United Kingdom European Committee Chairs (Meeting)
Agenda item 4 is some feedback from me on the European committee chairs meeting in Cardiff on Monday. We all take turns at chairing the meeting, and it was Wales’s turn on Monday. We had an interesting conversation. One of the clerks, Jenny Goldsmith, accompanied me and took some notes of our varied and interesting conversation. I thank her for her support.
The meeting was chaired by David Melding, who is the Deputy Presiding Officer and the chair of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee. The Welsh Assembly does not have a European committee as such, but European issues sit with that committee.
We received an overview of all the committees’ work from the committee chairs, and some common themes emerged across Scotland, Ireland and Wales, including on the common fisheries policies, the common agricultural policy and some of the challenges around subsidiarity and proportionality—for instance, how we are dealing with the transposition of some directives.
We had an in-depth conversation about the balance of competencies review and the UK’s status in the EU. We discussed the fact that the UK has intimated that it may opt out of and withdraw from some of the key treaties, and I raised concerns about how such changes would pan out here given that Scotland has a different legal system.
There was a discussion about the UK’s possible withdrawal from human rights legislation and the impact that that would have, given that human rights legislation is intrinsic to the Scotland Act 1998. That was an interesting conversation, and we will do some follow-up work on that in our committees.
The House of Lords committee in particular is very exercised about the issue and is undertaking its own inquiry. The three devolved groups that were present agreed to feed into that inquiry, so our clerks will do some work on that and we will bring it back at a later date so that our committee can feed into the process and open up that communication route as a two-way street.
That discussion led to a discussion of the UK justice and home affairs opt-out decision, which ran in parallel with the balance of competencies conversation, again with regard to the human rights opt-out and some of the challenges and concerns in that.
One of the big concerns was that UK ministers had not provided a list of opt-out proposals; it is hard to know what we are dealing with if they will not tell us. Even the House of Lords and the House of Commons committees have had real difficulty in pinning down their own ministers and Government to get that list. That is a difficult issue, but we all, as committee chairs, agreed to pursue it.
The Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament was thanked for some of the work that it has done in helping that work along. We agreed to discuss with the committee at a later date how we would take some of the work forward. The Justice Committee has written to the House of Lords, but it is still awaiting a response from the UK Government in order to have a fuller conversation on the issue.
The House of Commons committee is currently undertaking an EU scrutiny system inquiry, so it is scrutinising the scrutiny of the scrutiny of the committee, which sounds a bit Monty Python. It is looking at the way in which the systems work and whether they are doing what they should be doing, so it will be interesting to see what we can learn from that.
We talked about subsidiarity and proportionality. In this Parliament, we have had three episodes, two of which were on proportionality and the third of which was on a subsidiarity issue on which the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee decided not to take further action.
We have had a robust conversation about the constitutional debate in Scotland and how it will impact on the work of the other devolved Administrations as well as on the House of Lords and House of Commons committees. We agreed to have an open conversation about that, given that this committee will scrutinise the part of the Scottish Independence Referendum Bill that suggests how Scotland should interact with the EU and with foreign affairs, home affairs and international development. An avenue of conversation has been opened up in that regard. That is a quick overview of our conversation, which was interesting.
We then, as a group, took part in the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee. The conversation again quickly turned to the constitutional situation in Scotland and the on-going debate about Scotland’s future. I found that committee chairs were very interested in what is happening in Scotland. I did not sense any negativity at all—just a keen interest in what is happening and a request for an understanding of what that means for the rest of the UK.
Are there any questions?
Do you intend to write to the House of Lords and the minister at Westminster to express this committee’s concerns? That would add weight to the concerns that have been raised by many sectors in Scotland, and it might be valuable.
Yes. The committee chairs from the three devolved Administrations—David Melding from Wales, Mike Nesbitt from Northern Ireland and I—all agreed to write to ask for clarification, because we felt that it would be supportive of the House of Lords inquiry to do that. We need to further our understanding, especially if issues such as opt-outs are being considered—it would be nice to find out what we are opting out of.
Can we see a record of the deliberations that took place?
The informal committee meeting was not recorded, but Jenny Goldsmith produced two pages of bullet points for me. I could circulate that paper to members, as it would help them to understand the points that were discussed, but we do not have a verbatim minute.
So it was a private meeting.
Yes—the European committee chairs meeting is always a private meeting. The informal committee meeting in the afternoon was not recorded, but I would be happy to share any of the information that I have and to answer any questions that members might have. I will circulate that paper.
Are there any more questions?
That is a very good point. The chairs make such a big effort, so it would be nice to share information on their work with the various committees. It would be a good idea to do that in the future.
The meetings take place every six months. We have hosted one here. I think that the next one will be held in the House of Commons and the one after that in the House of Lords, so the next two meetings that will take place before the referendum will be held at Westminster.
If members have any questions, or if there is anything that they would like to know about, they should please let me know.