European and External Relations Committee, 21 Dec 2004

Meeting date: Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Official Report 107KB pdf

---

Convener's Report

Agenda item 4 is my report, which contains three points. The first concerns a response from the Minister for Parliamentary Business to our request for more detailed information on concordats between the Scottish Executive and the United Kingdom Government. The letter illustrates the areas in which concordats have been agreed and details whether any reviews have taken place or are current. In the past few days, the issue has reared its head again because of the Housing Bill that was passed at Westminster. The letter deals with that sphere of activity. Do members have any points that they want to raise about the minister's reply? I think that it provides us with the information that we requested.

The second point concerns a letter that we received from the Minister for Finance and Public Service Reform, Tom McCabe, on the location of European Union agencies. The issue emerged from a meeting that Irene Oldfather convened in early September. I think that the only action that we might take would be to encourage the minister to keep the committee advised of the priorities that he intends to focus on in securing such agencies.

Perhaps we could ask the minister's office to clarify what he means by

"the possible creation of an EU Agency for linguistic diversity and language learning",

given that he then goes on to refer to it as

"an agency for minority languages."

I would like to know whether the proposed new agency will be an agency for linguistic diversity that includes minority languages plus language learning or an agency just for minority languages. I would certainly be in favour of broadening its scope rather than of limiting it narrowly to minority languages.

I know that we are waiting on the outcome of the feasibility study that has been commissioned. My understanding was that the agency would have a wider remit, but I have noticed that it has been referred to once or twice as an agency for minority languages. Obviously, such an agency would be important to us in Scotland but it would be different from an agency for linguistic diversity. It is important to have the broader context of language learning, which really fits in with the Commission's direction on the Lisbon agenda. I hope that we can receive a report back on the recommendations of the feasibility study once it has been completed.

I will ask the clerks to clarify the issue with the Executive. When we get more detail, we will make it available to committee members.

Do members have any other points?

I want to take up an earlier point and return to a couple of issues in the pre and post-council report. I was struck by the paper's mention of the proposed directive on batteries and accumulators and—

Sorry, have you gone back to a previous agenda item?

I apologise, but I want to pick up on a point that is made in the pre and post-council report.

Are you referring to page 7 of paper EU/S2/04/22/1?

Yes. Page 7 mentions the proposed directive on batteries and accumulators and the proposed regulation on registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals. Although those proposals are a long way down the line—the commencement date for the batteries directive is 2011, while the date for the REACH regulation is uncertain—I remember what happened with the directive on refrigerators and waste. As far as I am aware, there are no arrangements at the moment for collecting waste batteries in my part of the world. If such directives and regulations are in the pipeline, we need to be clear that the Executive and local authorities are gearing themselves up to implement them.

I think that discussions are taking place with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities on that issue. People are aware that we were caught short on the waste electrical and electronic equipment directive and that we do not want the same thing to happen again. Although a number of commercial agencies have been set up to deal with hazardous waste, I think that batteries have a certain flag on them that means that they can be deemed to be hazardous waste. That is causing some problems. I understand that COSLA has been alerted to the problem, but the committee could certainly monitor the issue.

Annex A states that we will seek further information from the Executive on its transposition plans on the batteries directive, but John Home Robertson's point is well made. We will ensure that the Executive's response is communicated to committee members.

Thank you.

I want to ask about inward visits.

Let us return to the convener's report. As I said, I will ask the clerks to pursue with Tom McCabe the point about the status of the language agency.

The final point in my report concerns a report from the Parliament's clerk/chief executive and its external liaison unit on external relations activities in the Parliament.

Perhaps the clerks can clarify the brief point that I want to make about inward visits. Like other members, I sometimes hear about such visits after they have taken place. The process that seems to occur at the moment is that we hear about inward visits only through the party business managers and party whips, who are contacted by the external liaison unit, or we read about them later. It would be useful if members of this committee received notification about inward visits through the convener. Our involvement in those visits has been a bit pot luck until now.

The process can seem a bit haphazard, so I will ask the clerks to discuss with the external liaison unit how that information flow can be improved. Of course, there should be a totally seamless flow of information from business managers to members, but I shall leave members to chew over that point.

It is always good to have a back-up from the clerks.

I am sure that that seamless flow is never interrupted. We will note Keith Raffan's point and come back to him on it.

If members have no other points on my report, we can draw to a conclusion the items that are to be held in public. We will continue with item 5 in private.

Meeting continued in private until 15:33.