European and External Relations Committee, 15 Mar 2005

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Official Report 278KB pdf

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Convener's Report

Item 3 is my report. First, a report from the external liaison unit and the clerk to the Parliament, on the various inward and outward visits that have taken place, has been circulated to the committee as a courtesy. Are there any points on the report?

I do not know how we could have found ourselves in the places we are listed as having visited on Sunday 13 February. We were just in Gauteng and the Eastern Cape.

My goodness.

Do you want to go back?

I would love to go back—especially when you come back to temperatures of -6°C.

Members will note that the conclusions of our inquiry into the promotion of Scotland were conveyed to the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body by my good self on Monday 7 March after a long journey to deepest Donegal; however, the discussion was pleasant.

Secondly, I remind members that there is an event involving the European Parliament's Committee on Regional Development here tonight, to which all members have been invited. The clerks have details if anyone wants to attend.

Thirdly, we have received a follow-up response from Ross Finnie on the waste electrical and electronic equipment directive—WEEE for short, which says it all. We will have no suggestions from Mr Gallie about what might be in the wind on that one.

It is too late.

The reply has gone to the Environment and Rural Development Committee, but it has been passed to us for noting. Are there any points?

I am just glad that the clerks spelled out what WEEE stands for.

Or it would have been a source of great intrigue.

The big point is that the directive has not been transposed into law in Britain. Is there any risk of the Executive being open to infraction proceedings?

I am sure that Mr Finnie will have thought carefully about that before taking such a courageous or reckless decision, however one wants to describe it.

I am not sure that it is down to him. One of our duties is to keep an eye on transposition. If the UK Government or the Scottish Executive has not implemented legislation, we could be in difficulty.

We will ask Ross Finnie to reply to those concerns.

We usually find that, of all the European nations, the UK is the one that implements regulations ahead of others. We have a good track record under different Governments. In my view and in the view of others, if anything there is a tendency for the UK to gold plate. I wonder what the cost would be to industry of implementing the directive. How much consideration has been given to that? Are we considering best-value solutions? That all ties back to the Lisbon agenda, and how competitive we can be and how our economy stands. The directive looks to be complicated and costly.

The letter from Ross Finnie represents suspended animation. The minister does not say that he will not transpose the directive; he simply says that he is examining the implications of doing so. We will ask him for an update. This might be an interesting example of how the Government intends to approach better regulation, of which the directive represents a substantial example.

Will you throw in the cost question as well?

Of course. We will ask the minister to reply.

It is worthy of note that the minister states in his letter that he is undertaking significant consultation with the industry and others. That is important, because I am aware of the concerns of businesses in my area about the directive. It is better that we get it right than that we do it too quickly.

Clearly, the sense of the letter is that the minister has not careered into transposing the directive.

The committee next meets on Tuesday 22 March, when we will hear two chunks of evidence from Tom McCabe, the Minister for Finance and Public Service Reform: he will give evidence first in our inquiry on the presidencies of the G8 and the Council of the European Union and secondly on the European Union Bill, on which the committee has to consider a Sewel motion. The paperwork for all that will be issued on Thursday, so that members have time to read the substantial amount of documentation. We will also take evidence by video link from Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State for International Development, as part of our inquiry.

Meeting closed at 16:25.