as well as capital grants for major repair and refurbishment work. Although concerns have been raised surrounding congestion in Edinburgh and on the bridges themselves, the Bill has been supported by much of the local business community and all parties in the Parliament. Although, the support has come at a cost to the SNP, who have had to agree to an amendment not to delay or cancel major transport projects in Edinburgh.

12 October 2007

Small businesses save time and money

After a three-month fast track procedure, the European Parliament accepted a Commission proposal in July for the removal of unnecessary burdens on small businesses. The proposal is one of a package of 10 'fast track actions' presented by the Commission to cut red tape and now awaits agreement by Member States.

One of the main benefits for small businesses is that public limited liability companies will no longer have to order costly expert reports in case of mergers and divisions, unless there is a demand for such reports among shareholders. This proposal potentially applies to more than 600,000 public limited liability companies across Europe and particularly to those owned by a limited number of shareholders. The current obligation was meant to inform shareholders of the draft terms of mergers or divisions, but it is considered needless paperwork when shareholders have no interest in costly reports. This is often the case for SMEs where shareholders take an active part in the day-to-day management of the business.

It is estimated that the average cost of commissioning such an expert report amounts to roughly Euro 3,500. This is obviously not a trivial figure for SMEs that have identified the requirement as a bureaucratic burden. However, the proposal also ensures that, if shareholders still see a need for the expert report, they will continue receiving them.

This article is adapted from one originally published by Scotland Europa http://www.scotlandeuropa.com.

12 October 2007