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Item 6 is consideration of our work programme. A paper has been circulated, but I would like to add something to it. On Friday, I spoke to the senior management team of Highlands and Islands Enterprise, which pointed out that 1 November next year is the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Highlands and Islands Development Board by Willie Ross and HIE intends to mark the occasion. I suggest to the committee that it would be appropriate for us to hold a November committee meeting in the Highlands and Islands to mark the anniversary. We need to arrange that now. Both as HIDB and as HIE, the agency has been substantial. We could combine our meeting with a visit to the new centre at Dounreay. Is that agreed?
These matters take a long time to organise. If we agree in principle to the visit now, we can arrange it with the powers that be.
As members will be aware, the proposal would be eminently suitable from my point of view. I have gone on about the economy of east Caithness at considerable length and it would be great if we could bring the attention of the committee briefly to bear on the issue. I am prepared to bribe my colleagues and our estimable clerking team with substantial quantities of Scottish cheese.
That remark is on the record.
Oh dear. I see that the official reporters are still here.
We will ask Jamie Stone to take the lead, in consultation with the clerks, in organising the event in November. It would be logical for us to do our best to tie in with what HIE is doing.
It will be a pleasure.
Do members think that it would be appropriate for us to hold a discussion and to speak to people formally about the potential impact on the cultural strategy of the changes that were announced at the BBC last week? I am not suggesting that we hold an inquiry. Usually, I am not one for responding to short-term changes, but these are long-term changes that might well have an impact.
Like all other members, I suspect, I have received a letter from Ken MacQuarrie about the changes in the past few days. In my reply, I have asked him to specify what the impact on Scotland is likely to be. Regardless of what he says in his response, there will be many issues for us to ask him about. Although we do not want to hold an inquiry, a one-off meeting on this important subject is merited, given that we have responsibility for it.
I agree, especially because the proposals are vague and we have little knowledge of what the BBC is really doing.
Are members happy with the suggestion? It seems that the changes will have a fairly substantial impact.
In so far as the Parliament and the Executive have responsibility for broadcasting, the matter comes to this committee, so it is appropriate that we discuss the changes.
That is agreed. Do members want to make any other points about the work programme?
I want to raise one issue. We have decided to take final evidence from ministers on the follow-up to the renewable energy inquiry. In the revised work programme, the green jobs strategy is meshed with that strategy. I am not absolutely sure how well those elements work together and I wonder to what extent considering the green jobs strategy as part of the renewable energy inquiry will detract from some of the other points that we wanted to raise. Many of the issues that we raised were not dealt with in the Executive's response. We should not confuse the two issues.
Just before I left my office to come to this meeting, I received a letter from Jim Wallace about the unanswered questions on renewable energy that were referred to in the debate and which the Executive promised to get back to us on. I will circulate that to the committee today or tomorrow. Since both ministers are coming to our meeting on 18 January and the plan was to have Allan Wilson appear before us on 25 January to talk specifically about renewable energy, I do not think that there will be a problem with asking them questions about the updated response. I have not read the response in detail yet, but the covering letter more or less says that it contains the answers to the unanswered questions, so I presume that it will answer most, if not all, of the questions that were left unanswered before.
Some of my worry relates to what would be dealt with at the meeting on 18 January. How much other business are we going to pack into it? Will there be only one or two items on the agenda that day?
We will ensure that enough time is available to cover the issues that we need to cover and to deal with the other business that we must get through that day. We need to have a degree of flexibility to arrange that in discussion with the offices of Allan Wilson and Jim Wallace, but clearly ministers expect to cover a number of subjects.
I would like not only to hear the answers to the unanswered questions but to tie up the issues relating to renewable energy and the green jobs strategy. The debate in the chamber quite clearly showed a bias towards the view that renewable energy is all about being green and environmental and I think that we need to drag the discussion back towards a focus on jobs, the economy and reduced costs for businesses, which will protect jobs.
The issue is not to do with green jobs; it is to do with energy, electricity and the future of energy supply.
Nevertheless, the jobs that are created to support renewable energy are just as green as the jobs that will be sustained in existing industries as a result of a change in practices, the use of renewable energy or the adoption of more environmentally conscious procedures.
We are going to have the ministers here anyway, so we might as well kill two birds with one stone. How we then decide to take the matter forward is entirely up to the committee.
I agree with the principle of killing two birds with one stone—
I am not a member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, as you can tell.
I know that we will be trying to kill a growing number of birds with one stone at the meeting and, while I am delighted that this committee does not follow other committees' practice of allocating pre-prepared questions and so on, it would be helpful in this instance if the clerks could—with a light touch—give us a note of some of the themes that we have suggested ought to be covered. This might sound rich coming from me, but it would also be useful if we could attempt to discipline ourselves to follow particular lines of questioning as we go through—[Laughter.] I said it first. If we do not do that, we might end up going in umpteen different directions.
The subjects that we have identified as being those we want to cover are: the smart, successful Scotland policy; outstanding issues relating to renewable energy; the green jobs strategy update; and the ILA/budget issue. If the ministers agree, we could perhaps divide the session into those four subject areas. If committee members and ministers are happy with that, we will be able to keep the discussion coherent and ministers will know what they will be asked about. Does that sound reasonable?
Yes, but this is the last bite that we will get at the renewable energy inquiry cherry, so we should ensure that we are able to tie up all the loose ends—if you will allow me to mix metaphors. The time that we spend on that issue should not be constrained by the fact that it is just one issue on a large agenda.
We will plan to hold the discussion over an entire meeting. That should ensure that we have enough time to cover what we need to cover. Once we have read the response that I have just received from Jim Wallace, we will have a better idea of how long we want to spend on those issues. If members think that the response still leaves some questions unanswered, they should tell Judith Evans, the clerk, and we will try to ensure that they are dealt with when Jim Wallace comes on 18 January. She and I work closely with the minister's office because everybody wants to ensure that people get the maximum benefit from discussions between the committee and ministers.
The last issue in relation to the work programme is to highlight the fact that we are suggesting, in line with a previous agreement by the committee, that we begin to have fortnightly formal meetings after the February recess. That will allow us to catch up on our backlog and ensure that the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Bill is dealt with before we set up a better modus operandi for our inquiry into business growth.
Could we give some thought to how we record the outcomes of the informal meetings that we will have during the business growth inquiry? Obviously, we will not have the staff of the official report with us but it is important that we have a summary of what was said, as I presume that the sessions will be public.
When this committee's predecessor committee went on any informal visit, the clerk and the members who were involved prepared a note, which was circulated formally and placed in the public domain. Nothing was hidden and everything was recorded. That allowed us to be flexible and not to have to worry about some of the formalities.
I do not know what Murdo Fraser thinks about it but I think that the way that he and I worked together on the arts inquiry—which was basically what you are describing—was pretty good.
Yes. As long as the key points are reported to the committee, it should be fine. Is everybody happy with that?
I was going to suggest that we now have a chat about the area tourist board review, following the evidence that we took last week, but I note that it is almost 10 to 5. Patricia Ferguson will come to our meeting on 25 January and it might be a good idea to have an informal discussion about what we think are the key areas that we should pursue with her, given the evidence that we have heard and the additional information that has been provided since. We could do that offline, as it were, before 25 January. Is everybody happy with that?
Before we partake of our mulled wine, we will deal in private with item 8, which is consideration of the revised draft stage 1 report on the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Bill.
Meeting continued in private until 16:58.
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Budget Process 2005-06