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Agenda item 3 is Scottish Government correspondence. We have received letters that the committee asked for from Fiona Hyslop, the Minister for Culture and External Affairs, so I thought that it would be worth while putting them on the agenda. The first letter from Fiona Hyslop relates to Scottish Government ministers’ attendance at meetings of the Council of the European Union. The second is on the international engagement policy and contains information that the committee sought—when Michael Matheson was in the chair—on education opportunities in Taiwan and on the Scottish universities international group. We have a third letter on the China plan.
I suspect that a couple of issues that arise can be picked up in our international engagement inquiry, particularly on the surveillance work that Scottish Development International carries out and how it identifies priority areas.
I echo Michael Matheson’s point. On education, SDI has a project called EDGE—encouraging dynamic global entrepreneurship—which appears to be successful. I have done a bit of background work on it and it appears that it involves people from America and other areas coming to Scotland. It would be interesting to examine the project; I do not know whether it benefits Scottish students or only American students who come to Scotland. I would like to include that in our inquiry.
I will just point out one wee thing for the committee’s information. A Scottish Parliament cross-party group on Taiwan has recently emerged. That is possibly of interest to members. Through Tom McCabe, I have asked the cross-party group on China to consider inviting the Taiwanese representative in Edinburgh to come to a meeting of that group so that it hears a viewpoint from Taiwan. Despite the diplomatic differences, we should not exclude Taiwan from our thinking as we press ahead with our international plan. We should consider Taiwan, albeit that we should consider it differently from other countries with which we deal.
Those are valid points.
I know what Ted Brocklebank means. On that point, Lewis McNaughton and I met Mr Shu from Taiwan. It is important that we listen to all points of view and all sides on the issue.
It is worth mentioning that I saw something from the Taiwan Government recently that suggested that relations between Taiwan and China are probably in their best state for 60 years. We should do what we can in our own little way to encourage that development.
It is worth our while to note that one of the recommendations in our committee report was to ask the Government to assist in facilitating the setting up of a toolkit on China. The minister’s letter indicates that VisitScotland has specifically worked on that and has developed a China toolkit for Scottish tourism. That is a good example of the committee having a bit of influence and making a difference. Are members content to note the correspondence and to ask the clerks to follow through on the couple of items that members have raised?
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