Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee, 06 Mar 2002

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 6, 2002

Official Report 170KB pdf

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Scottish Parliament Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee Wednesday 6 March 2002 (Morning)

[The Convener opened the meeting at 10:03]

We now have a committee member from every political party represented on the committee here so I feel that we can make a start. There is a rail strike today, which may have affected the time scale for people getting here, but we have to start the meeting regardless of whether everybody is here.

Given that this is the first public meeting of the committee since Elaine Thomson resigned as a committee member, I reiterate what we said at a private meeting of the committee. Elaine Thomson was one of the original members of the committee and the work that she did was extremely helpful. She made an enormous contribution and we want to place that on public record. She has been promoted to an MPA, which is a minister's personal assistant. Given that Elaine will be responsible for assisting Wendy Alexander, the minister whom we shadow, under the rules she is not allowed to serve on the committee and will be replaced by another Labour member, I hope sooner rather than later.

I welcome to the Scottish Parliament the delegation from Slovakia. We have two members of the Slovak Parliament with us this morning. They are here to see how we do things and I hope that we can have a return visit to see how they do things.