THERE is no doubt that Scottish Enterprise needs good business people to be members of its board.

It would also be hard to argue that Crawford Gillies is anything but a widely respected operator who has been an effective chairman of the economic development agency.

Yet his continuing investment in Scottish companies to which the enterprise body is allocating funding to raises important questions. While the latest £2.2 million sum, spread across several companies and noted in the recent annual accounts, may be relatively small in the scale of Scottish Enterprise's overall activities, it is still far from loose change.

We believe Scottish Enterprise and Mr Gillies are following the relevant corporate governance rules for these types of situations. But the question has surely now become whether this is really enough?

One argument would be for all acting board members to agree to suspend investing activities in businesses which may attract financial support from Scottish Enterprise.

There perhaps also needs to be some kind of formal blind trust arrangement for investments which are held prior to taking up a board position.

We do not want to stop talented people becoming board members of Scottish Enterprise.

But as a publicly-funded body it has to ensure its policies are beyond reproach.

A stronger clarification of the rules and procedures around the investing issue would remove any uncertainty.