Structural Funds 2007-13 Inquiry
Agenda item 9 is evidence taking on the draft national strategic reference framework and structural funds. Because of the deadline for the consultation on the draft NSRF, our response will have to be agreed at our next meeting. The timescale is tight, so today is our only opportunity to take oral evidence on the framework, although we have received written submissions. The session will also inform our wider inquiry into the delivery of structural funds in Scotland for the period 2007-13, which we will conclude before the summer recess. Members have a briefing paper.
I welcome Jeremy Wyatt, who is the managing director of Hall Aitken, the consultancy firm that the Executive commissioned to produce a report on the delivery of structural funds. A copy of the report, "Making every euro count: Final report on EU Structural Funds administration options for Scotland", is included in members' papers. I invite Jeremy Wyatt to make his opening remarks, after which members will ask questions.
Jeremy Wyatt (Hall Aitken):
I was asked to make a few opening remarks, so I was just going to read the whole report verbatim. [Laughter.] No?
No.
Okay. In that case, I will mention just a couple of points.
I am the managing director of Hall Aitken, which is a social and economic regeneration consultancy that works in Scotland and the rest of the UK. I have been involved with European structural funds for about 20 years, as an applicant, a project deliverer, a manager, an evaluator and a decision maker on various committees. I have spent 20 years trying to get away from structural funds, but I have not succeeded.
Hall Aitken recently completed the interim evaluation of the objective 3 European social fund programme in Scotland and we are working on the ex ante evaluation of the lowland and upland Scotland European programme for the next few years. We have done various pieces of work throughout the UK. We have a reasonable background in the matter, which is one reason why we were asked to complete the report. The aims were to identify options by looking at what happens in other countries and to draw out comparative lessons and consider how they might be applied to Scotland. The report was a fairly limited piece of work. For example, we did not do a detailed cost analysis of how the European structural funds are delivered in the four countries that we considered. We spoke to some people, did a consultation and got a broad impression, but if somebody asks what the value for money is in Germany compared with that in Catalonia and Spain, we do not know, because we did not go into that level of detail.
With that caveat, I will point out the headline issues that we found in examining the four countries, which were Spain, Germany, Ireland and England. We found that the countries deliver the European structural funds in many different ways. In most cases, greater alignment exists here between the way in which the funds are spent and what the Government in the country is doing. The system is a bureaucratic nightmare everywhere and incredibly costly—nobody seems to have found their way out of that. Some countries deliver to national priorities; others deliver more locally, which is seen as good. In some places, the Scottish model is seen as desirable because it is locally responsive. However, it is difficult to determine which system delivers the greatest bang for the buck.
On the basis of our consultations in other countries and in Scotland, we developed a set of criteria that we felt should underpin how the system works in the future. The report includes 10 criteria, but I will highlight three of them—two because I think that they are particularly important and one because I want us to be clear about it. One of the criteria is that funds should be directed where they will make the most difference, which means considering economic need, economic opportunity and delivery capacity and quality—the ability of an organisation to deliver a programme. That is set against the current system, which many people perceive as one in which funding is delivered to people who are good at writing funding applications. The second issue is the general perception that the balance in the current set-up is towards selecting projects rather than delivering effective projects. Thirdly, I want to highlight the concept of horizontal themes. At present, all projects that are funded must take into account certain issues such as equality and sustainable development. Some people highlighted that as an across-the-board major benefit that is worth maintaining.
I will touch on two more issues before I answer questions. Our fundamental conclusion about what should change in Scotland is that the decisions on strategic issues—about where large blocks of money will go—should be separated from the decisions on project issues. At present, all projects go into a great big pot and decisions on them are made at the same level. Whatever the mechanism, a two-tier decision-making process in which funds are first directed strategically and decisions are then made about which projects to give them to would be better. There are many ways of doing that, some of which we have suggested.
The second point that I want to highlight is particularly important, given that it is now May and that the current programme will finish at the end of 2006 and the programme that we are considering starts in 2007. Many people are doing lots of work and have jobs that relate to the funds, so effective implementation is important and it is critical that decisions are made as early as possible. The history of funding in Scotland and the UK is often that new things are introduced, there are gaps and then there are two years of messing about during which a lot of impact is lost. Money might be lost, but usually it is spent to much less benefit than it could be. That is an important issue.
Good afternoon, Jeremy. I should explain that, about 12 years ago, Mr Wyatt was the chief executive of a local economic development company in Glasgow of which I was the chair. We did much good work together, including the spending of lots of European structural funds.
In the past 20 years, around £1 billion in European structural funds has been spent in the west of Scotland. You will appreciate why structural funds are an important issue for members of the Scottish Parliament. You highlighted three of your 10 criteria; I will point to some of the others. Number 1 is the minimising of administration—I presume, on the grounds of cost and efficiency. Number 5 is better integration with other activities. I link that to the delivery of structural funds and the link between delivery of the same with the Executive's priorities.
Related to that is the issue of co-financing. If we look at the delivery landscape in recent times, we see the emergence of community planning structures covering the whole country. In the urban areas and city regions, we see the advent of the city growth fund and metropolitan strategies. Do you see any merit, potential or feasibility in linking those, in the future, for the management of structural funds?
In simple terms, yes. We suggested that it would not be appropriate to develop a specific proposal or even options for the delivery of funds until prioritisation of what the funds were to be spent on was at least somewhat more advanced. I have alluded to the concept of decisions being made at two levels. First, at the strategic level, a package of funding might be agreed to meet strategic objectives for a city region, a community planning area or a thematic issue. Secondly, within that, the funds should be allocated to specific projects. That concept fits exactly with what you described. The priorities are a matter for the Parliament and the Executive.
I go along with that. I do not know whether you are aware that what you have just described is the way in which the city growth fund in the Glasgow city region has been spent in the Clyde valley across eight local authority areas since it was created. In effect, the politicians establish the ground rules, the pot of money is there, and people know that their project ideas must have a cross-boundary benefit. It is a lean, mean machine in the sense that existing officials of the local authorities, the enterprise network and other partners come forward with their ideas within a strategic framework for which there is considerable political backing and accountability.
I confess that I am not particularly familiar with that, but what you are talking about sounds like the sort of structure that we think would be appropriate.
Do you have any other views on what the Executive calls co-financing? What other funding streams, for example, might lend themselves to leverage? As you know, one of the great potentials of structural funds in the past has been the ability for them to be put alongside a cocktail of other funding streams to create bigger and better projects.
We were asked to consider the co-financing issue specifically. Co-financing is an arrangement that, in England, applies only to the European social fund, although I have heard that it might be extended to cover the European regional development fund as well.
In essence, pots of money are given to second-tier organisations such as the Learning and Skills Council and Jobcentre Plus and people apply to them for funding. That means that they get 100 per cent funding that is made up of money from Europe and money from the Learning and Skills Council or Jobcentre Plus.
For some fairly basic reasons, we concluded that the English co-financing model was not applicable to Scotland. First, there is no structure of learning and skills councils in Scotland. The Scottish Executive structure differs significantly from that. For example, further education funding in England is controlled by the Learning and Skills Council whereas in Scotland it is controlled by the Scottish Funding Council. Further, the Jobcentre Plus network is not part of the Scottish Parliament's business. Those are fairly important reasons.
The principle that was being followed in England concerned devolving decision making from the regional Government offices to local bodies and attempting to make more strategic decisions about packages of funding that were then distributed in a way that was not dissimilar to what you describe. There are lessons to learn from that co-financing structure, but it is not a model that can simply be transferred.
Being grilled by Charlie Gordon must take you back a bit, Jeremy.
He never used to grill me in public.
The Department of Trade and Industry consultation document makes specific reference to a strategy for regional economic growth in Scotland, a strategy for the convergence objective in Scotland and a strategy for the competitiveness and employment objective in Scotland. However, I see no reference to a strategy for the co-operation objective in Scotland. Is that a significant omission?
You are asking me about the planning of the fund rather than its management. I could comment on that, but we have not covered it in our report.
Scotland did not seem to get greatly involved in the current Interreg programmes, which are due to end at the end of this year. From your experience, do you think that there is scope for Scotland to get involved in the co-operation objective to a greater extent, particularly with regard to co-operation with the Republic of Ireland and, possibly, Northern Ireland?
I cannot comment on the amount of involvement or on whether Scotland could be doing more. I can say that I have been involved in examining various co-operation programmes and schemes and I know of projects and organisations in Scotland and across the UK that are doing that. That is a valuable thing to do and perhaps Scotland could be doing more of it. However, as I said, we did not tackle that in this research report and it is probably the aspect of the funds that I am least familiar with.
Did you not tackle it because the Scottish Executive did not ask you to tackle it?
It was not part of the brief, which was to consider the management of the European social fund and the European regional development fund in Scotland. The co-operation objective and the transnational programmes are managed outwith that area.
Thank you for coming to give evidence to us today, Jeremy. I guess that our objective, in the end, is to get the best value that we can from European funding, and to secure real and measurable improvements in people's quality of life. That is what this is all about.
I am finding it difficult to get all of this into my head. We might have the strategic framework, which can be set by the Executive, along with a platform that is delivered through organisations such as those that Charlie Gordon was talking about, including local partnerships, community planning organisations and local authorities, but how are we going to make the link between the framework position of the Executive and the delivery platform? How are we going to ensure that the Executive's aims and objectives are met and that the targets that it is setting are deliverable?
Beyond that, there is the even more difficult issue of quality deliveries, which is referred to in your report. How are we to measure—for real, for once—the actual impact that the funds have on people's lives? To what extent do they lift people out of poverty? How do they help to improve people's quality of life? How on earth can we do a better job in future of examining what the real outputs are? If we do not do that, we will never get a real handle on whether we are spending the money properly and getting the best out of it.
I agree that those are key questions. Drawing from other work that we have done, although people assume that consultants are only in it for the money—I wish that we were—the reality is that we care a lot about what happens with the funds. When we get involved in studies, we get frustrated about the impact of funding, and we find it difficult—for all sorts of reasons—to pin down what has really happened and to ascertain whether there is any tangible, identifiable benefit.
We think that there is now a massive emphasis on people winning funding. That is where all the focus goes. Taking things right down to the organisations that apply for funding, the most senior, capable people with the most experience and expertise in many of the organisations that secure European funding are there to get the funding applications together. When I worked with and for Charlie Gordon, I filled in European social fund applications. I ran the organisation, and that was the biggest part of my job. As long as I got the money in, other people could get on with doing things.
When I subsequently worked in the private sector for a large retail company, I realised that I had never got my hands dirty to such an extent before, and that I had never been so involved in the quality of delivery. Previously, I spent all my time filling out applications. This is a key issue. We felt from our research that the missing bit was a tier that is not part of the overall decision making under which responsibility is taken for agreeing that the organisation will meet targets and outcomes at an area or thematic level—meaning real impact, not just bums on seats—but which focuses on the quality of delivery, rather than on the quality of applications. That is why we concluded that a different approach should be taken from that of simply putting all the applications through the various processes.
I will describe what actually happens in those application processes. There are funding deadlines, and there are people who sit round in rooms with piles of application forms, trying to read through them all and make some sort of decision. It would be unfair to say that that is it, but that is where a lot of the focus goes. If the focus was less on having lots of administration and bureaucracy and more on accountability, quality of delivery and managing, more value for money would be achieved.
That gives us some useful areas to discuss with the Executive's representatives when they come before us. You are effectively telling us that we should change the process from being a cash hunt, which is what it has turned into, into being a process in which those who are successful and who have been securing the funds are asked up front what the expected outcomes are and how they can be measured. There also needs to be a link between what the Executive is doing and actual delivery.
Yes. To be clear, people are asked what they are going to deliver and they are held accountable for that, but it is a micromanaged process and the administration system ends up looking at the detail rather than the bigger picture.
That is useful. Thank you.
Before I come to my questions, I want to pick up on a point that Jeremy Wyatt made in an answer to Charlie Gordon. You talked about co-financing and gave as examples the Learning and Skills Council—that example does not apply in Scotland—and Jobcentre Plus, which is a reserved institution. Do you think that Scotland is missing out? Would there be benefits if some of the funding that is allocated to the Scottish Executive was used in partnership with, for example, Jobcentre Plus? We should not allow constitutional arrangements to get in the way of money being used as effectively as possible. In your experience, is there anything that we can do that is at least worth examining?
In principle, the answer must be yes. To be honest, the difficulty is that, if we take away the institutional issues and ask whether something works and what benefits it brings, it will take a little longer before we get the answer. There is a significant body of opinion—a particularly articulate body of opinion in the community and voluntary sector—that co-financing in England has been damaging and has led to poorer performance. There is an equally strong, if not stronger, body of opinion in Government offices and Whitehall that co-financing has streamlined things and brought greater strategic focus. The jury is still out on that.
We could devolve strategic pots of money to agencies or partnerships in Scotland, which would then put together matched money and give it out to projects. However, it would be a bit strange if we did that because there is a significant agency that puts in money at the moment—Jobcentre Plus—and such a process would be outside that system.
That point is worth pursuing.
May I intervene on that point? I saw Jeremy Wyatt speaking to some people at a stakeholder meeting in Glasgow. I remember that there seemed to be a bit of unrest among some folk because it had been shown in England that it was more expensive to go down the co-financing route, as a higher percentage of the award was used on administration. However, I did not get the full picture on how true that is. Will you comment on that?
It is extremely difficult to pin down the administration costs in European funds, but they are appallingly bureaucratic. My wry observation is that we in the UK probably obey every little regulation that comes out of Europe to an extent that other countries do not. We suffer for that.
I suspect that this is an apocryphal tale, but I vividly remember a European auditor telling me that his colleague had seen a bridge in Italy. The bridge that he had seen had been prompted by a nudge in the ribs in the car: "There is the bridge." He said, "Oh, yes. There is the bridge." I am not sure whether such things happen, but I think that we probably overengineer sometimes.
In England, the administration burden seems to have been shifted from some small voluntary organisations, but it has been given to the Learning and Skills Council, which previously did not do that work. It spent two years learning how to do it, and during that period the work cost a lot more. Our conclusion was that it is an administrative nightmare and that it is pretty costly. The process could be improved, but in many cases that would involve choices about systems that do not exist in Scotland.
I want to return to what you said about the separation between strategic issues and project issues. Is there another, higher layer? For example, if we go down the road of horizontal themes, at what level should they be determined? Is that a matter for ministers? A question that is of fundamental importance to the uplands and lowlands is whether the distribution should be geographical or horizontal. You say in your report that under the current arrangements there are differences between regions within the uplands and lowlands.
You raise several issues. The horizontal themes are determined largely by Europe. The extent to which they are emphasised is more of a national—and, indeed, regional—issue.
Some new guidance has just come out on geographical targeting. I was looking at it this morning and my reading of it is that there is a desire for the plans for the future programmes that are being put together in Scotland and the UK to pay attention to the need to address disparities within regions. After all, the whole point of structural funds is to address disparities within Europe. I think that what is being said is that the geographical issue is important, but I stress that that is only my interpretation; as the committee will be aware, if one has read a European paper only 10 times, one will not have managed to understand it.
Lowland and upland Scotland have had a very poor experience with the geographical allocation of funds under the present programme's European social fund. In the Highlands, such allocation has been much more successful. There is a table of allocations to different geographical areas, and that approach tends to work. However, that was not the case in lowland and upland Scotland. After a while, the programmes become driven by the need to spend. Particular amounts of money have to be spent on specific objectives. The strategic focus moves from doing the right things to the best quality to spending all the budgets.
In that regard, geographical targeting presents a risk. In the past, it has been a passive process. Once an area has received some money, people have applied for it. What will happen now is that a strategic agreement will have to be reached on how an allocation will be made, which will then be implemented.
There will probably be less change in the Highlands and Islands than in other parts of Scotland. From your inquiries, do you think that because that is the case, the area should carry on as before or does the opportunity exist for a fundamental rethink of how structural funds are spent in the Highlands and Islands?
Funding in the Highlands and Islands will be reduced to between 60 and 70 per cent of current levels. That is a considerably smaller drop than the reduction to between 40 and 45 per cent of current levels in lowland and upland Scotland. There is always an opportunity to consider making improvements. It is probably the case that more features of the system that are to do with adopting a more strategic focus have emerged informally in the Highlands than in the lowlands. It may be a matter of developing that approach and crystallising it rather than engaging in wholesale change. In principle, the idea of making more strategic decisions about lumps of money rather than attempting to go through a great bunch of applications on a table is a good thing.
I want to stay with the geographical theme, but to come at it from a different angle. I have long experience of approaching structural funding as a frustrated onlooker because I represent a constituency that has not had any access to it—apart from some reshare funding and, more recently, a bit of LEADER + funding—because the area is perceived to be relatively prosperous. However, some things that logically should have happened in East Lothian have been attracted elsewhere because of incentives that were offered for funding to go to areas that were perceived as being more depressed.
You will know that there are pockets of social deprivation and economic depression everywhere—even in the city of Edinburgh. What can we do to address such needs using the present funding package, which will offer less funding? Can we take a sectoral approach? Is there any hope of accessing funding through the revised programme so that we can deal with the pockets of difficulty in areas that look, superficially, as if they are relatively well-off?
I suggest that that is a strategic issue for the overall programme. I will comment on it, but I want to make it clear that we were considering the management and delivery of funds rather than where the funds should be targeted and what should be done with them. The place to address such questions is within the current planning process.
With less funding, there is even more of a drive to ensure that you get the best value for money. Wearing my hat as someone who works on the ex ante evaluation of the programme, I would say that we would be looking for justification in the programme and an analysis that said, "This is where the need is and this is why prioritisation decisions are being made." I cannot say, "That means that money should go to East Lothian," but money and interventions should address the combination of need and opportunity in such a way as to make the most difference. That is what it should come down to. In principle, that is how each programme is supposed to be put together, but, in practice, there is always a certain amount of politicking, which is entirely outwith the scope of any economic consultant.
Yes—we have been there already today.
I have listened carefully to everything that has been said. My impression is that, particularly with regard to the United Kingdom, European Union structural funds are not achieving all that they could. Much seems to be lost in bureaucracy and administration. Is that correct?
It is, yes. But—
I am very happy with that answer.
But could I just add a caveat?
Yeah, okay.
Some of the money goes in fees to consultants, which is always very well spent.
That says it all.
I have looked through your report and read about practices in some other countries. Although I am much in favour of power being passed to the people as far as it can be, it seems to me that the best results from structural funds have come when major Government programmes, aimed at gaining overall economic benefits, have been imposed. That is how to achieve best value from structural funds.
It is probably unarguable that, if structural funds are attached early on to large-scale Government interventions at national and regional level, the cost of separate administrative burdens must be significantly reduced. As I said, we did not investigate that—but I think that that is a reasonable assumption. The question then is not whether interventions are cheaper to administer, but whether they necessarily achieve best value for money.
We could easily spend 20 per cent of the funds on administering something and get from the other 80 per cent twice as much value as we would get from something that is cheap to administer but is not well directed. The argument that many people who currently use European funding will make is that the money funds activity that would not be funded through large-scale Government interventions and that it tackles specific local issues by helping local partnerships to lever in other money and develop new interventions.
Both arguments have merit. Given that we were not paid incredible amounts of money—only other sorts of consultancy get paid such amounts—we were not able to consider that in depth. That is a job for the big accountancy firms. The two cases are strong and you should not dismiss the idea that there might be a benefit in the additional cost of administration in that it might allow different sorts of things to happen.
I take that point. I want to consider the whole structure of EU structural funding. During the UK presidency, in the discussions on the EU budget, a line came from the UK Government that perhaps EU structural funds should be used to address the requirements of the new entrants to the EU and that overall budget contributions could be dropped, with national Governments picking up national requirements for structural fund areas on their own merits. Do you think that that would have worked well? Would that have been preferable to a situation in which nations of Europe know that they have to argue for a little bit from the pot to which they are net contributors in any case?
Was that covered in your report, Jeremy?
If it was not, it should have been.
I was just thinking that many of my neighbours in Ayrshire share that view. That is outwith the scope of the report and is probably outwith the scope of our consultancy. My personal view is that it would probably not work, but I cannot really comment.
That question was raised at the our voice in Europe forum. The youngsters at the forum said unanimously that if the new entrants were poorer than we are and needed the money, it would be selfish of us to insist on getting some. I thought that that was an interesting view from the younger generation. You should have been there, Phil.
I should have been allowed to participate.
You said in your opening remarks that when we shift to a new system there is always a danger of a hiatus; time and the opportunity to use money effectively might be lost. I declare an interest in that I used to have a ministerial responsibility for structural funds. One of the messages that we tried to get across to stakeholders when we were not sure what the outcome would be was to keep going and to keep producing the projects. It might be natural to expect work to come to a standstill when people are not sure what will follow. Has there been reasonable continuity and has momentum been maintained?
That has been the case until now. European funding has gone through a series of crises. Not all that long ago, people thought that there would be no structural funding for the UK this time round. To a certain extent, people just continue; they do not believe that anything will change, despite the fact that it is now clear that only 45 per cent of the money will be available.
Set against that, the structures are beginning to crumble. We do a lot of evaluation of programmes, look right down at projects and work with people in local areas. If members do not mind my saying so, my general view is that politicians and civil servants have an insufficient appreciation of the fact that effective quality implementation is achieved by well-managed, skilled people who have some idea of what will happen tomorrow, and by planning. One reason why European funds have less impact than they could have is that many people work hand to mouth on a year-to-year basis. As I have said, in the past there has been a two-year hiatus in which no one has really known what is going on, things have changed and so on. At the moment, structures in which programme management executives have staff with long experience of delivering programmes are beginning to disintegrate. The other day, I was at a conference that was organised by somebody who said to it, "Thanks, but I'm off into consultancy now." That was in the South of Scotland programme management executive area. Unless decisions that introduce some certainty are made in the relatively near future, members will find that the delivery mechanisms will begin to disintegrate, which is an important issue.
You mentioned effective quality implementation. Can that be achieved by turning the Highlands and Islands and the lowlands and uplands programmes from two into four programmes, because of the two different strands? Would doing that promote effective management and delivery?
The structures are less important than how the process is managed within those structures. Many people are arguing that there should be six programmes rather than two and so on. All our consultations were coloured by the interests of those who responded—indeed, if their names were taken off the responses, it would not be difficult to spot who said what. People look after themselves to a certain extent, but the interests of different people and different groups can be accounted for within different structures. That is not really the issue—the issue is more about teasing out the difference between strategic and project decision making and introducing some continuity into the process, as I said. Existing programmes could be merged relatively easily, but that would be difficult in six months' time.
Did somebody say something? I think that I heard noises of appreciation.
I thank you for your honesty and the quality of your responses, which are much appreciated.
Thank you for inviting me.
You should not be surprised that people are honest, convener.
I will not respond to that because I am aware that the official reporters are writing it down.
I ask members to return to page 1 of paper EU/S2/06/7/10, on the national strategic reference framework inquiry, which was put together by Nick Hawthorne. Obviously, we must agree a response to the consultation at our next meeting. The clerks need a steer. [Interruption.] I excuse Mr Gallie for not turning off his mobile phone.
I went out and put on my phone, but forgot to turn it off. I apologise.
I should think so too.
The clerks need a steer on whether the six questions that have been selected are appropriate so that we can respond to the national strategic reference framework—NSRF—consultation. I think that there are 12 questions in the paper. Six questions were picked that we think can best be answered from a Scottish perspective.
If you have all found the questions we will run through them quickly. The first is a general question, and it is followed by one about priorities for convergence and competitive programmes. The third question is about the Lisbon agenda, which the committee has been following quite closely. Fourth is a question on future programmes and, from what we have heard from Jeremy Wyatt, that is obviously very important. The fifth question is about improvement in co-ordination and the final one is about single-stream funding mechanisms and whether they would benefit Scotland.
Am I right in thinking that the inquiry is in two parts? The initial part is where we respond to the NSRF.
Yes. At our next meeting, we have to agree our response to the NSRF consultation. We will then conduct our structural funds and implementation in Scotland inquiry separately from that.
I suppose that there is another question.
No doubt there is.
Are EU structural funds still acquired on a universal merit basis? Is that part of the inquiry?
If I am right, those questions were asked by the DTI report that we are picking up on.
Yes, but the DTI does not always get it right. It just seems to be such a fundamental question. We have heard evidence today that suggests that we could query that.
I hate to bring logistics into the discussion, but our clerks have to prepare a response for our discussion and agreement at the next meeting.
Phil Gallie's question is a good one, but perhaps it was more relevant to the committee's previous inquiry on structural funds. The point is that we have the structural funds and are now more concerned about how they are going to be used. We might wait until 2010 for another opportunity to consider that. The question is about how rather than whether.
Implementation is the important issue for the moment.
It is obviously difficult for the clerks. We have not had a full discussion of the issues because time constraints have not allowed it. I suggest that I get together with the clerks fairly soon, and with anyone else who would care to join me. Charlie, I would appreciate it if you would come in on this because you are very knowledgeable and have been on both sides of the structural funding role.
You do realise that that will go into the Official Report?
What will? The fact that I think that you are quite good?
It might harm my prospects.
Would you like me to say more?
I will second you convener. That will really sink him.
I am happy with the selection of questions proposed by the clerks.
Yes, but we have to answer those questions, Mr Gordon.
I suggest that I and Charlie Gordon hold a very short meeting with the clerks to give our views on what the committee would expect the responses to the questions to be. That can then be fired around all the committee members for general agreement on the themes. A draft will then be brought to the next meeting.
Why are you smiling so widely, Mr Gallie?
I was just wondering whether we could have a vote on the questions.
The deputy convener is not here. Perhaps she ought to be considered.
I do not want to be awkward but there are two further questions that might be relevant to Scotland. Question 6 of the DTI's consultation is:
"Do respondents agree that the UK's Competitiveness allocation should be divided equally between the ERDF and the ESF at the UK level?"
That could have implications for Scotland. Question 7 of that consultation is:
"What are respondents' views on how best to allocate ERDF Competitiveness funding across the UK's regions?"
I do not want to expand the amount of work that has to be done, but both questions have some relevance.
Do I have the committee's agreement that a couple of us can go away and come up with a framework, then circulate it to members with a deadline?
Members indicated agreement.
I suggest that you should take informal soundings from other members, convener.
Okay. That is agreed. It gives us something to work with.
Our next meeting is on 23 May at 2 o'clock when we will continue taking evidence on structural funds.
Meeting closed at 16:55.