Environment and Rural Development Committee, 14 Jan 2004

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Official Report 251KB pdf

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Work Programme

Item 3 is consideration of the committee's work programme. We have a number of issues to consider in planning our work programme between now and the summer. I circulated a report, which you have all had a chance to explore. I will take you through the recommendations in my report, and ensure that you are all happy with them. It is important that they are approved properly, so that people can see our programme for the coming months.

First, I ask you to note the likely time scales for undertaking our work on Executive legislation, and particularly focus on the fact that we will start stage 2 consideration of the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Bill on 28 January. I estimate that it will take us four to five sessions to complete that work.

Secondly, can we agree to seek an informal briefing from the Scottish Executive and Scottish Water officials before we start formal stage 1 scrutiny of the forthcoming Water Services (Scotland) Bill?

Members indicated agreement.

I ask you to note the likely time commitments that will arise from the referral of other business, such as subordinate legislation. I draw your attention to the clerks' estimate that we will have about 50 pieces of legislation to deal with over the next few weeks. I also ask you to note the time commitments arising from budget scrutiny, the programming of European matters with the minister, and petitions.

I recommend that we receive an oral briefing from the consultants who are in charge of our sustainable development research, once their interim report is available, so that we can see how work is progressing.

Members indicated agreement.

We now know that the UK Energy Bill, which will come to the Parliament under a Sewel motion, will be considered by the Enterprise and Culture Committee. I suggest that we appoint a reporter to that committee to report to us. Evidence will be taken on 27 January, so we should have a verbal report on 28 January. I suggest that we circulate a briefing paper from the Scottish Parliament information centre and invite members to give me questions, which I will pass on to our reporter. The reporter could take up issues with the Enterprise and Culture Committee and come back to us the next day. We want to ensure that we scrutinise the bill, particularly any issues relating to our environmental responsibilities, SEPA, Dounreay and nuclear power stations. I propose Rob Gibson as our reporter. We will ensure that members feed questions to me and I will pass them on to him. Do members agree to that proposal?

I do not challenge it, unless Rob Gibson has a heart attack. However, the proposal would not preclude any of the rest of us from attending the meeting.

Absolutely not. I might go along myself, but we need somebody to have the job of articulating our questions and providing a formal report to the committee the next day.

Is the meeting in the morning?

The Enterprise and Culture Committee meeting is in the afternoon. I hasten to add that I expect the next day's report to be an oral report—I would be most surprised if you provided a written report. The key issue is that you should report back 24 hours later—that would be helpful. The committee can then progress matters. Do members agree to that proposal?

Members indicated agreement.

Do members agree that we should invite the minister to give evidence to the committee on the implementation of common agricultural policy reforms in Scotland? Our time scale is such that we could do so after the minister has announced his proposals. We would then want to give parliamentary scrutiny to those proposals and determine how we want to progress matters.

Members indicated agreement.

Finally, I recommend that we seek evidence from officials and then the minister on the implementation of the Water Environment and Water Services (Scotland) Act 2003. The Parliament passed the act last year and the committee should receive an update on the implementation of the act and environmental and rural development issues that are involved. Do members agree to that recommendation?

Members indicated agreement.

You mentioned the Scottish Executive. Will we also invite Scottish Water to give evidence for our consideration of the Water Environment and Water Services (Scotland) Act 2003?

I am happy to add Scottish Water to the list, if members want me to do so.

That might be useful.

That would give us evidence from Scottish Executive officials, Scottish Water and the minister on progress on the act. If members are happy with that proposal, we will attempt to programme the evidence.

The Enterprise and Culture Committee is doing an inquiry on renewable energy, which is pretty relevant to the work of this committee. I wonder whether we can be involved in that inquiry in any way. I think that that committee is into the second week of taking evidence for the inquiry, which appeared somewhat out of the blue straight after the new year. Perhaps individuals could be involved. Renewable energy is of key importance in the work of this committee.

We return to the UK Energy Bill in a couple of weeks for our next report. It would be useful if we could have an update on the Enterprise and Culture Committee's work so that we can make a submission. There are different ways of doing things. There could be a written submission or a reporter or the committee could discuss matters. You are absolutely right—we do not want to miss targets, as there are significant issues relating to renewables, energy efficiency and the grid, which Nora Radcliffe mentioned earlier. Perhaps we could return to that matter in a couple of weeks. Thank you for that helpful suggestion.

If there are no other comments on the paper, I will suspend the meeting until 12 o'clock, as the minister will not return until then. For members' information and to gear them up for the next session, I point out that they have a paper—I say this particularly for Richard Lochhead, as he has just joined us and will not have heard what I am about to say. I intend to deal with chemicals issues first, as Allan Wilson will be here for that part of the discussion. We will then move on to Ross Finnie for the rest of the discussion. I intend to take the issues in order. The private paper that has been provided gives a number of recommendations on issues on which we must scrutinise the minister. The agriculture and fisheries council will be our substantive issue, but we will deal with it last.

I suspend the meeting for 10 minutes. We will reconvene at 12 o'clock.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—