Rural Affairs and Environment Committee, 03 Oct 2007

Meeting date: Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Official Report 190KB pdf

---

European Union Scrutiny

Agenda item 6 is European Union scrutiny and the first European issues update paper—the committee will get an issues paper quarterly. Do members have any comments on the paper? In particular, is there any area on which you would like more information? The paper contains all the EU issues that impact directly on this committee's business.

We should be deciding whether we have time to look at the common agricultural policy health check this autumn, as detailed in paragraph 10 of the paper. Perhaps we should at least be aware of what that health check is about.

Okay. We can follow that up.

Also, under the heading of flooding, paragraph 28 mentions that a green paper was published—I am not entirely sure by whom, but I think it was Europa. It might help to inform our flooding inquiry.

There is a web link in the paper, so everyone can download the green paper themselves.

Does anyone else want to raise anything in connection with the EU? We are already allocating time to the common fisheries policy. Members will have seen the work programme that we sent round; Karen Gillon got one as well. It just lays out a rough headline agenda so that people know what is coming up and when. The CFP will be dealt with in that way. Does anyone have anything else to raise?

No.

Thank you. For those who are interested, Mark Roberts is the first point of contact for EU issues. If you have any queries, questions or whatever, please direct them straight to him. He is in charge.

The next committee meeting will be after the October recess on Wednesday 24 October. I thank everyone for attending and—

Convener, could you help me with a procedural point please? At the end of the previous meeting, after the minister gave evidence, we asked whether he could supply a copy of the regionalisation paper about foot-and-mouth disease. Do we have that? I know that it is circulating among the stakeholders; we might be able to get access to a copy as well.

When we come back from recess, would it be worth getting an update from the minister on foot and mouth and bluetongue disease? We do not know what will happen in the next two weeks. We could just make a contingency plan.

We wrote to the cabinet secretary, Richard Lochhead, and we have not had a response; we will do a quick reminder today.

The deputy convener has advised me that there is to be a big debate on Scottish agriculture on 24 October. It might be that the cabinet secretary will not want to come here to say in the morning what he might be saying in the debate in the afternoon.

I trust I have my facts correct.

We will double check.

If it is, that is fine.

If the dates do not coincide, we will make the request to the cabinet secretary.

Even if the dates coincide, I would not be averse to the cabinet secretary coming to the following meeting. The detailed questions we could ask during a committee meeting are different from those that are asked during that style of debate. Some of us might have detailed questions to ask.

That is a reasonable point and it is what happened when the cabinet secretary came before the committee before—he was making a statement in the afternoon of the day we wanted him to come and it was not appropriate for him to come. Bill, are you twitching because you want to make a point?

No, I am not. I am just sitting quietly and peacefully.

Okay. I now close the meeting. We are 15 minutes ahead of my schedule.

Meeting closed at 11:25.