Ferry Services (Clyde and Hebrides)
Agenda item 3 is consideration of any further work that we may wish to undertake on the tendering of ferry services in the Clyde and Hebrides. A paper by me has been circulated. Its purpose is to update the committee on the on-going discussions between the Scottish Executive and the European Union transport commissioner on the tendering of ferry services in the Clyde and Hebrides. The paper notes:
"Executive officials have confirmed that … the Minister for Transport is seeking to meet the Commissioner again over the next few weeks. This is likely to mean that any announcement to the Parliament may be made, at the earliest, immediately after the summer recess."
As I understand it, the date has not yet been confirmed for that meeting.
I seek members' views on what action the committee should take. My preference is to defer any final consideration of further action until we get a response from the minister on his meeting with the transport commissioner. A specific suggestion, which is not included in the paper, is that we write to the minister and ask him that, at his earliest opportunity after that meeting, he writes to the committee to advise us of any significant developments that have arisen.
Out of courtesy, I advise members that I have been approached by the Scottish Trades Union Congress to take part in a delegation that it wants to send to Brussels. It intends to seek a meeting with a representative of the Commission through one of Scotland's members of the European Parliament and it has invited me to go along. I would be going not in my capacity as convener of the committee but as an individual MSP. I just advise members that I have received that invitation and that, if the STUC is successful in setting up such a meeting, I intend to go. Obviously, if the opportunity presents itself, I could raise many of the issues that have come up in evidence and that we have discussed. Do members have any suggestions?
Thank you for that useful background, convener. Obviously the meeting in Brussels will be quite useful. I wonder whether the committee might try to get involved in that, given that we are conducting an inquiry. Evidence will come from that meeting that might help the committee to fashion recommendations. Is there any way in which the committee could be involved in the meeting in a more official capacity? I understand that you are going to the meeting in your capacity as an MSP, but it would not be a bad thing for the committee to be involved. However, that is a different issue from the one that we are considering at the moment.
I understand why you have made the recommendation that you have, but I am slightly concerned about it. We have just taken strong evidence from Professor Neil Kay, Paul Bennett and Jeanette Findlay about the need not to go to tender. We do not know exactly when the minister's meeting with the Commission will take place—it could happen during the recess for all we know, although the minister might change and it could take place sooner or later than that. However, if we wait until that meeting, although the evidence that the committee has gathered might not be lost exactly, it will not be able to be used in the way that the people who gave the evidence might expect. I would have preferred the committee to have taken an interim position using the evidence that we have heard to influence the Executive's negotiations with the Commission.
To get to that position, I expect that we will have to have some sort of interim report that draws together the evidence and comes to a view on it. I realise that that might cause some difficulty, because we are right up against the wall as far as recess is concerned. We also have stage 1 of the Licensing (Scotland) Bill to discuss in the Parliament tomorrow and stage 3 of the Transport (Scotland) Bill is next week. However, there is still a slot next week when the committee could meet and have a quick discussion about its interim position based on the evidence that we have taken. That would be a powerful thing for the committee to do, because our report could influence the debate that will take place at some stage between the minister and the commissioner. The minister could go to the meeting armed with the position of the Executive and the Local Government and Transport Committee. That would strengthen the minister's arm if he takes the view that the tendering process is not necessary and that there are other ways of showing that there is no discrimination.
In my view, it would be pretty challenging for us to agree a comprehensive analysis of the three academic reports over the coming week and to take a position on which we were all agreed. Many ideas that are worthy of consideration resulted from those evidence sessions, but I am not sure whether I am convinced that we have a detailed enough analysis of the alternatives to allow us to say that one or another provides the magic bullet. However, the Executive has those three academic papers and I am sure that it will have studied the questions and answers from the committee's deliberations.
What if the committee agreed to write to the minister to say that several interesting potential solutions to the tendering situation were suggested in evidence as the committee considered the three academics' papers, that we are aware that the Executive has those papers, that we ask the minister to provide the committee with the Executive's analysis of whether they provide a solution and that, if any ideas have merit, they should be fully explored in the Executive's meetings with the transport commissioner? That is my suggestion.
I will give Bruce Crawford an opportunity to speak again, but I will first call David Davidson, because he had his hand up earlier.
I have some sympathy with the view that you just expressed. When I put my hand up before you spoke, my view was that the minister's report of the meeting should go for comment not only to us, but to those who gave evidence. I am happy to go down the interim route that has been suggested but, if the Executive has a response one way or the other after a meeting with European officials, even if it has considered what we have said and the evidence, it is right to return to all those who gave evidence to ensure that they can comment to us, because the inquiry continues, regardless of what the minister does or does not do and of whom he does or does not meet. The committee must still tidy that up. People should have an opportunity to submit written evidence in response to whatever the minister says.
I also suggest that we could invite the minister to an early meeting after the recess to update the committee directly, in addition to a written update after the meeting with the commissioner. That might be an ideal way to progress the response to the meeting with the Commission and the Executive's response to the academic papers.
Obviously, I am pleased that the STUC is taking the initiative that it is taking. I hope that, just as the Parliament has displayed cross-party support of the desire to avoid tendering, the STUC will offer all MEPs the opportunity to be part of the delegation and to show a common front as a sign of the breadth of feeling. However, that is for the STUC and not for the committee.
I disagree with none of the convener's recommendations, but I endorse Bruce Crawford's recommendation. We could produce an interim report, which could be fairly short. Most of the work has been done in the three papers and in the evidence that we took.
It is particularly important to be accurate about the European Commission's position. By way of background, paragraph 2 of the briefing paper says:
"The European Commission has, for a number of years, held that under EU state-aid and maritime cabotage rules, the Scottish Executive is obliged to put the Clyde and Hebrides ferry operations out to competitive tendering."
That is not what Professor Neil Kay said. The last paragraph on page 11 of his paper said that, in relation to the 1992 maritime cabotage regulation, guidelines were originally issued in 1997. Those guidelines referred to tendering; in fact, Professor Kay quotes the guidelines as saying that
"the Commission expects public tenders to be made".
[Interruption.] I will try to speak louder while Mr Davidson turns off his pager or whatever it is.
However, any reference to tendering has been excised from the guidelines that superseded the 1997 guidelines. The reference to island cabotage has also been removed. Neil Kay attributes that, in part to "the indefatigable efforts"—"indefatigable" is a difficult word to pronounce—of Neil MacCormick. The evidence that we heard suggests that the problem is not that EU law says that there must be tendering, but that it may be difficult to find a way to comply with EU law that avoids tendering. Without revealing any names—the Chatham House rule applies—I should add that that also seemed to be the upshot of the advice that we received at the meeting that we attended. The background information could, therefore, be revised slightly.
The most significant evidence that we heard came from Jeanette Findlay, who pointed out the potential costs if Caledonian MacBrayne loses. She admitted that she could not precisely estimate those costs, but she talked about a figure of up to £42 million. I would have thought that the EU, in the rather troubled position in which it now finds itself, was not best placed to stamp its feet and tell Scotland what to do. Frankly, if a Scottish Executive minister said that it would be crazy to go ahead with a tendering process that would cost the public £42 million, when the whole point of the process was supposedly to save the public money in subsidy, that would put us in a strong position.
It would be helpful if we could have a meeting next week, as Bruce Crawford has suggested, and a short paper—of probably two or three pages—with bullet points summarising some of the strong evidence that we heard, especially regarding the potential costs. Whatever they might say about you behind your back, convener, no one could ever accuse you of being workshy. I am sure that you will agree that another meeting would be good news. If we can achieve anything by it, it could be excellent news.
My concern about having a meeting next week is not so much about the demands of that on members of the committee as about the demands that it would make on the committee clerks. They have the Licensing (Scotland) Bill to deal with this week and stage 3 of the Transport (Scotland) Bill to deal with next week. They are heavily engaged in processing amendments to the Transport (Scotland) Bill at the moment. The difficulty that I foresee in agreeing to your request is the impact that that would have on the committee's clerking team.
I suggest that, rather than having a meeting next week, with the additional pressure that that would put on the clerks, we might find it more effective if I wrote a letter to ministers, drawing their attention to the papers that we have received. I could also draw their attention to the comments that you have made today, which will appear in the Official Report, concerning the potential costs of tendering that are mentioned in Jeanette Findlay's report. I think that we would achieve more through writing such a letter to the ministers than we would by having a committee meeting next week and agreeing a report that the clerks would then have to finalise at the same time as dealing with stage 3 consideration of the Transport (Scotland) Bill.
I recognise the pressures that would be involved in our having a meeting next week, so I suggest that your letter could take the form of a report expressing the arguments that we have heard and drawing together the evidence in the sort of short document that Fergus Ewing envisages. It would obviously be difficult for us all to come to a unanimous agreement at this stage, but we could implore the minister to provide a detailed rationale as to why the alternative proposals would not be satisfactory. That would put the onus back on the minister to comment. Some of the evidence that we heard is pretty robust and the minister might have a view on it, but we are not going to know that before he meets the Commission. If we could circulate such a letter by e-mail and agree it in that way, that might avoid the need for another committee meeting. That would be a letter-plus option because it would, in effect, be a report that was done by letter. I am prepared to go that way if it helps us to achieve the necessary outcome.
I hear what Bruce Crawford is saying, but I do not think that such a letter would amount to much more than what was originally suggested. The convener's original suggestion that we should take the main points from each of the three papers could be done easily, as we already have Professor Kay's recommendations on the way forward as well as the other papers' suggestions, to which Fergus Ewing referred. We could simply refer to the main points in the three papers and ask the Executive to say why those are not workable and cannot be progressed.
Absolutely. I am perfectly prepared to do that. However, rather than trying to get agreement on the letter from all nine committee members, I suggest that, once the clerks and I have drafted the letter, we pass it by the deputy convener to ensure that it covers all the points that have been discussed today. Is that acceptable to members?
That would avoid the need to meet next week and, in effect, it would produce a report by letter. I am content with that suggestion.
What will be the timescale for the letter? Bruce Crawford has dropped his request for another committee meeting because of the point about the pressure that that would put on the clerking team, but I do not see how the clerks' workload would be lightened if they still have to produce a paper for next week. What timescale are we talking about for the report that is to be drawn up? I suspect that the timescale will need to be after next week.
I have not yet discussed that in detail with the clerks, but we may well decide on the timescale that you suggest. Given the purpose of the letter, the key point is that it is sent sufficiently in advance of the minister's meeting with the EU transport commissioner.
The letter should not be required for next week, as we should not put the clerks under any extra pressure. The only difference between the current proposal and Bruce Crawford's original proposal is that the current proposal does not involve a committee meeting next week. The timescale for the letter should be beyond next week.
I will discuss the timescale with Eugene Windsor afterwards, but the requirement is that we send the letter before the minister's meeting with the EU transport commissioner. Given that no date for that meeting has yet been agreed—we will check that point with the minister's team—we have a window of opportunity. I understand that the Executive will take no action on Hebridean ferry services one way or another until the Minister for Transport can report back to the Parliament on his meeting with the transport commissioner, so we have a window of opportunity.
Is that proposal agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
That brings us to the conclusion of today's meeting.
Meeting closed at 14:33.