Official Report 335KB pdf
Environmental Protection Act 1990:<br />Part IIA Contaminated Land<br />The Radioactive Contaminated Land (Scotland) Regulations 2007<br />Draft Statutory Guidance (SE 2007/168)<br />Foot-and-Mouth Disease (Export and Movement Restrictions) (Scotland) Regulations 2007 (SSI 2007/518)
Seed Potatoes (Fees) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2007<br />(SSI 2007/520)<br />Zootechnical Standards Amendment (Scotland) Regulations 2007 (SSI 2007/521)
Pesticides (Maximum Residue Levels in Crops, Food and Feeding Stuffs) (Scotland) Amendment (No 4) Regulations 2007 (SSI 2007/523)
Under agenda item 5, there are five items for consideration: one document that is not a statutory instrument, and four Scottish statutory instruments, all of which are subject to the negative procedure. No members have indicated any concerns about the documents.
Convener—
You should have done this in advance, Bill.
I apologise. This relates to—
Members get separate e-mails that specifically request them to indicate any concerns in advance.
I apologise. I should have done that.
Are you looking at SE 2007/168—the draft statutory guidance on the Radioactive Contaminated Land (Scotland) Regulations 2007?
Yes. I would like clarification of a couple of points. Paragraph 9 says:
Consideration of the document can be carried over to our next meeting. In view of the time, will you raise your questions directly with the clerks?
That is fine.
Do members have any concerns about the Scottish statutory instruments? No motions to annul have been lodged. Does the committee agree to make no recommendation on SSI 2007/518, SSI 2007/520, SSI 2007/521 and SSI 2007/523?
Our next meeting is on 19 December, when the main business will be consideration of a draft report on the budget. I understand that the Finance Committee wanted our report by 19 December, but it is prepared to wait a few days, because we will have to discuss the draft report and have e-mail discussion immediately after that. At our next meeting, we will also discuss a review of the committee's work programme.
I was a bit perturbed by the lack of definition and detail from the cabinet secretary. You will want me to be specific about that, so I will try to be as specific as possible.
A meeting follows our meeting in this room, so I ask you to be as quick as possible.
The cabinet secretary appeared unable to answer several significant questions on waste, flooding and rural development money. It will be difficult for us to agree our draft report on 19 December without the relevant information on significant shifts in the budget and with unanswered questions.
Since you raised the matter with me during the suspension, I discussed the position briefly with Jan Polley. Her view was that we would not gain anything from bringing the cabinet secretary back, because we would not achieve from taking oral evidence more than we achieved today. However, as a result of today's meeting, we can write to ask for further specifics that the committee should receive in time to consider them when we are discussing our draft report. Any discontent about details can be reflected in our report and I expect members to want to reflect that.
I would like the clerks to write to the cabinet secretary about my main concern, which is that he seemed to agree with Jan Polley's figure of a 35 per cent cut in Scottish Government input.
No, he did not agree.
I thought that he did. I will have to check the Official Report of the meeting.
We will maybe check the Official Report—
Hang on. Unless we ask about that, there will be no point in our meeting next time to agree a report. If Jan Polley is correct that there is a 35 per cent reduction in the Scottish Government's input to the rural development budget, I and other members need to know which headings the 35 per cent reduction comes under, so that we have some means of commenting on it. Otherwise, the figure does not mean anything. I need figures from the minister on where the 35 per cent decrease will come from.
We can do that in the letter that is sent today, which will be about some of the specific questions that arose in the meeting. Unfortunately, we will not get the Official Report until next week, which makes things difficult.
That is what I was asking for—for us to write on the issue.
Are you looking for specific questions in the course of today, convener?
I am asking for questions that arose from this morning's meeting—I do not want members to ask a whole load of extra questions. The letter should be about what we discussed today. We should reflect on this morning's questions and answers and the specific issues on which members feel that further information could be forthcoming. Please do that, but it needs to be done quickly, because we must get the letter out today or tomorrow, so that we get a response in time for it to be included in our draft report. The timescales are tight.
On Mike Rumbles's point, since I raised the subject, I point out that we want to know whether the minister can confirm that there is to be a 35 per cent cut in Government funding after European funding and modulation are taken out of the equation. If so, we want to know why the cut is so large and where the money is allocated to.
We want to know where the money is to come from.
Where will the money be taken from and where has it been allocated to?
I suggest that those questions could be intimated to the clerks in the next day or two. We could sit here—
No, we need to have them today, because the letter must be drafted and put in the mail no later than tomorrow.
It will need to be fairly late in the day, because I have other commitments.
We need to get the letter out tomorrow, given the timescale for drawing up the draft report.
The convener is saying, "Speak now, please."
I will need to check the Official Report, but the policy on flooding has shifted a lot during the past two weeks and a range of issues is still not clear. I have specific questions as a result of the minister's evidence. I will try to write them down in the course of the day, but it might be early evening before I get them to the clerks. There are specific points that seem to be at odds with what we were told the week before last.
In that case, will you convey those to the clerks as soon as possible, please?
I have a similar issue with the rural development programme funding and whether it is ring fenced. The evidence that we had two weeks ago was that there is no ring fencing, but the evidence that we appeared to get today is that there is ring fencing.
My recollection is different.
I do not want to go into a big rehash of that now; we can discuss the issue when we consider our draft report. I am inclined to say that the cabinet secretary's answers are the responsible ones, rather than the officials' answers. In a sense, the buck stops with him. His response is the one that we must rely on.
I have a point about the timescale. If Jan Polley is being asked to prepare a draft report for us to come out on Thursday or Friday next week, we need to have the information back from the officials by next Wednesday at the very latest.
The officials will be told of the timescale that is appropriate for us and asked to respond within it—I expect them to do so. That is why the letter must be sent out now.
Will the draft report be drafted by Jan Polley?
It will be drafted by the clerks with input from Jan Polley. She will be involved in the process.
Let us be clear: we have a specialist adviser who is preparing the draft report on our behalf.
That is an administrative matter. The whole report will not be drafted by Jan Polley, but she will be involved in the drafting of the report that will come before members, which will be in the name of the committee. I assume that she will be available during the discussion on the draft report.
Can we get an advance view of it?
Given the timescale, an advance view will be difficult, if not almost impossible. We will get the draft report when the papers for the meeting come out.
Meeting closed at 12:56.
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