Official Report 299KB pdf
We now come to agenda item 2.
Can I make a point about this? During the suspension, we were discussing the fact that, although it is almost 4 o'clock, we have not got round to any real committee work other than the report. I suggest that, somewhere along the line, we find more time for the issues that the committee has registered concerns about in the past.
I see your point, but the alternative is much longer or extra meetings, because we are up against deadlines. That choice is the committee's. If you feel that we require longer or extra meetings, let me know and it will be up for discussion.
I suggest reversing the agenda next time.
When we are taking evidence, we have to give witnesses time to cover all the areas. If we keep meetings the same length and reverse the agenda, we might end up not taking the quality and quantity of evidence that is required.
I would not mind lengthening meetings, but I do not know whether that would be universally popular.
Let us just get on with this meeting.
Does the committee want me to put that point on the agenda for the next meeting?
No.
No.
We need stronger coffee.
Yes.
I suggest that we move on. Two hours is not a terribly long time to expect people to sit at a meeting, so I suggest, if it came to it, that an extra hour would not be out of the way. Let us move on.
At the risk of extending the meeting, I suggest that the value of each group is worthy of debate. To that extent, the paper is worthy of further consideration, but I am not sure how we do that. We should discuss every one of the bodies and assess its value.
Including the one of which you are a substitute member?
Including that one.
That is right, Phil. One reason for bringing the issue up is our feeling that the committee is not as aware as it should be of the links that the Parliament and Executive have with Europe and the rest of the world. The paper is intended to inform our legacy paper on how the committee should proceed next session. It is valuable for that. I suspect that the next committee will want to ensure that it is kept aware of what is happening externally.
Your point is entirely valid, convener. It is great that the paper has been produced. It notes what the organisations are, what they do and who their representatives are, but the outputs and outcomes of the discussions that are going on are missing. I do not want to make our legacy paper any bigger, but as this issue will form part of it in any case, I feel that we should suggest that the members who are attending to the matter—Irene Oldfather has done that constructively for us previously on the European Committee of the Regions—provide a written brief on where things are at on each of the activities. That way, we will understand a lot more about developments and where things are going, and there will be a mechanism for reporting back and for scrutiny of what happens in terms of members' interactivity, which will help to strengthen the whole process.
That is fair enough. It is what we have agreed to do with the European members information and liaison exchange network—EMILE—before the next meeting. It is an on-going issue, but the benefit of what we are doing now may not, unfortunately, be seen by members of this committee. It is something for the future.
It is helpful for committee members to see this in writing and to note the contents of the paper. Parallel to that, we have had work programme discussions on how we monitor the bilateral agreements that exist between the Scottish Executive, the Scottish Parliament and some of the regions with which we have co-operation agreements. For example, the Scottish Executive has co-operation agreements with Tuscany, and we have had agreements with Sachsen-Anhalt through the network of regional parliamentary European committees. At some point, we have to examine the criteria that we use to set up those co-operation agreements and how we monitor any outputs from them. I really do not know what is going on with some of the co-operation agreements that the committee discussed about two years ago. That is something else that can go into the legacy paper.
It is about to be Maureen Watt.
I had not realised that there has been a resignation and a new appointment.
I would like to respond to Bruce Crawford's point about reporting back. I am a member of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, as can be seen from the paper. I have tried in the past to make contact with ministers who are full members, but I have never got any feedback from them about whether they intend to go to meetings. I have found it useful to strike up a liaison with the local authority group in England that seems to control who attends and to decide when the alternates attend, and I have attended several meetings. I am not quite sure about the value of those meetings, but I have always submitted a report to the clerks of this committee and to the external liaison unit. I have never had any feedback on those reports; they are simply lying there.
Everything that has been said reinforces the point that the committee is right to express its concern about these matters and its hope that a successor committee will take them up. You cannot hold people to account unless you have the right information. We will leave a good legacy if we raise that issue in our legacy paper. I hope that it will be taken up by our successor committee. I am sure that some current members will be members of our successor committee—as we discussed earlier, three are leaving the Parliament.
We are going to become plumbers.
Can I book you now?
You could not afford it.
I am so excited at the idea of getting a plumber that I have lost my train of thought.
Can we have a list of the bilateral agreements that exist? I have lost track of them. Jim Wallace will recall that we used to have an agreement on co-operation with the Czech Republic.
The agreement with the Czech Republic was a specific piece of work relating to structural funds in the run-up to Czech accession. We have had agreements with Catalonia, Tuscany and North Rhine-Westphalia.
I believe that the Executive also supports a work experience programme for Polish civil servants.
The discussion is getting more and more interesting. It reinforces the point that we must know exactly what is going on. We have put on record our view that a list of agreements would be useful and should be kept up to date.