THE leader of Scotland's biggest council has called for economic development quangos Scottish Enterprise and Skills Development Scotland to be scrapped.
Gordon Matheson, the leader of Glasgow City Council, said the bulk of the organisations' multi-million pound budgets and job creation powers should be handed to local councils.
He argued other functions, such as Scottish Enterprise's role promoting business abroad, should be taken on directly by the Scottish Government.
Writing in today's Herald, he says there is a "compelling case" for abolishing the two bodies, which between them receive more than £500 million funding per year from the taxpayer.
His comments follow Glasgow City Council's call for Scotland's seven cities to join forces to demand more powers from the Scottish Government and spending to be switched from SE and SDS to local government
Cllr Matheson argues: "I believe there's a compelling case to abolish both Scottish Enterprise and Skills Development Scotland. Most of their functions and budgets should revert to local government."
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "Just last week the Scottish Parliament endorsed the vital role that our enterprise agencies play in supporting businesses to grow, create employment, increase exports, boost innovation and help Scotland become more globally competitive, a position backed up by the recent Ernst & Young Attractiveness Survey which showed that foreign direct investment projects coming to Scotland in 2012 were at their highest level for 15 years."
Agenda: Page 15
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article