European and External Relations Committee, 26 Jan 2010
Meeting date: Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Official Report
167KB pdf
China Plan Inquiry
Item 5 is on our China plan inquiry. Colleagues have copies of the responses that we have received from the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. The response from the Scottish Government is very detailed, and the response from COSLA is useful. Included in our papers is a response from Standard Life that was first circulated to members some time ago.
Some particularly positive remarks are worth highlighting. The activity and progress on direct air links is highlighted on page 19 of the responses paper—the committee picked up that point in its inquiry, and we felt that it was useful to raise the matter. I note from that page that the Government is actively pursuing the matter, although we had not been aware of the details. We will keep a watchful eye on that.
Page 20 covers the development of a China toolkit for the Scottish tourism sector, which is a useful element of what we highlighted in our work. Page 21 is about increasing shared activity between Scottish Development International and the China-Britain Business Council, which the committee was seeking.
Page 22 is about exploring
"a more comprehensive mentoring scheme"
for Scottish businesses, which the committee also highlighted as an area where we wished to see progress.
There are a number of other areas of interest in the paper—I do not know whether we have time to go into them all. I assume that colleagues have read the paper in detail. A number of the initiatives that we had raised involving potential links with particular towns and regions are covered. In particular, Standard Life raised Tianjin as a possible new economic centre. The Government has given a commitment to explore such issues and report back to the committee.
It has been a useful piece of work. We should bear in mind that we will shortly be taking evidence from the Minister for Culture and External Affairs for our international inquiry, so there will be opportunities to follow through on some of the issues, especially where the Government has indicated a commitment or interest. If we wish to carry out further work, we can build it into our international inquiry remit, if colleagues are happy with that. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.