European and External Relations Committee, 21 Jun 2005

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Official Report 200KB pdf

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G8 and Council of the European Union Presidencies Inquiry

Agenda item 2 is the Executive's response to the committee's report, "An Inquiry into the Scottish Executive's Preparations for the G8 Summit at Gleneagles and the UK Presidency of the EU and the Contribution Scotland Can Make to These Events". Are there any comments?

The Executive agrees with us.

The response was encouraging.

I am always enthusiastic about receiving encouraging responses from the Executive, but we need a clearer idea of the massive economic benefits that Scotland will gain from the G8 summit. I raised that issue in the chamber during the debate on the G8.

The Executive makes it clear that a post-event impact study will be done, but there is no shortage of ministers at present who are prepared to say that the summit will bring massive economic benefit to Scotland. For reasons of good planning and the good use of resources, we should have some idea of what we are trying to achieve from the exercise. That is my only comment on the Executive response. Do members have any other points?

No.

Okay. We will note the response.

We welcome it.

Okay; perhaps we should go that far.

The Executive says seven times that it agrees with us.

That is nice and it makes a pleasant change. The minister will publish a post-event impact study, which the committee might look at in due course.