European and External Relations Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, December 13, 2012

Official Report 371KB pdf

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Balance of Competencies

Agenda item 4 is consideration of the clerk’s paper on the balance of competencies. Ian Duncan will give us some insight into that and what it means for the committee, and we will then take comments and questions.

As you will probably be aware, earlier this year the UK Government declared its intention to re-examine the balance of competencies between the UK and the EU with the purpose of ensuring that laws are made in the right place. The approach that the UK Government has decided to take is comprehensive and it will take two full years to complete. The annex to the paper sets out all the areas that will be explored, which include every single competence. As you can appreciate, it is a big task.

In the first semester, the UK Government will look at what I would contend are broadly reserved issues—sorry, there was a missing page in the paper, so you may have been given an extra page—such as the internal market, taxation, animal health and so on. However, you will find that every single area that the Scottish Government covers is also touched upon.

Given that the review is a big task, I suggest that we first ask the Scottish Government how it intends to approach the issue, so that we can get a feel for how it intends to tackle it. We should also alert the subject committees to the review because it will impact on each of them in specific ways. Once we get a response from the Scottish Government, I think that we should come back and look at how best to take the matter forward.

I will give some examples of the areas of competence that are being considered. There has been a lot of discussion on whether the competence for fisheries should lie more with Scotland or with the EU. On immigration and asylum, as Hanzala Malik has said, the EU might have greater competence than the domestic authorities. There are tensions pulling in both directions. However, I think that the first stage is to get an appreciation of where the Scottish Government stands on the review. We can then decide on the best course of action for this committee and the subject committees.

10:15

We can see how comprehensive the review is and how detailed a piece of work it could be. At the previous meeting of the European Chairs-United Kingdom group, we had a brief discussion on the matter with the House of Lords European Union Committee chairman, Lord Boswell, who has some grave concerns about the process. I hope that we can work with the other devolved European committees in Wales and Northern Ireland and consider making a joint submission to the House of Lords inquiry to ensure that the devolved nature of different areas of legislation—given that Scots law has always maintained its independence in that respect—is at least recognised. I do not think that the initial approach to the balance of competencies between the UK Government and Brussels included recognition that the law in Scotland is slightly different and should therefore be approached differently.

Do members have any comments or questions?

I was going to ask whether we will get the results of the review as they come along, given that it is a work in progress and it will obviously take a long time. However, I note that the paper states:

“reports on areas of competence will be published as the review progresses”.

Presumably, we will learn about it a bit like a story that has chapters. I imagine that we will look forward to the next instalment.

Absolutely.

Is the committee content to write to the Scottish Government to seek an update on its approach; to alert the subject committees to the review, the schedule and its implications; and to consider our approach once we have done that?

Members indicated agreement.

We will now move on to agenda item 5—

Sorry. Can I just ask whether the order in which the areas of competence are being considered is completely arbitrary? I see that fisheries is quite close to the end, whereas taxation is right at the beginning.

I do not think that the order is arbitrary, but I could not necessarily tell you why that order has been chosen.

The list is certainly not in alphabetical order.

It is not in alphabetical order and it does not seem to depend on the value of the area of competence. The broader and more important areas, which are mostly reserved, seem to be set out at the beginning. For example, the internal market and taxation are important areas. There must be a reason for the order, but I am afraid that I do not know what it is.

I just wondered.

We can ask.

Yes, we can ask about that.

If members are happy, we will move on to agenda item 5, which we agreed to take in private. I thank all members of the public and ask for the public gallery to be cleared.

10:18 Meeting continued in private until 10:41.