Scottish Enterprise, Scotland’s economic development agency, provides public funding to businesses, including companies in the arms industry. That brings a huge responsibility: to make sure public money isn’t supporting companies involved in serious human rights abuses or violations of international law in places like Gaza.
Scottish Enterprise says it takes that responsibility seriously. It has published a revised Human Rights Due Diligence Policy setting out its approach to identifying and addressing human rights risks when supporting businesses.
But there’s a significant problem. The published policy doesn’t tell us enough about how these checks actually happen.
Scottish Enterprise refers to separate internal procedures, guidance and systems that support its human rights checks. But these haven’t been made public. That means we cannot properly scrutinise how companies are assessed, how risks are identified, what happens when concerns are raised, or how decisions about public funding are reached.
In other words, we’re being asked to take it on trust that the right checks are happening behind closed doors.
And when people’s lives are at stake, trust simply isn’t enough.
The consequences of getting this wrong are not abstract and Scotland must do everything it can to ensure its money isn’t contributing either directly or indirectly to harm.
People have a right to know how their taxes are being used. They should be able to see what safeguards are in place, understand how decisions are made and have confidence that public money is not helping to fuel human rights abuses.
Katherine May, Head of Oxfam Scotland, said: “Scottish Ministers have provided crucial funding to help people in Gaza. It should not be too much to ask for evidence that Scottish taxpayers’ money is not also ending up with companies linked to the very suffering that aid is trying to address.
“Scottish Enterprise must stop asking the public to take its assurances on trust. It must publish the full procedures and guidance behind its human rights checks, so people can see for themselves how decisions are made and whether the safeguards are working.
“Public money comes with public responsibility. When lives are on the line, closed-door assurances are not good enough. The people whose taxes fund these decisions, and the people whose lives could be affected by them, deserve more than words. They deserve proof.”
/ENDS
For more information and interviews, please contact: Rebecca Lozza, Media and Communications Adviser, Oxfam Scotland: rlozza1@oxfam.org.uk / 07917738450
