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Item 3 is our legacy paper. The clerks have produced an outline paper that covers the key issues that we feel should be covered, along with extensive annexes that include the latest updates from the Government on our various reports during the past session. I propose that we agree that the final version of the report be agreed through correspondence rather than through a full committee meeting. At the moment, however, we can go through the outline to see whether there are any areas that members would like to be covered but which are not covered at present—or, I suppose, are covered at present but which they do not want to be.
I wonder whether, given what happened in the past four years—that is, the economy falling over a cliff, particularly the Scottish economy—it might be worth mentioning that at the beginning. In 2007, we set out believing that there would be a calm sea and a prosperous voyage but, in 2008, we reached the edge of the world—certainly as far as the Scottish financial services sector was concerned. The notion of, as we would say in Germany, “weiter so”—just saying, “Aye, aye, sir,” and carrying on—does not quite apply to the events of the past four years.
Lewis Macdonald looks delighted at the opportunity of making the point in the paper that the Scottish economy has fallen over a cliff in the past four years.
Absolutely, and there are other telling phrases that we could add in relation to the areas that we have had responsibility for monitoring over the past four years. However, I suspect that, if we did so, it might prove less straightforward to come to an agreement on the paper rapidly by correspondence. Perhaps the safe option—despite the temptation to enter into such a debate—would be to focus on what the committee is responsible for, rather than on the wider world.
In other words, “The operation was successful,” rather than, “The patient died.”
If we were to give the committee’s view of the success or otherwise of the surgeon, we might find that there were differing views on how effective some of the Scottish Government’s responses to those challenges have been. Again, I suspect that discussing that could take rather more time than we want to use.
We are trying to be helpful, Chris.
You were asking about page 1, but my point relates to the second line of page 2. If you were to make the point that the banking inquiry was held in the context of a crisis, that might be a fairer way of putting it. You might argue that, given that the legacy paper will be picked up in the next six months, it hardly matters. However, the inquiry was not just about what the banks were doing generally; it was about the banks for a very good reason at that point.
But the moment you go there, you have to say that we looked at the enterprise networks in the context of four years of reductions in resource funding. We could end up debating endlessly what the subheadings might be.
There is some shorthand in the draft paper. I do not think that we put the full title of the inquiries in. The banking inquiry was not just about banking; it had a full title, which we can put in the paper, which explains a bit more what it was about.
The legislation and the inquiries are almost, but not quite, in alphabetical order. It struck me that chronological order was the most logical order.
Yes. I think that we will go with chronological order. It might be worth putting in the dates on which they were considered, just for completeness.
I want to pick up the issue of “Legislative workload”—and perhaps the implication that it was overload. I am not quite sure what you mean by “Legislative workload”. Forgive me, because I am only an occasional member of the committee, but the Justice Committee, where I come from, has suffered enormous legislative overload. We would love to have had the breadth of time that you have had to do some inquiries. I merely wanted to give the context in which some other committees are operating.
That is a fair point. I do not think that this committee has suffered from legislative overload, although it has suffered from getting legislation that is not relevant to our committee’s remit. That is another issue that we might want to talk about under the “Breadth of remit of the committee” heading. There needs to be some clarity on committees’ remits, so that that sort of thing does not happen in future sessions of Parliament.
You might help the whole process if you were to mention the Arbitration (Scotland) Bill, which I am sure you would argue should have come to the Justice Committee. However, in the context of having only one Justice Committee—I think that members are clear that they do not want two again—you might have to recognise that, unless the world changes significantly, other committees are going to get such bills. There does seem to be more justice legislation than one committee can cope with.
That is a decision for the Parliament in the next session. We just need to highlight the matters that were referred to this committee. The census, which we do not mention specifically in the report, is probably better placed with something like the Equal Opportunities Committee than with our committee, because it is not strictly speaking an economy issue. It just happened to be led by the minister who reports to us.
There is a difference. It was appropriate for the census to come here, not because it dealt with the economy but because our sweep-up definition is that we consider anything else that comes under the remit of the relevant minister. It was fair for us to consider the census.
I understand the point that you are making. My point is that if we have such large ministerial remits, things will fall to the committees that consider anything under those remits. There has to be some reference to the subject matter of the committee, not just the minister’s remit. We might highlight the point that committees’ remits need to be defined more clearly to avoid bills going to the wrong committees.
It might be worth recording that it certainly seemed to be effective in the sense that the fact-finding visits that we did all appeared to generate some benefit for the inquiries that we were carrying out. If anything, the visits that we undertook in Scotland demonstrated the appetite that exists throughout the country for having access to committees of the Scottish Parliament and being able to engage with them. It might be worth recording the obvious point that that was a positive experience.
I still recollect the polite chit-chat with the British ambassador in Iceland, in which the prospective progress of the Icelandic economy figured not one bit.
It is probably important to stress that we have found the fact-finding visits to be of extreme value to the committee’s work, because there might be a slight risk in the current economic climate that a hair-shirt approach will be taken, which would reduce the effectiveness of the Parliament and its committees.
We have made the point about level 4 data every year and every year we have been told, “Yeah, we’ll make sure you get it.” This year, we had three sessions on the budget and, if my memory serves me correctly, for the first two of them we had not seen the level 4 data. That is absurd if we are to do our job effectively, and that must be a priority of whoever runs the show next time.
That is particularly necessary given the consequences of the Scotland Bill. The mix that goes into the budget will be much more complex from a taxation point of view.
That may not be something that we will have to worry about in the next session, but it is certainly an issue for the one after.
For me, that is key. I agree with Gavin Brown that it was ludicrous that we were trying to scrutinise the budget when we did not have the information. Sorting that out has got to be key.
On the merits of post-inquiry review, I think that we should highlight in our legacy paper how valuable it is to make regular requests to the Government to update the responses that it has given to our committee reports. That practice has proved extremely valuable and has ensured that the Government does not just stick our reports on a shelf.
It is probably worth recording that when we used expert advice and external research, we found them helpful.
Okay. Does anyone have any comments on the issues in the “Looking forward” section, which spans two pages? I suggest that we do not recommend that our successor committee carry out post-legislative scrutiny of the Arbitration (Scotland) Act 2010. I was not around for the committee’s consideration of the Bankruptcy and Diligence etc (Scotland) Bill, so I am not sure about post-legislative scrutiny of that one. Do members have any other thoughts on issues that they think that our successor committee should highlight and address?
At yesterday’s conference on tourism, the convener, Stuart McMillan, Lewis Macdonald and I heard that the tourism leadership group, as I think it is called, is to produce its refreshed strategy in May, post-election. To some extent, that will supersede the tourism framework for change, so whichever committee deals with tourism should be aware of that from the outset. It might be something that it would want to look at.
Yes, that is probably worth putting in.
That is right. The paper refers to the “50% tourism revenue target”, which may or may not survive the updating of the strategy.
Another issue that has come up on a number of occasions is superfast broadband. We might want to highlight to our successor committee that it should look at how Scotland is preparing for superfast broadband—or not, as the case may be.
And whether the superfast broadband that is offered turns out to be what it was advertised as.
That is another issue.
Fraud, I think, is the point.
That is a good idea. The issue of mutuals and co-operative development has been highlighted in relation to financial services, but I suspect that it will be important more widely in the economic recovery.
I have certainly questioned how effective Co-operative Development Scotland has been. Because that agency is combined with Scottish Enterprise, it is sometimes hard to find out what impact it is having on the sector that Christopher Harvie mentions. I totally support that suggestion, although we could go a little wider and include Co-operative Development Scotland, which is supposed to promote the sector. There could also be consideration of the support that it gets from the enterprise networks.
Slightly wider still would be the issue of social enterprises and how they are supported and developed.
Energy might be an issue on which the committee could make the error—it would be an error in the end—of focusing on the easy bits. It is easy to concentrate on electricity generation and not so easy to look at heating technologies, although I recognise that the committee has done so. Transport is a significant energy user, as is home and building heating. I am telling you things that you know. Those are the areas where the issues get a little more technical and maybe a little more intractable. However, assuming that the next committee retains the current remit, I think that it should be careful not to lose sight of those issues.
I agree. I was going to suggest that we add renewable heat, combined heat and power and energy efficiency as things that the committee needs to keep an eye on. We have pressed the Government to act on those three issues, but we have not been satisfied by the Government’s speed of action. That is not necessarily to do with ministers—generally, the system seems to be interminably slow.
Indeed, but one issue that could well drop between the cracks—it has already—is the difficulty with buildings. That is the most difficult area in which to make changes. Most of our houses are old and most of them will continue to be old. They are difficult to heat in the first place and to insulate. Probably the biggest gain to be had in improving thermal efficiency is to crack that but, if we are not careful, that will drop between the cracks.
Another odd area that falls into a fissure between transport and industry is communications. It has already been mentioned that we are badly off on ScotRail for wi-fi. On certain services on the continent, wi-fi is almost universal. A huge Scottish population commutes by car—the basic form of commuting in Scotland—and therefore lose anything up to two hours’ work, when they could be working on a train or bus.
That is another point. With regard to broadband, the whole issue of 3G—or even 4G—connectivity needs to be part of the overall review. Indeed, yesterday, people in the tourism businesses stressed to me the difficulties that are faced by travellers using iPhones, iPads and equivalents—there are, of course, other systems available—to book in advance, as they will not necessarily have the 3G connectivity to do that while they are travelling up the A9.
There is no question but that this issue will be important over the next four years, but is there any uncertainty over whether it is covered under the infrastructure element of the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee’s remit or under our own remit?
That would have to be clarified. Given, though, that the issue has important implications for the economy in general and tourism in particular, it is legitimate for this committee to examine it. I accept that certain infrastructure issues might fall within the remit of other committees but I point out that, even though the issue of skills, for example, does not fall within our remit, we have still touched on it.
More than once.
Indeed.
I was thinking about skills—or the lack of them—which have been one of the major issues in every inquiry that we have undertaken. We have heard, for example, how cluttered the landscape is and, given how big an issue they are for the economy, I would like skills to be included in the paper. Any future Government—as you say, it will be for a future Government—and, indeed, Parliament will need to look at how they link skills with the economy and I think it has been a nonsense that, for the past four years, we have not had the input into skills that we have deserved. After all, every single person we have spoken to has told us how crucial skills are to the economy. The fact that skills have not formed part of the remit of either the minister or the committee has been detrimental to the ability to drive forward our economy. I certainly think that we should mention what has, in my view, been a major error.
That is a fair point. With regard to the breadth of the committee’s remit, we should say that, although other committees might have the lead on skills and infrastructure, the economy committee must also be allowed to have an active interest in them.
If there are no other comments, I ask the committee to agree that the final version of the legacy paper be circulated by correspondence for final agreement and that I have the ultimate responsibility of signing it off with the clerks.
Given that this is, I hope, our last meeting, I want to take this opportunity to say a few brief words of thanks. I have thoroughly enjoyed my nearly three years as convener of what is a very hard-working committee. I appreciate the co-operation that I have received from all members of all parties in making this a constructive committee that has, I think, produced some tremendously good work over the past four years, even before I became convener. I suppose that at this point I should also thank my predecessor Tavish Scott, otherwise I might not get a job in the next session. The committee has been very helpful and I really am very grateful to my deputy convener Rob Gibson and all committee members for their support over the past four years.
I will be releasing the next edition of “No Gods and Precious Few Heroes”, which I am working on just now.
Thank you for your interesting contributions to the committee’s work over the past four years. I also thank Wendy Alexander, who is also stepping down. She has certainly had a major impact on the work of the committee.
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