Scottish quango’s £750k snack bill takes the biscuit

Scottish Enterprise increased its spending on food and drink from just over £607,000 in 2010-11 to more than £757,000 in 2011-12, according to documents released under freedom of information laws.

The surge in hospitality costs included an increase of more than £130,000 spent on entertaining potential investors in Scotland, with the annual bill on “external hospitality costs” going up from more than £472,000 to nearly £604,000 between 2010-11 and 2011-12.

There was also a sharp rise in the amount spent on tea, biscuits and other refreshments for staff and visitors at the Scottish Enterprise offices during the same periods. The budget described as “internal catering refreshments” soared from £52,000 to £73,000, the figures showed.

Scottish Enterprise, which is charged with promoting investment in Scotland also increased the amount spent on food for staff in their workplaces, with an “internal catering budget” going from £34,000 to nearly £39,000.

The quango said that the two separate budgets for internal catering covered the cost of feeding staff attending training and work related events at 22 offices.

The increase in spending was described as “disgraceful” by campaigners who called for an investigation into the quango’s hospitality expenses.

Eben Wilson , director of the TaxpayerScotland campaign group, said: “Scottish Enterprise continue to be a high-rolling quango. It’s disgraceful that taxpayers should have to support a huge increase in their hospitality spend. This sort of profligacy during an economic downturn suggests that there could be a much larger amount of unnecessary and wasteful spending across the agency.

“Taxpayers need to be shown a detailed audit of where this spending was accrued and the claimed results from our taxes that have been spent here.”

Scottish Labour MSP Richard Baker also called on Scottish Enterprise to reduce the “huge” amounts spent on refreshments and for the funds to instead  be used to directly support  businesses. He said: “On the face of it its sounds like a huge amount to spend on refreshments during what are straightened times for public finances.”

But Scottish Enterprise, which has 1,000 staff members, defended the costs. A spokesman said: “The vast majority of these costs relate to customer-focused events both here in Scotland and internationally which are fundamental in our efforts to help Scottish companies pursue new opportunities to grow their business and attract new foreign direct investment to Scotland.

“These include meetings and events with potential overseas investors, company training seminars as well as industry-related events where we actually  recoup costs through ticket sales.”