The 33-year-old Scottish Business in the Community is to merge with its bigger English counterpart after its corporate members voted for the change to help deliver a “national action plan for responsible business”.

SBC, pioneer of the corporate social responsibility agenda in Scotland and working on a range of programmes with partners including the Scottish Government, will remain a business-led charity but lose its independent status as one of 18 Prince’s Charities. President Prince Charles has approved the merger with London-based Business in the Community, also founded in 1982, which works with over 800 UK companies.

Chief executive Jane Wood, who has led the charity since 2009, has successfully argued that joining forces with BIC is necessary to influence big companies which have a significant presence but little decision-making in Scotland.

Ms Wood, who will remain as managing director in Scotland but also take on a UK-wide role as BIC's external affairs director, says: “Scotland would need a collective power in order to move forward with a National Action Plan for Responsible Business and SBC has access to many hundreds of members of all sizes and sectors who are already committed to ensuring that everyone is better off as a result of their business activity.”

She goes on: “Socially responsible business requires businesses to behave responsibly towards the communities which provide their workforce and purchase their goods and services. In doing so, businesses understand that they will increase productivity and profit. We believe that Scotland’s business community has an ambition for greater impact through combining its knowledge and solutions for society’s more intractable issues.”

The call for a national action plan was discussed at an SBC event by Jayne-Ann Gadhia, chief executive of Virgin Money, BT’s regional and Scottish chief Brendan Dick, SSE’s director of sustainability Rachel McEwen, and Asda’s corporate responsibility head Richard Mason. Alex Neil, Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Social Justice also spoke at the event last week.

It follows a call by SBC last year for more concerted business engagement in Scotland’s social issues. The charity says: “Since that time the Scottish Government has established Fair Work as a Cabinet Secretary portfolio, as well as the associated Business Pledge and the Scottish Living Wage. SBC understands, however, that there is an appetite amongst members of its movement for a business-led model through which responsible business can deliver transformative change in a collective effort supported by government.”

Mark Bevan, operations director and deputy chief executive of SBC said: “Scotland has significant socio-economic issues, but also some of the most innovative, exciting and ambitious businesses in the world."

Past business ambassadors for SBC include Sir Robert Smith, Dame Sue Bruce, Brendan Dick, and Dame Susan Rice.

*Scotland’s largest communications agency The BIG Partnership has called for the eradication of unpaid internships across the PR, media and marketing industries, which it says can often amount to “little more than slave labour”.

The Glasgow-based business has said it will now pay all its interns the voluntary living wage of £8.25 per hour, having for many years paid them the national minimum wage.

Founding director Alex Barr said: “Asking interns to work for nothing on the premise of ‘gaining valuable experience’ is a fig-leaf used by too many agencies and devalues the vital contribution that interns make to our industry.