The final item on the agenda is consideration of a paper by the clerk on how the committee might want to handle European issues that fall within its remit. The paper summarises two recent Scottish Parliament documents, "The Role of the Scottish Parliament in Relation to European Matters" and "The Relationship between the European and External Relations Committee and Subject Committees", by the then convener of the European and External Relations Committee.
The table that the clerks have put together in the paper is interesting. Over the past year, I have been aware of a large number of legislative proposals and policy decisions that our ministers have made in Brussels that have a big financial impact. I am sure that other members have been aware of them, too. Two issues that have been raised a great deal in the chamber are common agricultural policy reform and waste water treatment, which I am conscious have financial implications for Scotland in which the Finance Committee is not involved. I do not know whether there is a possibility of a compromise by combining the monitoring role with active engagement. Given our full agenda, it would be burdensome to try to do everything that is suggested in the column on active engagement, but it would be useful for relevant ministers and Commission representatives to give us evidence, based on the report that we receive. That could happen in relation to specific policy areas, rather than being done routinely.
I agree with what Jeremy Purvis has said, particularly in relation to matters such as the common fisheries policy to which Scottish ministers have an input that is by no means the lead one. Our experienced agriculture and fisheries minister—the Minister for Environment and Rural Development, Ross Finnie—goes regularly to European meetings and acts as the junior member to a United Kingdom minister. It has always seemed to me difficult to justify that situation given the relative importance of the fishing industry in Scotland compared with its importance in the UK as a whole.
I am not sure.
I am not sure about that either. Our role is to scrutinise what is happening and we do not necessarily want to be led by what ministers think we ought or ought not to do. I do not regard the suggestions for our monitoring role and for active engagement as being either/or. We could select bits from both activities, because both are important. Of course, we must bear in mind our other work commitments. We must balance anything that we do on European matters with our inquiries and the other things that we want to do. We must also recognise the role of other committees. For example, taking evidence on the CFP is more a matter for the Environment and Rural Development Committee than it is for this committee. We should not necessarily regard the Finance Committee as substituting for other committees.
Other committees cover many of the suggested activities and we should not duplicate those. We certainly do not want to commit members to going to meetings or whatever just for the sake of it. I do not like option I in paragraph 15, which talks of "little or no engagement". That sounds far too negative, given the importance of the issues. We should be alerted to any items through the normal processes, as issues flow through the European and External Relations Committee to our clerks. If an item is looming on the horizon, we could pick whichever monitoring role from the menu appeared to be appropriate for that particular policy area.
That is a sensible suggestion. I will add a couple of things. It might be worth asking the Scottish Parliament information centre to consider the process of translating European directives and so on into legislation and the financial implications thereof. We could perhaps get a report on that once a year. Directives such as the bathing water directive or the water services directive do not come out of hyperspace—things are on-going in Brussels. It would be useful for us to get a report that sets out the main legislative changes that are being proposed in Brussels, indicating where those are likely to result in legislative change in Scotland and giving a scaling of the impact. That would be a useful boundary piece of work that could be updated at appropriate periods.
I will build on what the convener has said. It strikes me that it would not be too onerous to have a report every six months that sets out the European financial threats and opportunities that have crystallised during the previous six months, and considers the outlook for the next six months. We could have that on a rolling basis, which would improve our ability to contribute to the macromanagement of Scottish financial management and outcomes.
I am not sure whether a six-month period is the right one. I would commission the report as a one-off and then assess from that what the appropriate updating period would be.
One area that we need to look into is the unexpected financial commitments that can result from the legal interpretation of directives that Europe hands down—for example, the judge's decision on slopping out. Perhaps another committee will consider that more stringently. The threat of having no control over our own finances if Europe gets a strong enough grip is always lurking in the background.
The big issue for us is to ensure that the Executive takes proper financial precautions to deal with identifiable consequences. That issue arose when we discussed the Water Environment and Water Services (Scotland) Bill last year and it will arise also in relation to other legislation. It would probably be useful for us to do a scanning exercise and to consider the financial implications of what comes from Europe. That would certainly fit with our remit. I suspect that the European and External Relations Committee does not consider matters in that way. It would be helpful if SPICe considered that area and reported to us on it.
Meeting closed at 11:43.