Lobbying and access to the corridors of power have been key themes of the first week of The Ferret’s Who Runs Scotland series. We kicked off our month-long investigation by revealing that businesses dominate lobbying of the Scottish Government.
But it’s not just ministers whom lobbyists target. Opposition MSPs are also an important entry point to Holyrood. They can propose debates, table amendments to bills and some could be future ministers.
So which MSPs have companies seen as most important – and most open – to their messages since the last election in 2021? We’ve plunged back into the darkest depths of Holyrood’s lobbying register to find out.
Daniel Johnson (270 meetings)
Johnson, Scottish Labour’s shadow secretary for enterprise and business, is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a popular target for corporate lobbying. He has had over 100 more meetings with business than any other opposition MSP.
Johnson met most with Scottish Financial Enterprise (16), which represents financial services firms. He also had meetings with banks, insurance firms, asset managers and representatives of the private equity industry.
He was lobbied 12 times by the British Retail Consortium. Johnson is the sole shareholder of Stripe Retail Ltd, which provides “retail consulting and advisory services”. Johnson’s shares are valued at £280,000 and he receives dividends from the company.
He also had meetings with the Scottish Tourism Alliance (9), the trade body for Scotland’s green energy industry, Scottish Renewables (8), and oil giant BP (7).
He attended Scotland’s rugby win over Australia in November 2024 as a guest of Vodafone.
Anas Sarwar (169 meetings)
Just over half of lobbying of the Scottish Labour leader since 2021 has come from business interests.
Sarwar’s meetings with corporations have been broadly spread across industries, but ScottishPower (8) topped the list. He also met repeatedly with fellow energy giants Shell (5) and SSE (5).
He met Salmon Scotland, the trade association for Scotland’s controversial fish farming sector, 5 times.
Two of these events were organised by lobbying firm Quantum Communications, which is led by Alan Roden, the former Scottish political editor of the Daily Mail who was previously a Scottish Labour spin doctor.
In a piece in The Times earlier this week entitled ‘We can use our ties with Trump to make Scotland greater again’, Sarwar wrote that “if we want Scotland to prosper, we must make it a place where businesses feel wanted and welcomed”.
Labour said the headline for The Times piece was given by the paper itself and were not Sarwar’s words.
Miles Briggs (157 meetings)
Tory MSP Briggs is the second-most lobbied MSP overall, behind only the now housing minister, Paul McLennan. Just over a third of his meetings involved business interests.
Briggs met Homes for Scotland – the representative body for Scotland’s housebuilding industry – 14 times. He served as the Scottish Conservatives’ housing spokesperson between May 2021 and October 2024.
The list member for the Lothian region met Scottish Land and Estates (SLE), which represents rural landowners, 8 times.
Discussions with SLE included “possible amendments” to legislation affecting landlords, including an offer by the body to send Briggs a “draft text of an amendment to strike out” part of a bill relating to the private rental sector that it opposed.
Brian Whittle (153 meetings)
Whittle, the Scottish Conservative MSP for South Scotland, met most frequently with clients of the public relations firm, Message Matters (12), itself run by two former Tory figures.
Whittle is himself a director and shareholder of a business advice consultancy called Trackside Consultancy, where he says he works for a maximum of 12 hours a month outside of parliamentary time. He has been paid just under £13,000 for the role since the last election.
The individual business groups that lobbied Whittle most were Scottish Renewables (7) and the Scottish Grocer’s Federation (5).
He had four meetings each with the Nuclear Industry Association, ADS Group – which represents over 1000 members in the weapons and aerospace sector – and the Scotch Whisky Association.
Whittle was treated to tickets to the Scotland vs France rugby match at Murrayfield by Scottish Gas. He estimated the value of tickets and hospitality to be around £500.
Sarah Boyack (139 meetings)
Lothian regional MSP, Boyack – the Scottish Labour spokesperson on energy, just transition and net zero – was another who had numerous meetings with clients of Message Matters (9) and Quantum (7).
Around half of corporate lobbying of Boyack was by energy companies – particularly those involved in renewables – with SSE (6), German company RWE (5) and Scottish Renewables (4) to the fore.
In October 2024, Boyack joined Anas Sarwar on a visit to Stuttgart to meet representatives of EnBW in order to “learn lessons” for the Labour government’s GB Energy proposal and “encourage more investment in Scotland”. The cost of the trip was met by the German firm.
What do the parties say?
A Scottish Labour spokesperson said: “Scottish Labour MSPs meet with businesses, experts and campaigners regularly to learn more about how we can deliver a new direction for Scotland.”
A Scottish Conservatives’ spokesperson claimed the party was “proud to regularly meet businesses who tell us they have been let down by 18 years of SNP failure”.
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Cover image composite thanks to Scottish Parliament/iStock/Scottish Labour
