European and External Relations Committee, 20 Jan 2004

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Official Report 234KB pdf

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Convener's Report

The next item is the convener's report. I will start by giving a brief report back from the meeting of the European Chairs—UK Group. I met the chair of the European and External Affairs Committee of the National Assembly for Wales and the chair of the UK European Scrutiny Committee. There was also a representative from Northern Ireland—a civil servant—which was welcome. The meeting was held in Aberdeen. I think that all who were there found it very worth while. It was the first such meeting for me and the Welsh chair, so it was our first chance to meet each other. We discussed a variety of issues including all our agendas.

We decided that it might be a good idea for the committees to meet some time soon. It might not be logistically possible for all the committees to meet one another at the one time; however, if one committee met another committee each year, we would all be able to meet all the committees over a four-year period—if members think that that would be worth while. It would be worth while for this committee to go to the House of Commons at some point to meet our counterparts there. That was suggested by the committee chairs. We can leave the matter on the table for the time being, but if members have any comments, we can address them briefly now. It has been suggested that the clerks have a parallel meeting, so that they can discuss issues such as the early warning systems. Minutes will be issued, and every member will get a copy. I am happy to take any questions.

I would like to know who the various chairs are—but not necessarily now; that could be included in the minutes. Did you say that the House of Lords is represented on the group?

Yes.

That is not unimportant, given the work that House of Lords committees do. They sometimes do a higher calibre of work than is done by the Commons on some issues.

The second item under the convener's report is a reminder that we will be having our six-monthly visit from the ambassador of the country holding the EU presidency. In this case, it is the Irish ambassador, whose visit is scheduled for 12 February. More details will be sent round in due course.

How do you pronounce his name?

Yes—how do you pronounce it?

I will ask the clerk to answer that excellent question, just in case I get it wrong.

The correct pronunciation for the Irish ambassador, for a clerk anyway, is "His Excellency". I think that that is as far as I could go. [Laughter.]

I think that we can discuss this informally.

I will provide members with a phonetic pronunciation.

We put on record our apologies for not being able to pronounce the ambassador's name.

At what time will the meeting take place?

Details will be circulated in the next couple of days, but it will be at lunch time.

That coincides with the Committee of the Regions week, so I might not be able to attend, unfortunately.

The third item under the convener's report is—wait for it—the Honey (Scotland) Regulations 2003 (SSI 2003/569) and the requirements for the labelling of the country of origin. The item has been referred to this committee by the Subordinate Legislation Committee. It appears to raise quite an important subject for the honey industry. The recommendation is that members thank the Subordinate Legislation Committee for bringing the matter to our attention and that we ask our committee legal adviser for a view on the matter. It is about honey producers in Scotland not being able to put "Made in Scotland" on their product. There appears to be some confusion about the labelling.

I note that the last sentence of the response that the Food Standards Agency Scotland sent reads:

"Therefore, in addition to the mandatory provisions contained in regulation 5(1)(c), Scottish honey may be named as such if a producer wishes."

I am therefore not quite sure what the difficulty was.

I felt it appropriate to put something on the agenda, given that the matter had been referred to us by another parliamentary committee.

When I saw this item among our papers, I took the liberty of consulting a neighbour who is a honey farmer. I have a note from him, which I will pass on to the clerk. He was perfectly happy about the proposals concerning UK honey. There is nothing to prevent people also putting on a label with "Scottish", "English" or whatever they like. That does not seem to be a problem for the industry. However, he was very worried that the proposed draft regulations seemed to make it possible to classify some pretty dodgy material as blend honey. I will not go into the details, but it might be worth passing the matter on to our colleagues for further consideration.

"Our colleagues" as in—

As in other committees, or indeed the Executive. I have given a copy of the note to the clerk, in any case.

We could easily write to the minister, just for clarification.

Looking ahead to the sift documents, I see that there is a paper that seems to be on a very similar subject: COM(2003) 787 final, which is entitled "Green paper on the future of rules of origin in preferential trade arrangements". I wonder whether there is any link there. It might be worth investigating that matter at the same time.

I suggest that we drop a line to the minister, as John Home Robertson kindly suggested, seeking clarification. We can easily incorporate the other issue that John Home Robertson brought to our attention.

In case it is thought that the Subordinate Legislation Committee has nothing to do except find things that are not important, I should clarify that, in cases such as this, our policy would be to ask the Food Standards Agency Scotland about the matter. The answer might be that there is no problem, but we would refer the correspondence to the lead committee almost automatically. The Subordinate Legislation Committee is not necessarily saying that there is a problem, but it is as much that committee's job to tell us that it raised an issue and to pass on to us what happened, as it is to suggest to us that there is a problem.

Okay. We could easily refer the matter to another committee, but that would be the second time that it had been passed from one committee to another. If no members object, we can write to the minister to seek clarification on that issue and on the one that John Home Robertson raised.

Will the letter pick up on my point about paper COM(2003) 787 final, too?

It can certainly do that.

The fourth item in my report is our submission to the inquiry of the House of Commons Transport Committee, which raises two matters: the proposals for a Eurovignette; and public service obligations for air routes. Those matters were raised by Alasdair Morrison and John Home Robertson respectively.

Alistair Darling recently made a welcome statement on public service obligations and I think that the clerks might have to rework paragraph 14 of our submission to the inquiry, which contains our recommendation, to take account of what the Secretary of State for Transport said.

I think that the letter was sent after you and John Home Robertson approved it, so it is probably too late to rework it, but thank you for bringing the matter to the committee's attention. I am sure that we will get a response to our letter in due course.

Fair enough. It was a minor point.

The final item in my report is the monthly report from the Parliament's external liaison unit on inward and outward visits to the Scottish Parliament. Do members agree that we welcome the report and thank all those who are involved in continuing to submit that useful information?

Members indicated agreement.