Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, June 27, 2019

Official Report 636KB pdf

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Scottish Government Reports

The next item on our agenda is consideration of biannual reports from the Scottish Government on a range of European Union issues. I would like to obtain further information on a couple of issues.

First, it would be useful to get further information on the implications of Brexit for Scottish organisations that receive horizon 2020 funding, particularly because it is very clear from the letter that we have received that we really punch above our weight in getting those funds. We receive almost 12 per cent of the UK total, which is way above our population share. Obviously, there are many unanswered questions about a no-deal Brexit in particular, so we need more information.

Secondly, on the 2014-20 European social fund programme, it would be useful to get further information on the financial impact of the pre-suspension process and the in-principle agreement that has, I understand from the European Commission letter, been reached.

I do not know whether members have other observations.

My observation relates to the update from the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education on the one-plus-two languages policy. I record my thanks for his response, but I would like a more helpful picture to be painted. The Deputy First Minister said in his response that

“70% of secondary schools are providing the full entitlement to learning the first additional language from S1 to the end of S3.”

I presume that that means that 30 per cent of secondary schools in Scotland are not providing the full entitlement, which they should be. Is that an improvement or a decrease? It would be nice to put that in the context of the past couple of years.

The Deputy First Minister went on to say:

“According to the 2018 teacher census there were 1,288 teachers with modern language as their main subject”.

It would be nice to give that some context and see whether the trend is going up or down, and to put those two things together and see whether that forms a picture of whether we are making progress. On its own, that snapshot does not paint a picture.

It would be very useful to get a breakdown of how many of those teachers are EU nationals and whether the number of EU nationals who have come to work in our education system has increased or decreased.

Okay. That is a useful question to include.

We have to keep pressing on whether contingencies have been put in place in respect of the shared prosperity fund, which does not seem to be in sight to any extent whatever.

I know.

We are told that the Prime Minister promised on 5 December last year that the issue would go out to consultation before Christmas 2018. We are now at the end of June, and nothing has happened. There are real issues relating to the impact across a number of sectors—in particular, those with which the committee deals.

I absolutely agree with that. We need to try to get some clarity on that, because the situation is simply unacceptable for all the organisations that are worrying about the future. It is quite astonishing that the UK Government seems to have failed to make any progress at all on that issue. Maybe its doing a bit more of the day job might be useful.

Sure.

Do members agree that we should write to the relevant ministers to raise all those issues, and ask specifically about languages? The shared prosperity fund is really an issue for UK ministers, of course, but perhaps there is an opportunity for the committee to write to them again to ask for an update. Do members agree that the deputy convener and I can sign off those letters?

Members indicated agreement.

11:08 Meeting continued in private until 11:27.