Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Official Report 343KB pdf

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Work Programme

Item 4 is our approach to developing a work programme. It is not really the intention to have a full discussion of the forward work programme at this meeting, but I invite members to flag up ideas for any future areas of work. I do not think that we should rush into making commitments at this stage. We are going to hear from Alex Neil, the Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment, at our next meeting in a fortnight’s time, which will give us more of an idea of his thoughts and perhaps some indication of what might be in his work programme. We can take it from there.

As a survivor of the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee from the previous session, I believe that if we had not had the election, the committee would probably have wanted to maintain its focus on winter resilience. We took a degree of evidence, but Parliament was dissolved in March and did not sit during April. We are now into June, and we will be off for July and August. By the time we come back in September, we will be heading back into the winter.

It would be useful to flag up the fact that we want to take further evidence on the lessons learned, not just in the aftermath of last winter but subsequently, and on the actions that have been taken, so that we as a committee can be satisfied, in talking to our parliamentary colleagues, that we have learned lessons and that plans have been put in place to deal with the situation should we face a similar winter scenario. The window of time in which to do that is quite limited. If we are going to take evidence and comment on what has been forthcoming, we will have to do so fairly early on when we come back from recess, otherwise we will be back into the winter. Nothing would be more dispiriting for the public than if it seemed that we were still talking about all this in the middle of another event, rather than discussing it in advance.

That is a good point. We could get in transport authorities, folk from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and Keith Brown, the Minister for Housing and Transport.

I understand that there was a conference on winter resilience last week—a member of staff in my office was at it. There might be some useful contacts from that conference, and we might want to take as evidence some of the presentations that were made at it. We cannot take long to do further work on winter resilience, but it would be useful for us to follow up on the issue.

We can perhaps tease this out when the cabinet secretary comes to the committee, but I just want to clarify in my own mind the remit and focus of the committee. I am not saying that winter resilience is not a good thing to study, but I suppose that the committee could quite easily become focused solely on transport and housing, because those are the two main substantive policy areas within the cabinet secretary’s remit. We could add water to that—and, no doubt, other things if we thought about it—but transport and housing are the big issues that people are thinking about.

However, the cabinet secretary’s portfolio covers capital investment more generally. The Scottish Futures Trust relates to health and education as much as it does to transport and housing. I suppose that it is up to us to decide what the committee’s focus will be but, as well as specific policy areas, we have to think about the wider issue of capital investment, which I imagine is the primary reason for creating the new Cabinet post.

The other anomaly—which we probably cannot do anything about, although we can still ask about it—is why we are shadowing all of the cabinet secretary’s remit apart from regeneration. Obviously, somebody else has made that decision, but I just wonder about it. The simplest thing for a committee is just to shadow a cabinet secretary, which gives at least a general focus to its work. I am not entirely clear in my own mind about what our particular focus should be.

I would be concerned if we looked just at the detail of housing and transport, rather than the wider investment issues.

Yes. One of my initial thoughts on hearing that I was being lined up to be convener of this committee was that I would need to get my head around the Scottish Futures Trust as well as the various methods of financing. Although we will probably not have an away day as such, having a business planning day at the end of the summer will mean that we can learn some lessons on the various methods of financing.

You raise another interesting point. As a Government and as a Parliament, we have tried to get people to come out of their silos. I do not think that committees should be seen as silos. There might well be aspects of regeneration on which we should work across committees.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that fuel poverty is in the cabinet secretary’s remit. Given the concerns about fuel costs and electricity charges, I suggest that we need to examine all of those issues urgently. I hope that we can make an early start on that issue, which is of the moment—we need to get stuck into it.

The points that Adam Ingram and Jackson Carlaw raise are well made and concern important issues that we should consider, but I will not be too prescriptive today about what should be in our work programme. I back up Malcolm Chisholm’s point that we need to get our heads around exactly where the brief is going.

The brief for the cabinet secretary and therefore the committee is rather wide ranging. Malcolm Chisholm said that regeneration should perhaps be in the committee’s remit, but I am glad that it is not, given the number of subjects that we must consider. We will probably have to speak to Alex Neil the week after next, and I presume that we will agree to that. We will subsequently consider in depth what we want to do in the next year and thereafter. We will have to be careful not to get bogged down in too much—the potential for that exists, given all the different areas. We will have to be focused on what we want to consider.

Does anyone else have ideas or contributions? If not, do we agree to invite the cabinet secretary to our next meeting, in a fortnight?

Members indicated agreement.

Thereafter, perhaps we will have more idea of the issues that he is concentrating on, which will allow us to develop our work programme. That is important for the Scottish Parliament information centre and the clerks. Does everybody know the clerking team? We have Steve Farrell, who is the clerk, along with Lewis McNaughton and Lauren Spaven-Donn. From SPICe, we have Allan Campbell. I welcome the team. We will give everybody the chance to work up papers on specific issues.

It is important that we look at the legacy papers and find issues that we can work on immediately, as has been said, because legislation will take a while to come down the line. We have a window for examining issues in depth, which I hope will equip us to consider legislation more critically.

Do we agree to hold a business planning day towards the end of the summer recess?

Members indicated agreement.

The clerks will make arrangements for our next meeting and a relevant work programme paper and will organise a planning day. Unless anyone has anything else to raise at this first meeting, that completes today’s business. The committee’s next meeting will be on 29 June, when we will hear from the cabinet secretary.

Meeting closed at 10:13.