European and External Relations Committee, 23 Mar 2004

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Official Report 278KB pdf

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Convener's Report

I will try to go through my convener's report relatively quickly. We held over two papers from last week's meeting that we did not have time to read as they were given to us at the last moment. The first paper is the Scottish Executive's analysis of the European Union's medium-term priorities and the potential implications for Scotland. It is important that we receive such papers. I certainly found the paper interesting. Have members any comments on it?

Perhaps unusually, I would like to record my thanks to the minister. He has responded very quickly and he has been fairly thorough. I cannot say that I agree with every one of his conclusions, but I think that he has done a pretty good job in a short period. I wish that all ministers would respond in the same way.

I would echo Phil Gallie's comments, which I think are fair. We have been quick to criticise, but it is important that when we get a good response and a good result, we place that on the record.

That has now been done.

The next item under the convener's report is a reply to our letter following up the evidence given by the Minister for Finance and Public Services to the committee a few weeks ago on the European strategy and the European Union's forthcoming priorities. We welcome the speedy response to our requests for some of the issues to be followed up. The reply from the minister is quite meaty and there are some issues in it on which members may wish to comment.

I draw members' attention to the relevant annex, which I found fascinating. It shows how Scotland is progressing in terms of the Lisbon agenda that was set out by the European Union, in relation to both the UK and other member states. Unfortunately, from some of the indicators, it seems that Scotland is not performing that well economically. We perform better in some respects than in others. That annex is a substantial bit of information from the Executive. I invite members' comments.

I am grateful to the minister for the Executive's detailed answers, which were certainly helpful in response to several of my questions. In particular, the minister went into some detail on the fifth question, which relates to

"the Executive's plans to increase education/infrastructure/trade links with the accession states".

That also relates to our promoting Scotland worldwide inquiry. There is a lot in the Executive's response. Much of it will be helpful to us for our inquiry and for bringing things together. I would not describe it as piecemeal in a critical sense, but it is like that. It underlines my wish to compare what we and the Executive are doing with what the Irish Republic is doing. As Mr Hewitt said earlier in the meeting, the Irish have some advantages, but in any case it is important that we compare and contrast the evidence. A lot of questions arise out of the response—which I can lodge at the chamber office for written answers—but it was very helpful.

I suggest that we copy the letter, and especially the annex to it, to the Enterprise and Culture Committee, as I think that it would be of interest to that committee.

Members indicated agreement.

The third item under the convener's report is the letter from Lewis Macdonald on renewable energy targets in Scotland, which we had requested from Andy Kerr on 24 February, when he was giving evidence to the committee. Andy Kerr had offered to arrange a reply from the relevant minister.

This is something that I have been seeking for quite a long time. The minister's letter raises more questions with respect to the targets than it answers. The letter mentions

"an additional 1,000 megawatts (MW) of new capacity",

which relates to about 5 per cent of what is required if we consider the actual generation time and demand on a reasonable winter's day. All kinds of questions surround that. At least we have something in black and white now, which gives us something to argue on in future.

The information is helpful. This may be going beyond the committee's remit, but I would like to know exactly how the Executive sees things panning out, and how the overall target for Scotland can be reached in such a way that projects are not over-concentrated in one specific area. That question has been raised with a number of local authorities in my region. Perhaps, however, I should pursue that matter on my own.

The reply is indeed very interesting, but it is clearly not our remit to delve too far into the matters concerned—unless members can identify a European dimension.

I think that there is a European dimension. It comes from the specific requirement under the Lisbon agreement to secure reliability of supply. The paper that we have received suggests that there are massive questions in this area, and that the Lisbon agreement cannot be met with respect to security of supply. I think that the matter very much concerns the committee.

There is no mention of our aging coal and nuclear plants. How is the Executive to secure the Lisbon requirements for security of supply, given the information that we have before us?

It might be worth copying the letter to the Enterprise and Culture Committee. I understand that that committee has been doing some work on renewable energy, and it would make sense for it to pursue some of those matters. We could also send a covering letter, if the committee is happy to do that. Members are also at liberty to pursue the issue in their own time.

We will. The question is 20 per cent or 40 per cent of what. It is relatively easy to build up the percentage of renewables simply by shutting down existing plant, but that could blow a huge hole not only in our domestic generation capacity but in our ability to export to England, Ireland or anywhere else. The issue has the implications about which Phil Gallie talks, so it is important for Scotland.

It is very important. Are committee members happy to take the suggested course of action at the moment? They are free to bring the matter back on to the agenda in future if they think that the committee should pursue it separately.

Members indicated agreement.

The next letter from the Scottish Executive is on the transposition and implementation of the Honey (Scotland) Regulations 2003, which particularly concerned the labelling of country of origin. We wanted to raise that issue with the minister, and members will note the minister's helpful reply, which states that the European Commission has informally informed the Executive that Scotland could be labelled as the country of origin on honey.

Do any members have comments on the reply?

When this matter came before us previously, I mentioned that my reading of the directive was that that would be the case, so it is good to have that confirmed. We should also note the point that John Home Robertson raised last time about the labelling for honey that contains quantities of non-European Union honey. The minister seems to confirm that consumers would be able to determine whether honey contained even a small quantity of non-EU honey. That is important.

How important is it to the consumer? To read the correspondence makes me ask why on earth we need a regulation on labelling honey. It is a load of bunkum. Some civil servant sat somewhere had nothing to do one wet afternoon and produced another regulation. It is a load of nonsense, and anybody who read it would surely agree.

I am being goaded. In Europe, extremely high-quality honey is produced; honey is produced in other parts of the world that is of far lower quality and may contain various additives, which could be of concern. The point was put to me that it might be possible, under one reading of the regulations, for an unscrupulous wholesaler or retailer to produce a bucketful of, for example, Chinese honey, put a few spoonfuls of European honey into it and market it as being of European standard. The reply that we have indicates that that could not be the case, and that is good news.

As usual, it was Phil Gallie who was producing the load of bunkum. The letter is helpful, as it states that Scotland can be labelled as the country of origin. That is helpful, in contrast to the chaotic free-for-all that Mr Gallie and the Conservatives would impose on us all yet again—as if we had not learned enough.

You used to be one.

I learned. I am a sinner, but I repented.

So many options are offered, and anybody who reads the second paragraph of the letter must recognise a "Yes, Minister" element to it.

I am sure that there is a lot of sympathy for some of your points, Phil, but perhaps not all of them. We can always use this matter as an example when we discuss subsidiarity and the transposition of legislation at a future date. We have talked about addressing that at some point.

I move on to the letter from the Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department regarding the provision of information to the committee on pre and post-council scrutiny. One point occurred to me when I read it. As the committee will note, the Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development says that part of the problem is the delay in getting information from Europe to the Executive, and that that information must in turn be passed to the committee. To me, that raises the question whether the Executive is pursuing the matter with the Commission. The whole scrutiny process depends on information going right down the line to the Scottish Parliament. There might be an option of writing back to the minister to ask what steps have been taken to speed up the process at the Commission's end.

To be fair, the minister points out that the deadline for getting information back is often less than two weeks away by the time the committee has contacted him and that the matters that we ask about sometimes require input from a number of different sources. He says that he will make every effort to respond timeously. It would be helpful to note his response and to continue to monitor the situation.

If, in monitoring the situation, we discover any more undue delays, we are at least entitled to an explanation of why there has been a delay. We must ask whether it is the fault of the Scottish Executive or of someone in Brussels, or the result of a lack of communication in between.

That is an option that we should leave on the table. We cannot just let the buck pass. The Commission has to be dealt with as well.

The minister says that his department

"has a particularly high volume of EU business."

That is true, but the issue is whether his department has sufficient human resources to deal with that volume of business. We should continue to monitor the situation and, as Dennis Canavan says, we should ask questions if there are further delays, to find out whether the minister's department is under staffed or whether the problem lies with the Commission.

I will move on to the final item under the convener's report—the last item that we will deal with today—which is consideration of our proposal for a committee-led debate in the chamber on 22 April. That is the provisional date; the debate might be on 21 April.

The committee has agreed on the motion for the debate, which reads:

"That the Parliament welcomes the enlargement of the European Union that will see ten new member states join on 1 May 2004, recognises that this provides both challenges and opportunities to Scotland and encourages the Scottish Executive to promote actively the benefits of enlargement across Scotland."

If members are content, we will proceed with that.

I think that the motion is suitably consensual and I hope that we can all sign up to it. In the week before enlargement, it would be inappropriate for amendments to the motion to be lodged. I hope that, in the debate, we look for issues on which we can agree, even though we might want to make different political points, which is fair enough. I hope that the committee can agree on the motion. The danger is that, if one political party lodges an amendment to the motion, we will end up having three or four amendments to it. In the week before enlargement, that would send out the wrong signals from the Parliament. I hope that we can all sign up to the motion.

Of course, those are matters for political parties, which the committee is unable to influence.

I do not know about that. Are you saying that you are so weak and powerless? I hope that you will bring your influence to bear this time. I strongly support what Irene Oldfather has just said. What happened before was most unfortunate and I hope that it will not be repeated, because such an outcome is divisive, particularly in committee terms. I hope that you will use all your good offices and influence; you will have an opportunity to show that you have some influence in your party.

My view is that it is not for committees to influence the debates that take place in the chamber.

If the debate is a committee debate, I think—

As the member will appreciate, the committee is responsible only for the motion. I do not know what will happen.

You should use your good offices.

I think that what has happened in the past will happen again in the future if what is written in a motion does not align with the beliefs of parties or individual members. On this occasion, because of the way in which the motion has been written, I think that there will be unanimity, but that is not to say that there will be unanimity on every motion that the committee lodges in the future.

Okay. There are no further comments. The next meeting is next Tuesday.

Meeting closed at 16:39.