Official Report 288KB pdf
We come to the next item on the agenda. I have two matters to draw to the committee's attention. The first is an update on our invitation to ministers to give evidence in our regional development inquiry. As members will have seen from their papers, we have had no joy so far with the invitations and the Treasury has indicated yet again that it does not want to give evidence. We have sent a follow-up letter to the DTI, on the understanding that, if we do not receive an acceptance in response to that, we are prepared to send a delegation to London, as we agreed at a previous meeting. I envisage that that would be a small delegation of perhaps four committee members, although we would have to agree on the size of the delegation. Are members happy to work on the premise that the delegation would be a cross-party one?
The clerks will speak to individual committee members about the arrangements for that.
The sift paper shows that another document with an explanatory memorandum is coming out with respect to structural funds and changes in budgetary matters. We should ensure that we have that paper and have had a chance to digest it before we head southwards.
Okay. Thanks. We can discuss the matter briefly at a future meeting before we go to London. I am sure that the trip will take a couple of weeks to arrange.
The statement from the Foreign Secretary is positive. He suggests a successor committee to the standing committee that was set up to look at the convention on the future of Europe and the intergovernmental conference. He mentions—as Michael Ancram said in his response, although I did not agree with much of what he said—that the proposal is more for a grand committee, in which there can be debates as well as questions. The Foreign Secretary suggested that members of both houses would be represented, including ministers who are involved in EU work, and that MEPs and European commissioners might have the opportunity to attend.
I would not go too far in congratulating the Foreign Secretary, but noting and progressing the idea would not be against anything that I feel.
Okay. If the committee is happy with the suggestion, we can draft an appropriate letter to the Foreign Secretary and hope that he can shed more light on what prospect there is of the devolved legislatures' involvement. We can do that in a welcoming fashion.
In a limited welcoming fashion.
We are a polite committee.
The statement was significant.
Alasdair Morrison and I are both on the British-Irish Interparliamentary Body and we serve on the sub-committee that deals with European affairs. The National Assembly for Wales, representatives of the Republic of Ireland and the Northern Ireland Assembly—which has a small number of representatives, for obvious reasons—are all involved in that, along with the Westminster Parliament. There is a lot of work to be done. The Nordic Council was one of our main areas of work and the issue will come up again when we next meet, in April. There seems to be a danger of our always involving ourselves in yet another committee, with yet more travelling and yet more expenses, to go through arguments and opinions that can be e-mailed or voiced by letter. I am not saying no to the concept, but I am hesitant about setting up another organisation.
Once we get a reply, we might be more in the picture as to how we would be involved. We can make a decision at that time.
I take issue with Margaret Ewing. She may have reservations on the matter, but to suggest that the House of Commons is just another organisation is a little bit rich, in view of her past history. It is more than just another organisation; it is central to our political life, for goodness' sake.
It is obsolete.
We will not go down that road just now.