European and External Relations Committee, 18 Mar 2008

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Official Report 245KB pdf

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Correspondence

Agenda item 3 is correspondence from the Scottish Government. We wrote to ask the Minister for Europe, External Affairs and Culture about the implications of the new UK points-based immigration system for Scotland and for the fresh talent initiative in particular. Do members have comments on Linda Fabiani's response?

Trevor Phillips made a statement last week about the need for more flexibility in the new system. Perhaps we should write to him before we talk to Linda Fabiani. He is the chair of the new Equality and Human Rights Commission and his comments were extremely helpful.

The comments were interesting and writing to him is a good idea. Members have no more comments and are content with that.

We agreed at the start of the meeting that agenda item 4 would be taken in private, so everybody in the public seats will have to leave. I thank them for attending and thank the witnesses again.

Meeting continued in private until 12:33.