KEITH Brown has escaped a formal censure by Holyrood after apologising for the SNP Government being suckered by a sham £10 billion investment deal with China.
The Economy Secretary said he took “full responsibility” for the scandal, which saw Nicola Sturgeon sign a memorandum of understanding with controversial firm SinoFortone and the state-backed Chinese Railway No3 Engineering Group (CR3) exactly a year ago.
Sinfortone said it would invest up to £10bn in projects in Scotland, but a series of promised deals failed to materialise, and its sole UK asset turned out to be a pub.
It also emerged CR3’s parent company had been blacklisted by Norway’s sovereign wealth fund over corruption concerns and been accused of human rights abuses in Africa.
Dubbed “the Scottish shambles” in China, the deal collapsed last August.
Businessman Sir Richard Heygate, who helped present the deal to the Scottish Government, later admitted SinoFortone’s investment promises had proven to be “all b******s”.
Urging MSPs to censure Mr Brown, Scottish LibDem leader said Scotland’s reputation had been “dragged through the mud” by ministers failing to make basic background checks.
Mr Brown told MSPs the government had been unaware of the human rights concerns when the First Minister signed the memorandum of understanding (MoU).
He said: “I take full responsibility for the handling of the MoU and I am sorry for issues that have risen from it. I can assure parliament that we have and will learn lessons from the experience.
"We will consider human rights issues in our engagement with overseas businesses and only sign investment agreements where appropriate due diligence, including on the human rights record of companies, has been undertaken.”
MSPs voted 64-54 for an SNP amendment which deleted the censure aspect from Mr Rennie's motion but admitted to “regrets” over the signing of the MoU.
Mr Rennie said: "It shouldn’t have taken all this effort to get an apology. Mr Brown needs to show that he has actually learnt from this debacle.”
Green MSP Patrick Harvie welcomed the apology, and said the government deserved criticism for failing to take human rights into consideration when it signed the MoU.
He said: “I have disagreed with Keith Brown on a range of issues and no doubt I’ll continue to do so. However, when an apology is given in good faith, I think Parliament should accept it and move on, ensuring mistakes made are never repeated.”
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