Employers in Scotland have hit back at claims that they were bribed not to send jobs overseas after an investigation revealed the Scottish Executive had donated £36m to call centre firms in the past four years.
The recipients of the executive’s Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) grants – including corporate giants such as Dell, which received £7.48m – strongly denied that the funds were used improperly.
But Murdo Fraser, deputy leader of the Scottish Conservative party, said: “There’s been a trend of call centres offshoring jobs.
“Some RSA recipients stay [based in the country] for the absolute minimum the minute they can leave without paying any money back they seem to announce closures and downsizing.”
Robert Wright, a professor of economics at Strathclyde University, told The Scotsman, which carried out the investigation: “If we’re going to subsidise jobs, we should be subsidising highly skilled, high-productivity jobs.”
However, Linda Holden, group HR director at Telecom Services Centre (TSC), which received £1.4m, said: “The Scottish Executive giving a Scottish company like TSC a grant to bring jobs to an employment blackspot makes sound economic sense.”
Alan Miller, HR manager for Scotland at Dell, said delivery grants for development areas were standard practice.
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“We’re on target to create 850 jobs in Scotland by 2008,” he said. “We do have lots of overseas operations but we try to employ directly from here where possible.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Executive said the RSA grants boosted local economies.
