European Committee,

Meeting date: Tuesday, May 7, 2002

Official Report 258KB pdf

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Future of Europe (Scottish Parliamentary Forum)

Item 4 concerns the idea of holding an autumn conference on the future of Europe, which would link with everything that we have talked about this afternoon. Members will recall that we asked the clerks to develop that idea and to bring proposals to the committee. We have a helpful paper that develops matters. I would be happy to hear members' comments. Otherwise, we can agree to the report and look forward to convening that forum in the autumn.

Sarah Boyack talked about this issue—is there scope for widening the forum? The paper says that we do not want to see just the usual suspects. If we make the scope too narrow, we will hear from only the usual suspects. If we included enlargement and the future of how Europe makes it decisions, we might have more participation and the forum might appeal to different people and different ages.

I agree that we should not have only the usual suspects. I would like us to involve more young people in the debate. The future of Europe debate arises from the enlargement process—those matters are intrinsically linked. However, I do not know whether I want to call it a forum on the future of Europe and enlargement.

If we are not to have the usual suspects and are to involve ordinary people, the funding of attendance is important. If we want representative people from our communities, such as somebody from the women's institute, somebody from the playgroup movement or a local farmer—people who would not normally become involved in such an event because it would never occur to them to attend one—we will have to pay their expenses.

That is a good point. We are considering a bid for civic participation money, which I believe is available.

The idea in paragraph 22 is exciting. We could identify the people who would—if they were given the chance—be interested in participating in such a debate, rather than leave it to a high-level discussion. Everything in Europe pushes us to such involvement. We should bring in ordinary people who have views on Europe to have a proper discussion with us. I like the idea of inviting constituents to the event.

I will leave a question about paragraph 26. If we are trying to open up discussion and have a wider debate about Europe, it could be argued that having something like a discussion under the Chatham House rule—which allows people to speak off the record—would do the opposite. However, it could also be argued that if discussions were hyped up and leaked, they would receive huge press coverage. I am thinking through what we are trying to do. Giving people extra political space to have discussions without everything being quoted verbatim can be useful, but the forum aims to make the discussion wider and obtain wide community, media and civic Scotland coverage and engagement. That is an issue to think about.

I agree. There can be a parallel debate—that is almost inevitable—in which the usual suspects will probably be involved.

We do not need to exclude any of those suggestions. I agree with Sarah Boyack, but we should consider going out more into communities, rather than having everyone come to Edinburgh. There will be many reasons why people cannot come to Edinburgh. Perhaps we ought to think about going to places such as Inverness. We could take advantage of the Parliament's going to Aberdeen and have a wider forum event there—although that might be too late to organise—or have an event down in the Borders. We should promote Europe as part of our job. We should listen to people's concerns about it, engage with them and contrive ways in which we can work in a more positive way and share information about Europe. The proposal to have the forum is first class as a first step, but we should also consider going around communities.

I can share the Health and Community Care Committee's experience in respect of the community care inquiry—Ben Wallace will be aware of what happened. We took the bulk of the evidence in Edinburgh, but individual members or small groups of members went out into local communities and held small meetings during the recess. That worked well. Members were tasked with taking information back to the full committee. Members acted almost as mini-rapporteurs. If members are willing to do that, there might be an opportunity to do so during the recess, particularly in their own areas.

That is a good idea. Even those of us who represent seats in Edinburgh have found that people can still be put off from coming to the Parliament. We should get into people's communities because they can talk there. We should go directly to people rather than have them always come to us.

The issue relates to comfort zones—people are more comfortable in their areas and communities. The Parliament represents officialdom, bureaucracy and other off-putting factors. It would be useful to think about that.

Members of the Health and Community Care Committee went out in communities and invited representatives from forums of the elderly and all kinds of local community groups. That approach works well, but it depends on local members taking on a rapporteurship for a local area. Members of the Health and Community Care Committee were willing to do that and the community care consultation exercise was promoted in communities, which was important.

I want to pick up some threads from today's discussion. Community involvement exercises are good. John Home Robertson mentioned Europe not being too visible in his constituency, as a result of funding issues. However, there are European funding logos everywhere in the Highlands and Islands, as Christine May said. Perhaps we should prioritise areas that have not had the same direct benefits from Europe, in order to try to promote pro-Europeanism.

In the Health and Community Care Committee, members were asked to take a geographic area, organise a couple of meetings in that area and assume responsibility for reporting back to the full committee. Perhaps we could do the same during the recess. That would be another way of taking the debate and the consultation out to communities.

Was the consultation conducted on a semi-structured basis? Was there a set of questions?

Yes. We had a set of questions and we reported back to the committee.

I want to caution that, like it or not, Europe is a politically charged issue. The committee is not big enough to go across the regions. I am a Conservative and Nora Radcliffe is a Liberal Democrat and I am sure that we could raise a number of people to come to see us—our parties are dominant in the rural areas of the north-east. However, would we get enough people involved in the process?

I agree that it is right to have a forum. Perhaps the committee should meet outside the Parliament from time to time and have a public forum after a short, structured meeting. We meet on a Tuesday, so it would be possible to make a day of it. Perhaps we should have a convention. When Hugh Henry was the European Committee convener, he raised that idea. The cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on cancer found a sponsor whose funding enabled it to hold an event in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, to which 300 people turned up. It would not be too difficult for the European Committee to do a similar thing. Perhaps we could get a private sponsor—I am sure that companies such as BT and other companies that are trying to project a European image and expand into the east might want to sponsor an event.

If we have a conference, we will need a certain number of people to create a dynamic. Of course, we might decide that we want a simple forum.

The two are not mutually exclusive. I would envisage holding the forum in the autumn, as is proposed in the report. I would like each member to go—on a voluntary basis—to one or two communities during the summer recess at a time of their choice to invite community groups to give evidence to a forum that would be similar to the one that the Health and Community Care Committee convened. As I said, we would work on a voluntary basis. A group of two or three MSPs who were available on a certain day could go to an area that was geographically close to them, for example. We can think about that.

There is a lot of merit in the ideas that are expressed in the paper, particularly paragraph 19, which refers to a sponsored day-long event in the chamber. We would need to ensure that the invitations were as open as possible and that we got a fair cross-section of people from various walks of life who have a variety of views on the future of Europe. That will allow cross-fertilisation of ideas and so on. It is more appropriate that the Parliament sponsor such an event rather than the Executive, which is suggested earlier in the paper. The Parliament has a duty to monitor the work of the Scottish Executive and, at times, to encourage criticism of it. People might feel restricted or reserved if the event was organised by the Executive.

If we deal with all the business in a plenary session, some people might feel a bit shy or reluctant to express themselves. It might be a good idea, if we get a good response, to split up into workshops that would deal with various subjects: one might deal with business opportunities in an enlarged Europe; another might deal with the governance of Europe; another might deal with human rights; and so on. A member of the committee could act as a rapporteur for each workshop and report back to a plenary session later in the afternoon.

The format of the event would depend on the number of people who wanted to attend and what their interests were.

The idea of having parallel working groups is a good one.

Do we agree to ask the clerks to progress some of the ideas and expand the concept of the convention further to examine the possibility of linking with local communities and adding in a couple of working groups?

Members indicated agreement.