European and External Relations Committee, 03 Feb 2004

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 3, 2004

Official Report 171KB pdf

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Scottish Executive (Scrutiny)

We move on to item 5, which is pre and post-council scrutiny. Members have the papers and the one that is worth pointing out—over and above our regular updates from the Scottish Executive—is the analysis of Executive responses, which we discussed previously.

Will we go through the briefing paper first?

I am happy to do that.

I draw members' attention to paragraph 3 of the section on the economic and financial affairs council—ECOFIN—on the broad economic policy guidelines, which contains a comment that the Lisbon agenda has brought about

"the creation of five million jobs".

I presume that those jobs have been created within the European Union. I would be interested in seeing a breakdown of that figure, in particular because only the UK seems to be sustaining a good level of employment at present, whereas other countries seem to be going backwards. Where are the 5 million jobs and where did they come from? Can they be attributed to the Lisbon agenda?

Before I come on to the real issue that I want to raise, I point out that in that paragraph we are complimented on opening up our energy markets. I am sure that members will join me in congratulating Mrs Thatcher on having laid the foundations for that.

My other point is about the setting of interim targets for Scotland—here I go again being new Labour, Keith—in relation to the broad economic policy guidelines. Can we have some country-specific detail on that matter? The paper says:

"Interim target dates are less than two years away."

On reading that, I thought that it sounded as if a panic button was being hit somewhere. I would like to think that Scotland was on the right lines.

On your first point, we could ask SPICe to find out whether the information on employment levels is available, rather than write to the Executive. The information might already have been published, in which case we can ensure that it is passed round the committee. Are you happy for us to do that?

Yes. What about my second point?

I think that you made a second and a third point. Are you suggesting that the committee should write to the Executive for clarification on those points?

We should ask for clarification on the BEPGs and targets. I did not suggest that we write to congratulate Mrs Thatcher, but if that is the wish of the committee, I will go along with it.

Her name has now been mentioned twice since this committee was formed.

If members have no comments, we will drop a short note to the Executive to ask for its view on the matters that Phil Gallie raised.

Are there any other comments on the pre and post-council scrutiny?

We have other papers.

Can we briefly discuss the Executive responses?

I was intrigued to read in the pre and post-council scrutiny paper that the Irish and Dutch presidencies have set out a joint operational programme. I am sure that there are connections between different presidencies, but I was not aware that they were such that the presidencies would set out a programme for the council for 2004. It would be interesting to see a copy of the programme. Can we get one?

I think that Stephen Imrie knows something about that.

I would be delighted to send a copy to committee members who are interested in that. Members may also recall that at a previous meeting, we asked the Executive for an analysis of that slightly longer-term look at the EU's agenda to identify matters of interest to the people of Scotland. An annual work programme or policy statement for 2005 is expected in the next few days. If we receive a copy of that, we will circulate it to members.

The post-council report contains a comment on items that have been approved without debate at ECOFIN, including

"Taxation: Directive concerning common system of VAT".

I do nothing more than ask whether we can have information on that, to ensure that no threat is posed to our derogations.

We will take that on board and try to obtain that information when we obtain other information.

We will move on to the clerks' paper on timescales for responses from Executive departments when we seek pre and post-council scrutiny. As members will see from the table, the Environment and Rural Affairs Department is the worst offender for delays in providing information.

Does anyone have comments on the paper? We thank the clerks for producing it and making the calculations. The delays hamper our job of scrutiny. I know that the clerks have continuing discussions with Executive department officials and that the committee has said in the past that it wants departments to get their act together, because having that information is essential if we are to scrutinise the Government pre and post-council.

As the footnote on page 2 says, almost all requests for information have been in the four-week response category—the slow track—so the situation is disappointing. As the clerks have allowed that length of time, it is disappointing that we do not receive quicker replies. That hampers our work.

The Environment and Rural Affairs Department is the most disappointing. In an opinion poll that took place recently or before the previous election, in which people spoke about Europe, the issues that were numbers 2 and 3 were agriculture and fisheries, which are both dealt with by the Environment and Rural Affairs Department. It is worrying that that department has made only a 50 per cent return to the committee. An asterisk next to the figures for the Finance and Central Services Department marks the note that somebody was absent because of long-term sickness, but the Environment and Rural Affairs Department has offered no excuse for being the only department to meet only 50 per cent of the committee's requests. I do not know how we handle that, but that worrying aspect of the table jumped out at me.

What are the outstanding papers? Is there anything that we are exercised about on which we should chase departments?

We do not have the papers in front of us; we are discussing an analysis of the figures.

On the face of it, the figures are disturbing, but if the papers deal with trivia, we should not make a meal of it.

The committee has several options to consider. We can write to the acting minister to bring the matter to his attention or call the department's head to the committee to discuss the subject.

I do not want to make a mountain out of the issue, because we all appreciate Ross Finnie's circumstances and we are all thinking about him. I am glad that he is back home. However, a 50 per cent non-return of information to the committee is a very poor record. Something must be done, as Private Eye says.

There is no point in keeping the information to ourselves.

The issue is not just non-return by the date requested, but excessive delay in providing a response. For example, our documents contain a copy of a letter dated 5 November that the convener sent to Ross Finnie, in which he asked for a response by 1 December. Having no response to that is not good enough; we are into February now, so the response is more than two months late. I take it that why the response is more than two months late has not been explained.

To pick up on John Home Robertson's point, the questions and the letter to which Dennis Canavan referred are not exactly trivia, given that they cover agriculture and fisheries, albeit that there might have been a deliberate delay because of continuing negotiations. However, that letter is not the worst one by any means, because there is a letter to Jim Wallace that is dated 29 September, and I know that that was routed through Ross Finnie. I am not sure whether the original letter was sent to Jim Wallace on 29 September, but a response to that letter has been outstanding since that date.

I suggest that we write to the Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development to bring those matters to his attention, express concern and suggest that he discuss with his officials how they can improve their procedures to help us to fulfil our duties to the Parliament.

I know from ancient experience that some officials have more than enough on their plates without dealing with such matters. If that is an inherent problem with the system such that it is physically impossible for officials to do the job properly and respond more quickly, it might need to be raised with the permanent secretary to the Scottish Executive, because it would be in nobody's interest to ask the officials to do the impossible. It would be wise to take stock and find out just how serious matters are before we go ballistic on the issue.

I do not think that the committee wants to go ballistic, but we do want to express concern, given the results of the analysis that we have carried out. I am sure that the minister will also be keen to see the figures so that he can speak to his officials about them—I am sure that any of us would do that if we were the minister. We could copy our letter to the permanent secretary so that he is aware, if members feel that that is helpful.

I am not suggesting that we write to him yet.

We could copy our letter to him for information so that he is aware of the problem, if members are happy to do that.

Among the letters, we have a reply from Cathy Jamieson about the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. From my reading of that letter, it suggests that the United Kingdom probably has one of the most generous criminal injuries compensation schemes in Europe, if not the most generous one. That suggests to me that people from other parts of Europe come here and take advantage of our scheme, but when people from Scotland go to other European countries, there is no scheme to cover them. I am not sure that Cathy Jamieson's response addresses the urgency of the need to level the position or considers whether, in the short term, we should find some means of ensuring that the generous scheme that we appear to have does not apply to others from throughout Europe, although I suspect that that might be illegal. Some action should at least be taken to identify the circumstances and whether the Government should do something now about it, given the lack of agreement.

It might be more appropriate for one of the justice committees to take that matter up, because they might have an interest in that. They should have copies of that correspondence, but I will double-check that the conveners of those committees have distributed it.

Would you mind putting those points to the justice committees?

I will do that, and we will copy the Official Report of this meeting to them to show the points that you have raised.