Work Programme
Item 3 is our future work programme. A number of papers have been circulated by the clerk, Stephen Imrie: a cover note that gives us an overview of what we are currently committed to, a scoping paper on options for a committee inquiry on sport, one on creative industries and one on European structural funds evaluation.
I offer a general comment. We need to focus on two matters. One is whether we should undertake another inquiry before the committee finishes at the end of February or beginning of March, and if so, what that inquiry should be, or whether we forgo having any inquiry, but perhaps add hearings on particular subjects along the lines of what we did previously on broadcasting. We must take a basic decision about the areas that we want to examine—if any—that are not currently in the work programme, and if we do, we need to identify what those are.
The second matter is that between now and October, our time is pretty much committed because we have to consider the Bankruptcy and Diligence etc (Scotland) Bill, the Tourist Boards (Scotland) Bill, the St Andrew's Day Bank Holiday (Scotland) Bill and the beginnings of the budget work. After the October recess, we will also have the proposed national register of tartans bill and the legacy paper at some point in the new year. The truth of the matter is that we would only be able to undertake any inquiry or hearings some time after the October recess. I think that we have about eight meetings between the October and Christmas recesses and then we have January and February before the run-up to the elections. It is sometimes difficult to get committee unanimity in those circumstances, even on a subject such as sport.
It might be that people are thinking along the same lines, in which case we can reach a fairly quick decision. However, in reality, we will not be able to do much on either an inquiry or hearings prior to the October recess because we are pretty bogged down with legislation. It is a case of what we can fit in. Whatever we agree to do, the remit has to be reasonably tight because there is no point in our trying to bite off more than we can chew or trying to do a piece of work that ends up half done because we run out of time.
I will go round the table and get people's comments, starting with Murdo Fraser.
I am inclined to agree with the direction in which the convener is trying to lead us because of the shortage of time, especially before the end of this calendar year. We would have difficulties undertaking a large body of work and trying to complete it in January and February next year.
During the three and a half years over which we have met we have not delved into sport in depth, with the exception of the paper that Richard Baker did on football. That is an omission on the part of the committee. If we were to agree to undertake a further piece of work, I think that it should be on sport—albeit that we would have to choose a tightly focused topic that was non-controversial and non-partisan because, as the convener said, it might be impossible to get agreement on a controversial issue two months before an election.
We might have to do an inquiry on shinty.
I am strongly against our doing a full-blown inquiry, regardless of the subject matter. That is partly because of the pressure on time. If we do something, we want to do it well. There will be all sorts of pressures on us as we move into the new year, including the more general pressure of the Parliament's legislative programme. Although that might not have a direct impact on the committee's timetable, it will affect members' time and energy.
In addition, I am increasingly concerned about the shape and form that some committee inquiries take. I am not sure that more is better. Full-scale inquiries can become quite plodding and can lose a lot of momentum along the way. There are other ways in which we could add value in the suggested subject areas, which could have just as much of an impact as a full inquiry. Self-evidently, the dreadful business of party politics will come to the fore to a greater extent and sport is an area that offers enormous potential for the committee to fracture along party lines.
I have two specific suggestions. We could give quite a good airing to the subject of the creative industries in the form of a hearing—or whatever label we want to use—that consisted of just two evidence sessions. The scoping paper sets out quite neatly some of the key developments that are taking place in that field. The establishment of creative Scotland will be an important milestone. I am not sure when would be the right time to do that work, but if we agreed to the general principle of doing it, I am sure that the optimal time at which to do it could be identified. The chair of creative Scotland has been advertised. Perhaps that appointment would give us a chance to discuss publicly that organisation's stage of development and to raise some issues that might help to shape its work.
It might seem premature to talk about our legacy paper, but I hope that we will leave plenty of quality time in the spring not just to produce the paper, but to reflect on what members of the committee have learned individually and collectively and on what we might want to suggest to our successors. There has been considerable continuity on the committee for some time. Some folk have even come back to it because they liked it so much the first time. I hope that we will leave sufficient time to reflect on the past and to think about the future.
I will deal with the three different inquiry options that the clerks have suggested. I think that our time is too limited to be able to undertake an inquiry on European structural funds, which would be a detailed piece of work.
There is reasonable scope to conduct an inquiry into the creative industries and Scottish Screen, but given that creative Scotland is only just being set up, it would be too early to do that work now. Even by late autumn, when we would be in a position to take evidence, creative Scotland's chair will have just got their feet under the desk and will be attempting to evaluate where the organisation is going. I suspect that that inquiry is better suited to the spring of next year. The problem is that we will not have time to conduct it. It should be considered, because there is concern in the creative industries about the establishment of creative Scotland and the merger between the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen. However, until creative Scotland has been established as an organisation and its chair is in place, it will be difficult for it to provide us with the detailed evidence that we would need to carry out a full inquiry.
I have said before that I am in favour of conducting some form of inquiry into sport. With the exception of the football inquiry, the committee has failed to cover that area. The football inquiry was undertaken by a reporter, who produced a report for the committee, and it dragged on for some time. The sporting community in Scotland would welcome investigation of some aspects of Scottish sport by the committee.
I notice that the paper puts forward four scrutiny options. The first concerns the funding of sports policy. That could be a political football—
Aw!
I am taking after Alex Neil with my puns. However, I suspect that in the run-up to the elections an inquiry that was limited to funding issues could become political.
The second option concerns the structure of sports policy. That would be a very detailed inquiry, given the range of governing bodies that exist. Those bodies have so many different views on what the structure should be that a considerable amount of detailed work would be needed.
The third option is to look at major events. There is scope for us to consider not just major sporting events, but major events in general. How we seek to attract major events could merit an inquiry.
Option 4 is the best option, as it proposes a limited inquiry. The review of sport 21 is taking place now and is due to be published in the next month or two. There will have to be a strategy off the back of that to address some of the issues that were not addressed by sport 21 the first time round. There is an option to consider what lessons have been learned and the new strategy that is to be put in place, and to take evidence from some organisations on how they think that the new strategy will address the deficiencies in the first one. A tightly focused inquiry into the review of sport 21 and the strategy that will be developed from it would fit in very well with our timescale and workload.
I interpreted the paper as setting out two proposals for an inquiry and my proposal for a minor piece of research evaluating the impact of European structural funds. I intend to proceed on that basis, as there is merit in seeking the piece of research work that has been suggested.
I agree with Michael Matheson's comments on the proposed inquiry into the creative industries. Unfortunately, the optimum time to conduct such an inquiry is so close to the election that we would never get agreement on it, although it would be a good inquiry to pursue.
The fourth option for an inquiry into sport is almost the equivalent for sports policy of the inquiry that we would like to conduct into the creative industries. I am not sure that we should carry out a full-blown inquiry into the issue. We may want to schedule a couple of evidence sessions and some desk research, seeking the initial view of the major organisations concerned on the outcome of the review of sport 21, what issues have been dealt with, how well they have been dealt with and what is still to be done.
I am keen to pursue an evaluation of the impact of European funding, because there is still a story to be found and told about individual projects and investments from this round and previous rounds of European funding. There is evidence that that funding has provided the catalyst for on-going development. The examples of which I can think most easily are from my area.
For example, there was European regional development funding and funding under the European environmental stream for cleaning up contamination at Rosyth. There is now a legacy of a booming inward investment and economic development area. The other example is Methil energy park, where I was this morning. There is a similar type of investment there. However, I suspect that there are such examples throughout the country, including evidence from European social fund projects, ERDF projects and the other horizontal strand projects.
We could have a tightly focused piece of research, picking out perhaps three examples from each of the funds, and their accompanying horizontal themes. Such a piece of research could be conducted by the Scottish Parliament information centre, in conjunction with the programme planning partnerships and the European partnerships of the east of Scotland, the west of Scotland, the Highlands and Islands, and the south of Scotland. That could be done relatively easily and not at huge expense, and would provide us with some sort of economic measure by which we could consider the issues that are coming up for the next round of funding.
Concern has been expressed that, because of time pressures and the political cycle, it will be difficult for us to launch into a major inquiry at this point. I share that concern, but if we are going to focus on one issue there is a clear argument for sport because we have not invested as much time in that area as we have in others. The sport 21 review would be worth considering, but I am a bit sceptical about whether we could have a tight and focused inquiry into such a huge area of policy.
Our evidence sessions and hearings—we have heard lots of evidence on certain issues—have worked well for the committee. There is no reason why we should not deploy that kind of approach again. We could have not just evidence sessions but round-table discussions and the like on certain issues.
Looking at our legacy paper, it might be useful to engage organisations in that sort of work. If our approach is not to consider one issue in too much detail, it would open doors for us to consider other, smaller issues, or big issues that we might not otherwise be able to touch on. There are issues such as the development of the employability strategy—we could even have a couple of evidence sessions on that. We would not be able to go into it in depth, but it would be useful to get an idea of what progress has been made on that, given that it took so long to come out in the first place. I would rather have that kind of approach, which is focused on those kinds of issues, than have a major inquiry into any particular subject.
I missed the meeting at which the discussion on the options took place, but I picked up from the meeting that one of the options had been to consider those young people who are not in employment, education or training. I wondered why that option had been dropped.
We had agreed that we should wait until the Executive had published its two strategies before deciding what, if anything, we would do. At the time, the Executive had not produced those strategies but it has now done so. We were not robbed; we just decided not to pursue the issue at the time. The Executive had hoped to produce its strategy much earlier.
So that is really off the agenda.
No, not necessarily. It is up to you.
That is Richard Baker's employability strategy.
That is what I was saying. We cannot go into it in the depth that might be required, but we can at least touch on it.
As that appeared not to be in our scope, I looked at what the other options were. I wondered about the creative industries and whether there was an opportunity there. I gather that a culture bill is proposed for the next session. Is that right?
That will be after the election.
Yes. There is a possibility that a short inquiry could give direction to that culture bill. I wondered whether that would be an option, but at the end of the day I feel that an inquiry into European funding would provide the most benefit.
I invite Stephen Herbert to comment, as he produced the papers. He can answer any questions that members have on them.
Stephen Herbert (Scottish Parliament Directorate of Access and Information):
One point that all members have mentioned is the degree of change that exists in all the areas—to a greater or lesser extent—at the moment. A bill is in the process of being developed in relation to the creative industries, so I feel that more significant change is taking place in that area than is the case with sport, given that the sport 21 strategy has been in place for some time.
On structural funds, I acknowledge Christine May's point about a range of options, but her idea about highlighting a few projects is the sort of activity that the programme management executives and the European Commission undertake—the Commission finances on-going evaluations.
Those are some general comments regarding the options. I do not want to make any specific comments.
The problem is that the evaluation work that the PMEs and the Executive do comes at the end of the structural funds round, so it tends to look back at projects that have been concluded for years. I am talking about considering situations in which there is an on-going economic impact, or not, as a result of European funding. The PME evaluation, the mid-term evaluation and the Executive's work do not do that.
The present programmes run until the end of 2006 and it will take two or three years for the economic impact to come through. However, the evaluations of the previous programming round programmes have been produced. There is an on-going process in which we have to wait almost three years.
We are talking about two entirely different things.
Let us try to wade our way through the matter. I will deal first with the suggestion on the European evaluation, which is different from the other issues that we are talking about in that it is about commissioning a piece of professional research. The results of that research would be of major interest, not only to this committee, with its enterprise and lifelong learning hat, but to the Local Government and Transport Committee, the European and External Relations Committee and potentially others. I therefore suggest that we treat that as a separate issue and agree in principle to commission a discrete piece of research on it, although we would need to agree the detailed remit at a future date.
The research may or may not be completed early next year but, either way, it would be of benefit and whatever is done with it, it would be built into the committee's legacy as an issue that our successor committee should address. In the meantime, let us get the research done. Other committees may want to address other aspects of the issue. We will agree a remit and then go through the necessary channels to get agreement for the research to be done. I presume that that would be managed by SPICe, but perhaps with external assistance. We can do that without interfering with our work programme. Do members agree to that suggestion?
Members indicated agreement.
Now that we have put that issue aside, we have three subjects in which members have expressed an interest—sport, creative industries and the employability strategy. There is also the allied issue of the modus operandi of our work, such as whether it will involve hearings or an inquiry.
I think that what I am hearing is a majority of members suggesting that we should do something on sport, on the grounds that it is an important sector and because, with the exception of the football inquiry and the rugby hearings, we have not done a great deal across the board on sport. We need to discuss whether a full-blown inquiry is possible within a realistic timescale, but there certainly seems to be a feeling in the committee that we have neglected sport rather more than we should have done.
I agree that there is a major piece of work to be done on creative industries, which has such a wide definition that it could cover broadcasting, independent production and a range of other activities. Of course, in a sense, it covers both the enterprise remit and the culture remit. It seems to me that the creative industries issue needs a lot more work over a longer period of time than we can perhaps give it. Having said that, the committee could hold hearings to try to identify the main strands of the issues that need to be addressed, and perhaps to provide some focus, particularly to feed into the legacy paper, on the work that needs to be done at parliamentary level.
The employability strategy is a high priority, but I suggest that, because it has just been published, we need to give it some time to bed in before we could add value to it. Obviously, we could undertake an exercise and second guess the strategy and say where we think it might be wrong. That is a possibility, but it seems to be a very wide area and one that will need a fair amount of intensive work. My own inclination is to say that the time to do that will be in about a year from now, by which time the strategy should be starting to produce some results on the ground. In my view, that will be the time for a committee inquiry into the employability strategy.
I would like to develop some variations on a theme. I sense that there are no huge disagreements in principle around the table, but that it is simply a question of how we make it all hang together. On the European structural funds, I certainly think that the proposal to commission research is a good one, but I would like to suggest a slightly different tack for the three other topics.
My own view—and I did not detect anybody round the table who was not arguing for this—is that we should not embark on an inquiry into the creative industries. There is a specific issue about the creation of creative Scotland, and I apologise if I have confused the issue by using the wrong terminology. The board for creative Scotland will be set up by the end of this year. That is the current stated position, as captured in Stephen Herbert's paper. Primary legislation will be required, and I understand that the publication of the draft culture bill is expected this year, although—
It will not be laid formally this year.
That is right. It will not be taken forward until the new parliamentary session.
I remain of the view that there is something—I do not want to be too pushy or prescriptive about what that thing might be—that the committee needs to consider at some point in this parliamentary session, specifically in connection with the creation of creative Scotland as a body, particularly if the draft bill is about to be published and if, de facto, the body has been set up, even if it is not yet enshrined in primary legislation. I absolutely do not think that that work should take the form of what we would recognise as an inquiry. It should be something that literally provides a hearing of the issues and the situation. We can then provide a platform in the Parliament to help the wider public to understand the stage that that significant structural development has reached.
I would treat employability in a similar vein. Richard Baker is right to remind us—I had certainly forgotten—about the previous commitments and our intent. I agree with the convener that we could not possibly do justice to the subject in this session and that we should allow the strategy to bed in, but having one meeting at which we took evidence from the minister and heard an update would be useful. If I remember rightly, the last parliamentary debate on employability took place before the strategy was published. We could make a contribution on that.
All that I will say about sport is that I am with Richard Baker: my mental jury is still out on whether it is possible to undertake a focused piece of work on sport. We cannot separate the in-principle decision from the methodology question, because we need to see that we can make all that knit together in the time that is available, which is a pre-election period.
Do members agree to having one or, at the most, two hearings on creative Scotland, probably early in the new year? That would probably be the right timing, rather than before the end of the year. We could also cover the employability strategy in one or two meetings at which we would hear from the minister and others. That would help to inform the legacy paper on work for the successor committee. Do we agree initially to hold one hearing on the employability strategy, with the potential for a second hearing before Christmas, and to deal with creative Scotland just after the Christmas recess, given that creative Scotland's chairman and board have still to be put in place?
When did you say that we would cover the employability strategy?
I suggested doing it before Christmas, because that strategy has been published.
Do we need to decide today?
No.
Could the clerks develop some of the thoughts that we have shared and produce a further paper?
We can reconsider the matter, but if we agree in principle that we want those two sets of hearings, that will leave us to agree what we want to do on sport. Do most people agree to have hearings on employability and creative Scotland?
I will chuck in a couple of wee points about employability. A couple of important issues that are not directly the Parliament's responsibility affect employability. I would not mind examining aspects of reducing the number of people who receive incapacity benefit, what that does for the employability strategy and how that is built in. I will leave it at that.
On the employability strategy and creative Scotland, the clerks will produce an outline of what we are trying to achieve and who we will invite. We will revise the work programme to reflect the timescale.
I have been talking to members of the Scottish Youth Parliament—as members know, they match our committees. I feel that we do not engage with, encourage or listen to the Scottish Youth Parliament enough. I do not know whether it is possible, but will an opportunity exist for Scottish Youth Parliament members to give their view on the problems of the young unemployed?
I see no reason why not.
I want to check what will happen—
We will come back to sport.
I presume that the time that will be required for the employability and creative Scotland stuff will be scoped. That will give us a clear idea of the time that is left for any further inquiry or any work on sport.
I am just coming to that.
Does everybody agree that it is sensible to invite members of the Scottish Youth Parliament to talk to us about employability? Are members happy with that?
Members indicated agreement.
Do we agree to commission research on the European stuff—that will be an evaluation, not stuff—and to have hearings on the employability strategy and creative Scotland, on which the clerks will prepare a draft proposal in detail?
Members indicated agreement.
That leaves us with sport. Is there general agreement that, of the four options in the scoping paper, doing something on sport 21 is the most logical? That would give us an overview of the situation rather than concentrate on a specific aspect.
I am trying to marry up that idea of having a broad overview with the time that we have available. That is my only concern.
I am coming to my point. To have a full-scale inquiry into the sport 21 strategy would be far too big. Should we conduct hearings on sport 21 along the lines that we have just talked about, because we are not absolutely clear when the strategy will be published?
Would it be easier to decide if we knew our timescale for looking at the sport side? We will know that once we have scoped up the time that is necessary for the employability and creative Scotland work.
We could find out when the strategy is going to be published.
Yes. That would give us a better idea of how much time we have, so we could make an informed decision about how detailed to be.
The strategy is the only document that we are going to have. Otherwise, sport could cover everything from rollerblading to horse riding.
Should we ask the clerks to return next week with a paper reflecting the discussion and the agreement on what we are doing? They now have a better idea of what we think that we should be doing.
Members indicated agreement.
In an inquiry into sport 21, would there be any way of focusing on the cross-cutting issue of obesity? It is in the press so often at the moment, so could it tie in? Is the Health Committee considering that as well?
I suggest that the clerks consider that as part of their paper and that we discuss it next week. Is that agreeable?
Members indicated agreement.
My final point is to say that I agree with Susan Deacon. The legacy paper should not be just a mechanical exercise that we produce just because we have to produce one. We should give some real thought to it. We should also bear in mind that there is no guarantee that there will be an Enterprise and Culture Committee in the next session of Parliament. We have broadly five portfolio responsibilities: enterprise, lifelong learning, sport, tourism and culture. Who knows what committee structure there will be, but the legacy paper should obviously try to cover all five areas. They are the core of our remit.
I also agree with Susan Deacon that we need to leave enough time in January, February and March to produce a legacy paper that is worthy of the name. By that time, we should have all the other work done and dusted. Is everyone happy with that?
Would it be possible for the clerks to extend the timetable and take it through into the spring?
I think that, when we finalise the work programme—ideally next week—we will want to have a clear idea of what we are doing, and roughly when, from now until the end of March. Is everybody happy with that?
Members indicated agreement.
Thank you very much indeed. I look forward to seeing you all next week. [Interruption.] Sorry, I thought that we had finished.