Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Official Report 420KB pdf

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European Commission (Work Programme)

Item 3 is the European Commission work programme. Chic Brodie is our European reporter, and we have a paper from him with some recommendations.

Chic, do you want to say anything about the paper?

I thank Jane Williams, our clerk, for being supportive at the meeting in Brussels—she lost my briefcase, but that is another story.

I think that that was your fault.

No, it was not, actually. Anyway, she guided me happily through the meetings that we had.

The paper that is in front of the committee covers two things. One is the priorities from the European Commission work programme that we should submit to the European and External Relations Committee. The recommendations are fairly simple and easy to read, and annex A to the report indicates those eight areas. Two of the eight proposals require some real monitoring. The annex also highlights those on which we should keep a watching brief, such as the annual growth survey and long-term finance. I will not go through all of them, but the key ones on which I suggest we need to keep an eye are energy policy and the funding of European economic governance.

I do not know whether members have any questions on that element. As I said, it is fairly simple.

The more substantive part of my report concerns our meetings with two directorates-general in Europe—DG enterprise and industry and DG energy. I will not go through everything, but there are some fairly major highlights, particularly the discussions with the official from the small and medium-sized enterprises access to finance unit in DG enterprise and industry.

As we all know, the Commission deals directly with member states, of which, at this moment, Scotland is not one. Items that might require further action were raised. I ask the committee to allow us to continue with some further correspondence with DG enterprise and industry, particularly the SME unit, before we make any public pronouncements.

12:00

The interesting part about the discussions with the SME unit was that, believe it or not, each member state has a small business envoy. In our case, it is the director of enterprise at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills—BIS—in Westminster. We have suggested that, as Scotland has 350,000 small businesses, it might be worth while Scotland having its own small business envoy. That will be a matter of discussion with BIS.

The second fairly significant element is that the enterprise Europe network has SME panels that are used to consult SMEs on policies and future legislation. Again, because of the 350,000 SMEs that we have in Scotland, we thought that it might be of benefit for one of the panel meetings to be held in Scotland in the near future.

The third item of significance from the SME discussion concerned access to finance. It transpired that, for the current seven-year period, Europe has €1.2 billion available through the SME funding and guarantee finance programme to cover SMEs throughout Europe. That is significant. We are required to have an intermediary who can disburse those funds, and it generally tends to be a venture capitalist or a bank. I have talked to the banks and discovered that we appear to have only one intermediary. The banks have their own programme that is supported by the Westminster Government and, so far, only one bank to which I talked was aware of the European programme. We need to have further discussions about that before we make any huge pronouncement.

The report on the renewables briefing is fairly comprehensive. It was extremely interesting to hear about what is happening throughout Europe, particularly on connectivity of the grid between countries such as France and Spain. We also discussed the use of biomass, a proposal on which will be published soon.

Thanks to Jane Williams, the report in the paper is fairly comprehensive. I will take any questions. There is a lot to be discussed and, if I may say so, convener, a requirement for more interaction between us and the European and External Relations Committee on the areas that we have suggested in the paper—that is, SMEs and energy.

Thank you for that summary and for your efforts in Brussels on our behalf, notwithstanding the loss of your briefcase.

I should add that I had an email on Sunday from some gentleman who said that he had lost his briefcase or had it stolen in Cyprus. He asked whether I could give him any tips on what he should do.

Don’t lose it a second time.

I immediately advised the authorities here to engage in case he has got his hands on some of my papers.

I am not sure why he asked you.

There were two copies of the renewables report in the briefcase. The fact that people want to steal it shows how exciting it is.

That is clearly what they were after.

Does anybody have any questions for Chic Brodie or any points that they want to make on the paper?

I have a question about the proposals in the paper—it may be more of a question for Jane Williams.

I want to understand the difference between monitoring and keeping a watching brief. Proposal 8 mentions opportunities for the production of unconventional gas. I do not support that, but that is not what the discussion is about. I want to know why a watching brief is recommended for that whereas the recommendation on proposal 5 is that we should monitor European energy policy in the context of our work on energy policy.

Are we basically saying the same thing there? Will we keep an eye on both developments to the same extent?

Jane Williams or the convener might want to comment, but I think that the issue is that to take action on all eight proposals would be more than a full-time function. We have looked at the proposals. We will monitor and, if we find anything critical, I will feed that back to the committee. We decided that, on two issues, we should recommend to the European and External Relations Committee that we do more than monitor, but actually engage. Is that fair, convener?

Indeed. Alison Johnstone is absolutely right that there is not an awful lot of difference between monitoring and keeping a watching brief. Chic Brodie makes the fair point that the committee has a limited amount of resource to follow a broad range of policy areas. Therefore, the paper tries to identify where the priorities should be in our workload. It is entirely up to members to decide whether the recommendations in the paper are correct and what we want to do. It is worth saying that any European Union legislation that is relevant to any of the areas will be flagged up to the committee via the European reporter, so we will get plenty of advance notice of anything relevant that is coming.

I just wanted to check that we will keep an eye on the issue of unconventional gas.

It is a good point. As we monitor the situation and keep a watching brief, if something of significance arises, we are duty bound at least to raise it with the committee, and if we feel that further action needs to be taken, we should certainly do that through the committee and with further interaction with Europe.

On SMEs, I do not know what the procedure is, but I wonder whether the committee should write to the Scottish Government and the cabinet secretary to ask what is being done and whether we can do more to raise awareness among SMEs of the available funding. Should we also write to the banks? Chic Brodie said that he has spoken to banks, but surely that should be done through the committee.

I agree that we need to approach the cabinet secretary and I take the point that the committee at some stage might want to write to the banks. However, I seek the committee’s agreement that we should seek more information before we say formally to the cabinet secretary what we want him to do. The meeting that I had was only 40 minutes or three quarters of an hour.

To pick up on Margaret McDougall’s point, is it the case that you already plan to discuss the issue with the cabinet secretary?

Yes, but we need more information, and that will certainly be brought back to the committee.

Is it not worth asking what people’s views are, because they might be working on that and they might give us information that helps us to make a decision? They might already be aware of the issue and have work in train, so it seems a bit daft—

Forgive me, but perhaps I should have expanded on that. The rationale for me talking to other bodies is to try to discern who knows what. The information that I have so far from discussions with civil servants and the banks is that there is little awareness of the access to finance programme. As far as I know, we do not have a small business envoy—unless someone can name them—and there has been no proposal on that. Ultimately, a proposal for panels and business envoys and so on should go from the cabinet secretary to the relevant director general.

I suggest that Chic Brodie continues to work on the issue and reports back to the committee on where the discussions are going. Rhoda Grant and Margaret McDougall have raised a fair point. A pot of money is available, but people are not aware of it, and it is perhaps unfortunate that Scottish SMEs are losing out. However, we need more information, so it would be helpful if Chic Brodie could report back to the committee.

Okay.

As there are no more points, do members agree to the recommendations on page 2, which are to adopt the priorities in annex A and forward them to the European and External Relations Committee; to ask the European reporter to continue to monitor developments on EU policy making and to report back; and to continue to consider any relevant EU issues?

Members indicated agreement.

12:10 Meeting continued in private until 12:37.