Scottish Enterprise chief accused of conflict of interest over second job

ONE of Scotland’s highest-paid civil servants was criticised yesterday after senior MSPs claimed her decision to accept £55,000 a year for working one day each month was at odds with the SNP government’s ban on public sector bonuses.

Lena Wilson has accepted a directorship of a FTSE-100 company on top of her £200,000-a-year post as chief executive of Scottish Enterprise, (SE) the economic development agency.

Labour MSP John Park said that Ms Wilson’s decision to accept the post in the private sector was a “conflict of interests” when she was employed at the taxpayer’s expense to promote jobs and investment in Scotland.

Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie said that Ms Wilson’s £55,000 private sector post was “one of the biggest bonuses John Swinney could ever have authorised” after it emerged that the minister supported the senior civil servant’s move to join the board of Intertek, a company with its headquarters in London.

Mr Swinney earlier this year talked about “freezing pay and bonuses for the year ahead” in the public sector as he promised to curb top pay among executives employed by the state.

The minister yesterday faced calls yesterday to block Ms Wilson’s private sector work, with opposition MSPs saying that the contract with the FTSE-listed company amounted to a 25 per cent pay increase and bonus payment.

Mr Park said: “There is a conflict of interest. We all have to be careful in the current climate, as it doesn’t look right that the head of a Scottish development agency is receiving payment from a private company.

“I’m surprised that John Swinney agreed to allow this to go forward, given the restrictions on bonuses in the public sector.

“Even if it’s only one day a month, it’s one day … that could be spent on promoting Scotland’s economy. We want someone who uses their skills 100 per cent to promote investment.

Mr Rennie said “This is one of the biggest bonuses that John Swinney could ever have authorised, and it comes against a backdrop of claims from the Scottish Government that it wants to curb high pay in the public sector.”

Ms Wilson, who has been the chief executive of SE since Nov-ember 2009, will take up her new post with Intertek, a consumer goods testing specialist, next month.

SE chairman Crawford Gillies dismissed the criticism of Ms Wilson’s appointment and said that the agency had “very clear policies” to ensure that its board members who also did work for private firms did not influence investment decisions linked to those companies. He said: “There is no conflict of interests, and the issue of bonuses is nothing to do with Lena’s remuneration at Scottish Enterprise.”

Profile

Lena Wilson was handed the role of chief executive of Scottish Enterprise in November 2009, when she succeeded Jack Perry.

Before that she was the agency’s chief operating officer and chief executive of its inward investment arm, Scottish Development International.

She is an ambassador for the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice, an advisory board member of Strathclyde University’s business school and a member of Scotland’s Financial Services Advisory Board.