Reporter's Report
We have a progress report from Dennis Canavan on the proposed European charter on fundamental rights and the development of a Scottish perspective. Dennis can update us on his work so far, then members can comment or ask questions.
Work has been progressing gradually over the past few months. The pace of progress could have been greater, but we have received relatively little evidence, partly because many organisations, academics and so on have been otherwise engaged over the summer. Apparently some groups and individuals had been unwilling to submit evidence, on the ground that the draft of the charter was incomplete. However, the draft was completed last week and submitted to the European Council of Ministers, prior to its Biarritz meeting, which starts on 12 October. I hope to have that draft, for reporting back to the committee, soon after the autumn recess.
More than 20 organisations were invited to submit evidence, including non-governmental organisations such as Amnesty International and the Scottish Human Rights Centre, and bodies such as the Scottish Trades Union Congress, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Law Society of Scotland. The committees of the Parliament were invited to submit evidence if they so desired. A call for evidence was placed on the worldwide web. So far, the response has not been great in terms of quantity, but the quality has been good. We have received nine responses so far. The Faculty of Advocates has promised a response, which is due later this week.
I would like to follow up an interesting suggestion from Professor Burrows, the director of the Scottish Jean Monnet European centre of excellence. She has proposed a seminar on the proposed charter of fundamental rights, which she suggests I chair. The centre has some funding available to organise such events, so there would be no budgetary implications for the committee. We could probably hold such a seminar in one of the committee rooms.
The convention that is charged with drafting the report has met regularly since 17 December last year and has finalised its draft charter. The input from the UK consists of Lord Goldsmith, who is the Prime Minister's representative, Win Griffiths, who represents the House of Commons, and Lord Bowness, who represents the House of Lords. There is also input from David Martin MEP, who, as a vice-president of the European Parliament, is that Parliament's representative on the convention. I had a useful meeting with David, at which he gave informal oral evidence.
My assistant, Adèle Brown, circulated copies of the draft charter to all members just prior to this meeting. If members have not received a copy, please let me know. A website contains other information on the work of the convention and on the progress of the draft charter and members should contact my office if they want the address for that website, as Adèle will be able to supply it.
The draft charter consists of civil and political rights as well as social, economic and solidarity rights. The civil and political rights were fairly non-contentious, but there was some controversy about the social, economic and solidarity rights.
The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was concerned that member states might consider making the charter legally binding. It was reported that he even threatened to use the UK's veto in order to prevent the charter from becoming legally binding. However, it appears that some compromise has been reached, so the charter will probably not become legally binding.
Concern was expressed about certain social, economic and solidarity rights. The trade union movement in most countries would probably want to strengthen solidarity rights. France certainly seemed to be taking a maximalist position on those rights, but it did not receive the support of most of the other member states, including Britain. As a result, another compromise was reached, so the draft charter is not as strong on social, economic and solidarity rights as the French Government, for example, would have liked.
Key issues that will continue to be the subject of debate include future accession to the European convention on human rights. All member states are already signatories to the convention, but it is possible that the European Union, as an institution, will accede to the ECHR. The status of the charter and the inclusion of social and economic rights will doubtless continue to be the subject of much debate.
On the Scottish dimension, there is a clear need to focus on the collection and dissemination of information. To that end, and with the approval of the committee, I would like to take up the proposal for a seminar that was made by the Jean Monnet European centre for excellence. All members of the committee and any other interested MSP will be invited to participate in that seminar.
Thank you, Dennis. Your report gave us a good update on how the proposed charter is progressing and ideas on how to pursue that work.
Do members have comments or questions?
It is not clear from Dennis's report precisely where the draft charter fits into the European Union's internal processes. Who is considering it? When is it likely to cease to be a draft charter and become a permanent charter?
The draft charter has been completed by the convention. The convention acted like an international working party and was involved in drafting the charter. That work has been completed and the result is the document that was circulated by Adèle Brown just before the meeting started.
The draft charter will go to the Biarritz European Council summit, which will be held on 12 October. If it is approved, it will probably be finalised at the intergovernmental conference in Nice in December.
Does that response answer your question, Allan?
Yes.
What about Dennis's suggestion that we pursue our work on the draft charter through the proposed seminar? Do members think that that would be appropriate? Are members interested in becoming involved in that seminar?
I will take that silence as a yes.
I like Dennis's idea, but I would like to know more about what the expected outcomes from any such seminar are, so that we can judge whether it might a successful way of doing things in future. As long as we know before we proceed what the outputs are and we are able to make some measurement and understand it, I would support the idea.
The idea of the seminar would be to enable invited participants to express their views. I doubt that there would be unanimity on every issue on the agenda. Following the seminar, I would hope to be able to submit a draft report to the committee.
Views within the committee about certain aspects of my draft report may differ, but I hope that we will be able to reach some consensus or majority view and publish a report for the Scottish Parliament. If there is time, we could perhaps feed it in to the European decision-making process, but I am not terribly optimistic that our views would hold much weight there as that process is mainly intergovernmental: the member states and the European Parliament have the major input. Nevertheless, it would be useful for us to finalise a report, at least for our own Parliament. We could, if possible, forward it to some European institutions.
Does Dennis envisage taking retrospective action against Tony Blair later? [Laughter.]
I think that we will have to rule that comment out of order. Let us move on in a constructive spirit. It would certainly not be the first report of this committee that did not have unanimity. We have always tried to ensure that everybody's views are taken on board in the appropriate way.
I would like to see Dennis's report first. I am not unsympathetic to the idea of a seminar but we should perhaps see the report first and take things a stage at a time. I am aware that a lot of people on the committee are doing reports, and there is perhaps an argument to have seminars for all of them. We need to be clear about what the report says and about how it feeds into the system. Dennis has said that we might not be able to influence things and that it is more of a learning exercise. We should perhaps take things a step at a time.
My understanding is that the Jean Monnet centre was interested in doing a seminar anyway.
Yes.
It would therefore not be our seminar, but would involve feeding in our contribution. Is that correct? The centre has written to me and to others.
I would prefer the seminar to be held before I finalise my draft report so that the views expressed there can be taken into consideration. My draft report will return to the committee for approval, amendment, rejection or whatever before it becomes an official committee report.
Does that clarify the position, Irene?
Yes, that is fine.
Dennis will be able to liaise with Stephen Imrie to ensure that committee members are kept up to date at every possible point.
I will therefore go ahead and organise the seminar. I will keep members informed.
I can see people's heads going down at the suggestion that there should be seminars; I do not think that anybody is rushing to help organise them. Thank you very much for that update, Dennis. We look forward to hearing what comes of future developments.