European and External Relations Committee, 17 Jan 2006

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Official Report 215KB pdf

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European Commission Work Programme 2006

Good afternoon and welcome to the first meeting of the European and External Relations Committee in 2006. I have not received any apologies.

Our first agenda item is the regular tracking of the priority issues that the committee identified in the European Commission's work programme. There are two items in paper EU/S2/06/1/1 to bring to members' attention. The first is annex B, which is the Executive's response to our letter of 20 November, in which it gives its initial views on the various priority areas that we identified. Can I have comments on that, please?

The only thing that I want to mention is the note on the globalisation adjustment fund, which I raised when we had the witness from the European Commission. It is good news indeed that, according to the Executive, the fund was agreed in December at the European Council, as part of the budget package. The fund is a significant amount of money that is specifically set aside for industrial restructuring. We should keep a watching brief on that. There will not be many of us around the table who have not had personal experience in our constituencies of substantial job losses. We could make significant use of the fund in Scotland, if we keep a close eye on it.

Okay. Members asked for particular items to be tracked. I think that Phil Gallie was particularly interested in the European qualifications framework.

Certainly, I am interested in that overall area, taking in not just university qualifications but trade and professional qualifications and so on. The only point that I would pick up on in the Executive's comments is that it claims success in how it has managed things, but no comment is made about the Scottish Qualifications Authority. There was a degree of shambles surrounding the SQA not so long ago. However, there is nothing in the Executive's comments that I really take exception to at this point.

The public procurement aspect always worries me just a little bit, particularly after the shambles around the lighthouse ship on the Clyde. Another worry is the Royal Mail, which I have raised previously. I attended a presentation by the Postal Services Commission today that alleviated my concerns a little. However, on the Executive's comment in the paper that

"If commercial competitors expand through their ability to deliver—"

and so on, we could say that that would be a case of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. Perhaps that aspect should be considered.

Are there any other comments on the internal market for postal services, which the committee has discussed previously?

There are obviously risks, particularly for a largely rural country such as Scotland. We would need an early warning if there were to be moves by anyone from other parts of the United Kingdom or from outside the UK to cherry pick postal services across the UK, but particularly in Scotland. If circumstances arose that could undermine the ability of the Post Office to collect and deliver mail in remote areas, such as the islands, that would be catastrophic.

I am sure that we all agree that we are in a worrying situation. Assurances have been given that things are all right as far as we can see, but the situation is fluid and people will be sizing up business opportunities. Something far bigger might evolve that would have serious implications for large parts of Scotland, so it is important that the Executive and the UK Government keep a close eye on the matter and are ready to react.

So you think that we are right to track the matter.

Yes.

Do members have any other comments on the Executive's response?

Will we get further clarification of the outstanding points on public procurement contracts?

Do you mean in relation to the Ferguson yard?

No. I mean in relation to the Alcatel ruling.

That is mentioned in the Executive's letter but we were unable to get clarification before the meeting.

I was not going to admit that. I was just asking whether we will get further clarification.

We will. I can assure you that a detailed précis of the Alcatel ruling will be forthcoming.

I ask members to turn to annex A, which is my note on the European Commission's plan D proposal. We seem to have been discussing that proposal for an awfully long time without making any real progress. We have discussed it at various meetings so we do not need to go into too much detail on what plan D is and what it is for. Given that the Commission is seeking responses by April, I think that it is time to grasp the nettle.

I will give a quick update on the note. In paragraph 5 I express concern that Liz Holt's former position has not been advertised. However, since I wrote the note an advertisement has been placed, so that is fine. We can disregard the recommendation on that point.

My note also mentions the Executive's building a bridge project. We have not heard from the Executive about exactly what it is doing, so I recommend that we write to ask for further information on the project and on how the Executive intends to involve the Parliament. In December, Irene Oldfather and I had a chat about how we should proceed. I put together the paper on the basis of that chat and with a view to not duplicating the work that the Executive is doing with that project.

I recommend that we consider the ways in which the Parliament tries to communicate with people and encourage participation. I suggest that we write to all the committees. I do not propose that we ask them to do a lot of work on the matter, but we could ask the committee clerks for a brief summary of the ways in which they engage with the public. We could also consider the Parliament's outreach service and Gaelic service. When we get the responses, we can collate them along with details of the various ways in which the European and External Relations Committee engages with the public, including Europe day, ambassadorial addresses and so on. I suggest that we collate that information and send it to Westminster, to the Executive and direct to the European Commission, because it asked for direct representation from regional Parliaments.

I would like to hear members' thoughts on my recommendations and any additional ideas that they have on what we should do.

I am content with the recommendations in the paper. We agreed that we would find out what the Scottish Executive is doing so that we did not duplicate its work. The committee discussed whether we should consult stakeholders, but I understand that that is being done as part of the Executive's project. Until we hear from the Executive, it is difficult to do much more. When we have its response, there might be ways in which we can link into or dovetail with the project. Under agenda item 5, we will discuss a call for evidence from the House of Lords, which is considering the matter. It occurs to me that it would be helpful to find out whether the National Assembly for Wales and Jimmy Hood's European Scrutiny Committee at the House of Commons are doing any work on the matter. Perhaps we should write to them to find out.

I have received a letter from Margot Wallström saying that she is delighted that the committee is interested in the matter and that she is coming to Scotland early this year. The dates are to be finalised, but that may be an opportunity to link in with her.

The Commission is holding a conference on the issue in Brussels next week, to which I have been invited. Unfortunately, I cannot attend, but I wonder whether we could ask our parliamentary officer in Brussels to attend it and to report back on what approaches are being taken in the regions throughout Europe. My understanding is that, although the Commission is asking for indicative responses in April, the conference will allow the regions to say what they are thinking of doing. The Scottish Executive project is intended to run until at least September, so the April deadline is not particularly fixed—there will be opportunities to continue to develop the project after that. I would be happy with a bit more information gathering about what people are doing and how we can link into that work.

I am surprised that the Scottish Executive is not taking the issue more seriously. Plan D came about because of the failure of the all-important constitution. When it went down the tubes, that brought about the idea of an urgent need for plan D, but the urgency is not evident. It is of merit that the committee has agreed to try to respond on the issue, although that perhaps just demonstrates the stupidity of the European Union's original timescale for responses to plan D.

The paper contains a recommendation that we contact other committees. If we do so, it will be important to ask how they measure success. We all have our ideas about how good we are at communicating, but the secret is in achieving real success. If we are to ask the committees how they engage, I would like to ask them how they measure the success of their engagement. That applies to the European and External Relations Committee, too. The convener referred to Europe day, but if I ask people in the local pub or women's guild about Europe day, few know about it, which makes me wonder whether there is any engagement with the wider public. If we are to consider the issue, we should try to identify the steps that we can take to get through to ordinary members of the public who do not get involved in normal political exchanges.

We have certainly discussed that issue before. It is all very well our feeling that the Parliament does a great job but, until we measure success, we will not know whether we are reaching folk. If, as Irene Oldfather says, the April deadline is only for the first part of the process, which will continue incrementally after that, we could start doing the sort of work that Phil Gallie suggests.

In that case, we should write to whomever is seeking the information in the EU to say that we find the timescale to be somewhat impractical and to lay out what we intend to do, within a more rational timescale.

When we met the commissioner's representative in Brussels, she took on board completely that the April deadline is not one by which all discussion must be finished and that dialogue will be on-going. However, there is no harm in reconfirming that that is the case.

I go along with the recommendations at the end of annex A, but I wonder whether they go far enough. Paragraph 2 of annex A states:

"The Committee has considered various responses that it might make to Plan D, such as hosting discussion events involving civil society or schools".

However, the recommendations seem to emphasise collating responses from the other parliamentary committees and, I presume, including in the resultant paper information on our mechanisms for engaging with the public.

Will we not, at some stage, try to assess the opinions that have been expressed at such events and in communications? If members of the public have made any major criticisms or suggestions, we should try to feed them into our response to the Commission on plan D. Instead of simply thinking of mechanisms for consultation, we should set out the substance of what we are consulting on. If any salient points emerge from our consultation, we should try to pinpoint them and convey public concerns and suggestions to the Commission.

There are two strands to the matter. First, we should bear it in mind that, although the committee has been discussing the matter for three or four months, it has not reached agreement on anything. Secondly, we must also bear it in mind that we do not know what the Executive is doing in its building a bridge project, because it has not yet responded to our request for information. I am picking up from members a feeling that we should do something now that might act as a starting point for the committee to submit something by April, when the first stab will be made. However, when we know exactly what the Executive is doing and examine the information that we get back, we will be able to consider mechanisms for measuring success and, indeed, for going further to ensure that we complement—not duplicate—the Executive's work and come up with something that benefits everyone.

I am sympathetic to the points that Phil Gallie and Dennis Canavan made. As members know, I was very keen to do some work on this area; indeed, I still am keen to do so. The problem is that consulting stakeholders forms part of the Executive's project. That should not rule out our holding a conference in the chamber, as we discussed at previous meetings. However, to ensure that we are not talking to the same people about the same things, we should wait for the Executive's response before we make any firm decision on such an event. I am very open-minded and would welcome the opportunity to hold an event in the chamber.

I am aware that I missed the meeting just before Christmas, but I am slightly concerned that the timetable has slipped a bit. I fully appreciate the point that we should not duplicate the Executive's efforts in its building a bridge project. However, one of the committee's purposes is to scrutinise the Executive and I feel that we should start to get a bit firm with it. After all, we are now in mid-January; we have a week's recess next month; and then we will be heading towards Easter. As the convener said, the first stab will be in April. Instead of waiting and hoping that the Executive will respond in due course, the committee should tell it firmly that we want to receive more detailed information as soon as possible. Otherwise, it will become absolutely impossible to meet the timescale.

I note the recommendation that we should write to Scottish Executive for further information. If we are doing a number of other things, it might be useful to ask a minister to give us a presentation on the building a bridge proposals, following which we can cross-examine him.

Before I summarise members' comments, I ask everyone to bear it in mind that this discussion has been very similar to our previous two discussions on the matter. We have now reached the point at which we must do something if we are serious about it.

I wonder whether we can agree the recommendations. First, it is recommended that we ask all the Scottish Parliament committees to provide a summary of how they engage with the public with a view to finding out how they measure success. We could ask a question on that matter in our initial letter to them. After all, some committees might already have established such mechanisms.

It is then recommended that we co-ordinate those responses with information on how we feel that we engage with the public. I am being careful to say "feel that we engage with the public" because we might be under a bit of an illusion about that when it comes to measuring our success.

We would send copies of our collated paper to the Executive, the UK Government and the European Commission as our contribution to plan D, which is to be considered in April. That would not preclude us from going further. We would also write to the Scottish Executive again and suggest that someone come along to discuss with the committee how the Executive is progressing its work. The final recommendation is to be disregarded because we have received further information since the paper was written.

Given that you are summarising our discussion, I add that we should ask Ian Duncan to go to the plan D conference in Brussels next week and to report back to us. We should also seek further information from the Welsh Assembly and the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee on whether they are doing anything and, if so, what.

I agree with everything that you said, but I would like to see the responses from the committees and hear what the minister has to say before we agree to send the paper on. We might want to add to the paper before we send it to the Commission. In the interim, we might be able to get Margot Wallström to come for a discussion. I do not know whether the April target is that important, but at least we are agreeing to the steps that we are going to take to get the project moving. That is good.

It is one thing for us to send our representative in Brussels to the conference, but if it is so important, I would have thought that the Scottish Executive would have people there. It might therefore be worth while to inquire who the Executive is sending.

Yes. Are we agreed on how to move forward on plan D?

Members indicated agreement.

Gosh. Well done.