European Committee, 07 Dec 1999

Meeting date: Tuesday, December 7, 1999

Official Report 192KB pdf

---

Convener's Report

The next item is a report on the meeting with President Mary McAleese of the Republic of Ireland. Margo MacDonald and Dennis Canavan also attended that meeting.

President Mary McAleese spoke to a number of people assembled in the Signet Library. Politics, the Church and business—the usual suspects—were all represented. I was very impressed by the President's speech, because it teetered nicely between a political analysis and a good-will visit.

The President treated our Parliament and the Scots in general as being the same as the Irish, in that we have every right to think of ourselves as contributing to Europe, rather than being mere beneficiaries. She referred to the historical links between Ireland and Scotland as Celtic fringe nations, but did not dwell on the maudlin. She moved ahead quickly and delicately to stress the fact that we are partners and competitors in developing the European economy, in investing in the European zone and in our approach to coping with the ups and downs of the global economy.

As members will gather, it was a decent speech that the woman made. Everyone who was there was charmed and impressed by her. If I may express a personal observation, I hope that, when the convener of this committee or of any other goes on a reciprocal visit to Dublin, they will appear just as confident about European matters.

That is quite a challenge, Margo.

The next item concerns the role of the European Committee in relation to human rights. Following the discussions at previous meetings, we had asked for a report on what we could legitimately consider. The clerk will circulate that report and we can return to it if necessary when we consider our future work programme.

The next item is a letter from Bill Miller MEP, in which he makes some useful suggestions about European programmes. This is rather different from the work that we have asked the rapporteurs to do, but the committee may want to consider commissioning a seminar to link in with the European Commission, identifying the various programmes and funding sources that Scottish organisations and institutions can tap into. That work could provide education for members as well as information for members of the public who look to the Parliament for advice on such matters.

Winnie Ewing will be familiar with some of the descriptions in the letter, but others may wonder what the new SOCRATES initiative means or what is available through the DAPHNE initiative or ARCHIPELAGO. That could be a useful starting point for discussions at a future meeting.

I can see the proposal being of value to members of this committee. However, local authorities are already participating in many of those initiatives. For example, North Ayrshire Council has been participating in SOCRATES for some time. I know that a great deal of work has also been done in Scotland on the DAPHNE initiative. There are some very well-informed people out there who are already doing a good job in accessing funds.

At a future meeting we can consider the various initiatives and funding sources. It was very helpful of Bill Miller to bring this to our attention.

The next issue that I had put on the agenda was how we deal with members' business. Some of this may be covered when we finalise our work programme, but I am aware that there have been a number of expressions of interest in allowing members to present pieces of work. To some extent, that will depend on the work programme and how long it takes to commission the reports that we have requested. I may want to come back to this, to see whether we have space on our agenda in which to progress other issues relatively quickly.

I would like to say two things about the date and time of our next meeting. We are proposing a meeting on 14 December to consider the objective 3 operational plan. With your agreement, I will circulate our draft report, which is based on comments that were made previously. If members want to make any alterations, they should inform Stephen Imrie by 5 o'clock tomorrow, so that he can finalise the report. The report incorporates comments that members have made. The intention is to have those changes approved so that the report can be submitted to the minister ahead of next week's discussion as this committee's view on the plan.

I would like to make a point about the objective 3 plan. Some of us went to the briefing that was held on it last week, at which it was made clear that the plan has not yet been finished. We have been promised that we will get it by tomorrow. It is a 400-page document, and some things have changed. We were briefed by the Executive's officials, who said that a number of changes had been made to the original plan and that they would have been unhappy for us to comment before we saw the finished version. They agreed that we would not have enough time to digest the report and question the minister on it if we did not get it by Friday. Stephen Imrie was also at the meeting.

The intention was that, on the basis of our previous discussion of the objective 3 plan and the comments that were made at the briefing with the Scottish Executive officials, we would try to produce a short draft report highlighting our views at this stage. We would also try to incorporate into the report any comments that members had when they received the final version of the objective 3 operational plan. That report would be tabled at our meeting of 14 December to assist with the discussions with the minister, but it would still be a draft report. After the meeting we would revise it quickly to take into account what had been said there. The finalised report would be presented to the Scottish Executive. That procedure was agreed to assist the Executive to finalise its operational plan, so that it could still submit the plan to the European Commission this side of the Christmas and new year break.

There are two separate issues. The draft report is based on members' earlier comments and the informal briefing. Its aim is to focus some specific attention on areas that concern us. However, it is not our final report. We will have an opportunity to revise it further at the meeting of 14 December.

The second issue, which is the inadequate availability of documents ahead of an important meeting with the minister, was touched on by Ben Wallace. He is right to say that the plan is a very bulky document and that it will be difficult for us to give due consideration to it. Do we know when the final draft of the document will be available?

As Mr Wallace said, we agreed informally with the Executive officials that they would try to give us the document by today or tomorrow. Those would the earliest dates by which they could provide us with the final plan. We indicated to them that if we did not receive it by then, it would be difficult for members to give the plan proper consideration.

I had a detailed brief based on the original plan, but when I asked questions from it at the briefing the officials said that they had changed the plan so much in some areas that they were reluctant to give answers based on the previous draft. What worries me is that we will have a draft report on a draft plan that has now changed.

Our difficulty is that the Scottish Executive is working to a tight time scale for getting the plan to the Commission. We could say that we are not prepared to meet the minister because we do not have the document. The problem is that the Executive would go ahead and submit the plan anyway. Next week will be our only opportunity to discuss it, although this is clearly not a satisfactory situation.

I wanted to follow up on some of the points that have been raised, because I was also at the briefing. Am I correct in understanding that the comments that were made at that briefing have been taken into account in the draft report? There was broad agreement among all of us who were present at the briefing on some of the areas that we would want to be addressed in the plan.

Yes.

It might be helpful if we could see the draft report, which would give us an indication of how things stand.

We will agree to circulate the report. If members have any further comments, they should inform Stephen Imrie, who will try to incorporate what he can into what will still be a draft report ahead of the meeting with Jack McConnell next week. We will make our concern known separately to the Executive about the late availability of the final plan.

I am scheduled to attend a meeting of the Local Government Committee on the afternoon of 14 December. Will the meeting with Jack McConnell be in the afternoon?

Would you like me to check when the Local Government Committee meeting is due to take place, or when our meeting is scheduled?

At the moment they seem to be scheduled for the same time.

I will check whether there is a clash with the Local Government Committee meeting. Our meeting is at 2 o'clock in the chamber, but I will check the status of the Local Government Committee meeting. We were not due to meet on 14 December. Today's meeting was to have been our last meeting this side of Christmas. Next week's meeting had to be scheduled in.

It was done to accommodate the objective 3 plan.

I might not be able to attend.

I, too, may have problems attending next week. I want to be clear about this. You want us to submit our comments on the draft report that we more or less agreed at a previous meeting. We have not seen the report, but it takes into account the comments that we made at that meeting. The report will be circulated, and we will have to comment on it by tomorrow. However, the report is not based on the finalised plan. I am not sure that that makes sense.

It makes sense up to a point. At the moment, what you have described is all that we can do. The report is based on the information that was provided to us when the officials appeared before the committee, updated by a briefing that a representative of each political group received from some of the officials involved. That is the most that we can do before our meeting with Jack McConnell. It would help to focus attention on what we consider to be the general issues. It is not our final comment. We will make that next week. We hope to have received the document by then, although that will not give us much time to examine it.

The briefing was based on the most up-to-date information that was available. We must agree whether it goes to the Scottish Executive ahead of the meeting. It would be useful to feed back some of the comments that came out of the informal briefing, although it does not represent the final view of the committee. We will write to the Scottish Executive separately expressing our concern at the lack of provision of the document. Whether we like it or not, we will have to go ahead with that meeting next week. Otherwise, we will not have an opportunity to comment before that document is sent to Brussels.

Although this is partly the Executive's fault, I must say in its defence that it is tied as well, as this report must be in Brussels by 17 December. As it is a lengthy report, can we get a briefing on it if it comes in tomorrow or the day after? Can a SPICe researcher give us a synopsis of it?

We will do what we can.

It might be worth while highlighting the aspects of the report that have been subject to substantial change.

I propose that the January meeting focuses on interviewing Lex Gold and members of his committee who are considering the programme on the monitoring of management structures. We will want to meet a range of organisations to examine that. We should therefore schedule that meeting in Glasgow.

What is the date of that meeting?

We have not fixed a date yet. I will come back to the committee with a suggested venue and date.

The last point goes back to the scrutiny process. We will continue in private so that we are off the record as far as the official report is concerned.

Meeting continued in private until 15:33.