European Committee, 23 Apr 2002

Meeting date: Tuesday, April 23, 2002

Official Report 213KB pdf

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Work Programme

Item 5 concerns our proposed work programme for the year ahead, which we should try to finalise today. I know that the clerk has taken soundings from committee members and that we have all listened to the ideas about the work programme that have been raised at our informal meetings. I hope that what we have before us today reflects the ideas and discussions that we have had.

It is proposed that we embark on two new inquiries, one fairly major and one short, in addition to the on-going structural funds inquiry. The programme is ambitious but reasonable. It retains the work of our reporters and maintains focus on the debate on the future of Europe, which is important.

The focus on employment will be important. I have spent a lot of time in the past few years saying to people that Europe is not about foreign affairs and things that happen "over there". If anything will bring that home to people in Scotland, it will be the matters of employment and social responsibility. I hope that colleagues will agree that the committee should inquire into those subjects.

Do colleagues generally agree with the proposals in the work programme or do they have any comments on them?

I agree with what you say about bringing Europe closer to the people. I get a little bit irritated when I hear commentators in the media saying that we are going to Europe as if we are not already part of Europe. I mention that only in passing.

In relation to the review of Scottish institutional presence in Brussels, I notice that the reporter is Ben Wallace.

Would you like to do it?

No. I was going to volunteer to be part of that with you, Ben. I was sorry not to have been able to be here when the committee discussed the issue—as you know, I was having my hip replaced. If the committee has no objection, I would be interested in participating in that review.

You can be the reporter, if you like.

We should work together.

I am sure that Ben Wallace will welcome that offer, considering the huge amount of work that he did on the enlargement report. I have no problem with Helen Eadie's being joint reporter. Do members agree?

Members indicated agreement.

Are there any other comments on the work programme? I suggest that we spend a few minutes on the employment inquiry and the waste minimisation paper.

The work programme looks pretty meaty. There is a good balance of high-level discussions and political issues with one or two institutional issues. What does not come through in the paper is the fact that, when we start monitoring the European Council meetings regularly, the balance of our work will change quite a bit.

Do we agree to the work programme?

Members indicated agreement.

Annexe B of the forward work programme document deals with the indicative terms of reference for Europe's employment strategy. There has been tremendous progress since we started talking about that. We are finally getting to the bones of what we want to do.

I am not terribly keen on having "Europe's not working" as the inquiry's title. My preference would be "Europe's Employment Strategy: An Inquiry into the Scottish Model". I am happy to hear the committee's views on that.

When I was in Brussels last week, at the commission for economic and social policy of the Committee of the Regions, we were talking an awful lot about skills and mobility. It occurred to me that we might want to include a little more about skills and mobility. I understand that the European Commission intends to draw up an implementation plan on skills and mobility. Perhaps in our inquiry we could ask some questions about whether Scotland faces obstacles in terms of skills and mobility that other regions do not face. Obviously, peripherality might be one such obstacle. We must ask what can be done to overcome such obstacles. We could consider information technology, the knowledge economy and changes in skill levels.

Another issue that came up at the commission for economic and social policy was language development. In its papers on skills and mobility, the European Commission will introduce a strategy that will recommend that children learn two languages in addition to their mother tongue. That will not be a challenge for regions and member states whose people already speak three, four or five languages, but for Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom, it will be a major challenge. Perhaps we could examine that issue as part of our inquiry. I understand that the discussion on skills and mobility will take place at the June meeting of the Council of the European Union. As the first step in examining employment strategy, we could try to get information from the Scottish Executive and the European Commission's paper on skills and mobility.

I agree. In the area in which I work, Fife Council had access to a pilot grant from Europe for children's early education in speaking another language. I am fairly sure that that work is on-going.

I am interested in whether members support work on one of the "isms", which include racism and sexism. I spoke at lunch time with a friend of mine—who is in the audience today—about agism, which is a big barrier to employment for many people. The last time that I looked, the age cut-off point in job advertisements for the European Parliament and the European Commission was 35. Perhaps it has now gone up to 45. We should consider that matter, because it is an issue throughout Europe. Society often sends out messages to older people that say, "Thou art now on the scrap heap." It is totally wrong to send out such a message to people who have a lot of wisdom and experience. We should identify strategies to keep hold of that great fountain of knowledge and experience.

I have a long-standing interest in disability issues. I have experience of sitting in a wheelchair and of using crutches and zimmer frames. Access for disadvantaged people in our communities is a particular problem.

Helen Eadie raises some important points. Targets will be set in the strategy, one of which might be to increase the percentage of the population aged between 55 and 65 who are in active employment. Another will be to increase the percentage of women in active employment. We should get information on that in a background paper. That would be important in setting the context for the kind of changes that must be made in Europe and it would help us to consider how Scotland is facing up to those challenges.

The clerk informs me that the European Commission no longer applies the cut-off age of 35 years for applications, which is to be welcomed. I recall lobbying on that matter some time ago.

When we were in Brussels, we received a briefing on the intention to increase the retirement age. That would not be universally welcomed in the western world, but demographic studies show that we are running out of youngsters. Perhaps older and wiser people—whom I represent—should carry on working. We ought to take on board that major theme.

As I always say when we start on our big inquiries, there is a tendency for us to take too wide an approach. We focus on the words and that makes it hard for us to assess how the words are being translated into actions and to assess the outcomes. Social policy in Europe is a large remit and I would hate us to go down the road of doing everything from the "isms" to the narrow strategies only to find that either we did not do it properly or that those whom we praise or criticise are able to wriggle out of their responsibilities. I would like our inquiry to allow us to assess clear outcomes rather than, for example, see old initiatives reworded to address priorities such as raising employment levels for over-45s. I have not seen a massive shift as a result of the Lisbon declaration.

I would prefer the option of an inquiry into the Scottish contribution to the UK and EU action plans. The action plans are more concrete than the thematic pillars.

My understanding is that the pillars are background information. We are moving on. The pillars were part of the Luxembourg agenda in 1997. That sets the background for how we should make progress. We are targeting action plans and there should be more focus. The headings are perhaps alternative titles rather than a reflection of subject matter. I want to focus on issues around national action plans and local contributions to them.

We might stray into reserved matters.

I would not want to stray too far in that direction. The European Commission is encouraging local involvement and regional contribution to national action plans. To be honest, I am not too sure what the contribution from Scotland has been to the national action plans, but I think that such contribution should be encouraged at local level. I do not think that it is a reserved matter, because employment policies have a local dimension.

The main point of the paper is the key questions for the inquiry. Ben Wallace is right—we could write books on the subject. We want a fairly focused inquiry and the key questions will help us to achieve that. They are:

"What is the current contribution in Scotland at the local and regional level to the UK's National Action Plan for Employment and can this be improved?

What examples of best practice do we have in Scotland … and what can we learn from elsewhere in the UK and the EU?"

and

"What is the view from Scotland on the continuing debate across the EU on Corporate Social Responsibility and promotion of a dialogue between social partners in Scotland?"

Those questions are fairly focused. There is likely to be a reserved angle on those issues, but if we stick to them in relation to holding the Minister for Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning to account in terms of what the Parliament sees as our priorities, we would have a good starting point.

It is important to have some of the background, but we intend to focus our inquiry. Before I forget it, there is a point that I want to raise in relation to the key questions. The second question refers to

"the four pillars of the Lisbon agenda".

However, to be absolutely correct we should change that to "the four pillars of the European employment strategy", which predates the Lisbon agenda.

I want to home in on the second question in relation to Sarah Boyack's comments. Apart from what companies, the Parliament and the Minister for Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning are doing, there is also an issue about what the voluntary sector is doing throughout Scotland. There are some excellent examples of good practice, particularly in the mutual sector through co-operatives, workers' co-operatives, community co-operatives and so on. Some projects in that sector have been given substantial funding by the EU and have done a tremendous amount for some of the most disadvantaged communities. I know one or two such projects.

Helen Eadie is right. I imagine that we will see in the good practice that emerges some good projects in the voluntary sector. The European Commission intends to hold a conference early next year to examine good practice. We have, in the past, been held up as a flagship performer in certain areas and I hope that we will be able to showcase some of the good projects that we have in Scotland, including those in the voluntary sector.

I am concerned that there does not seem to be much emphasis in paper EU/02/06/5 on employer-employee relations, apart from a brief mention under the title "Corporate Social Responsibility". We ought to consider that. We compiled a brief report on the obligation on employers to give relevant information to employees or their representatives. It would be useful for us to follow up that report and other aspects of the need for good relations between employers and employees in general.

Some of the examples of good practice might throw that up. We produced a fairly substantial report on that, which was recognised as such. I do not know whether this is the place to follow it up, although I am open to the views of committee members. The question of corporate social responsibility and good practice should allow us to say something about good employment practices and relationships between employees and employers. However, I would not want us to follow up our previous report. We would be in danger of widening things out.

I was not thinking just of the specific directive on the obligation of employers to give information to employees in a particular situation—usually redundancy—but of the more important matters of continuing good relations and dialogue between employers and employees, in the context of the future planning of an enterprise and employment policy. I was also thinking about the role of trade unions in the workplace and the role of the Scottish Trades Union Congress in providing input to the employment policies of the European Union.

I hope that we will take written and oral evidence from the STUC as part of the inquiry. That issue will fall within good practice regarding corporate social responsibility and good industrial relations. There is a definition of corporate social responsibility on the same page of the paper. That covers some of the points that you mentioned and includes employment relations, companies' ability to influence employment, job quality and the quality of industrial relations. Those are some of the issues that we can address. I hope that, through the written evidence that will come from the trade unions, we can highlight some examples of good practice and pick up any difficulties that might be present in Scotland.

This might be a diversion from the main report, but one of the things that affects mobility of employment is the way in which our housing market works. People tend to buy rather than rent. As a small part of the inquiry, it might be worth inviting Communities Scotland or a similar organisation to comment on that aspect of inhibition to mobility. It is a huge question and highlighting it as a local issue may be valuable.

I have no objection to our taking a wide range of written evidence. That will help us to decide on which areas we want to focus. I think that we all agree that it will be a useful and worthwhile inquiry to undertake. We will have to go into the matter in depth, which will take a bit of time. The inquiry will demonstrate that Europe is not only about things over there, but about things that affect the everyday lives of people in Scotland. It will be a good exercise for the committee.

We have indicative terms of reference for the waste minimisation strategy; we will probably need to do a little more work on it. There might be some overlap between it and Sarah Boyack's report, which might provide useful background and help us to focus more on certain areas of waste minimisation. At yesterday's meeting of the European chairs UK group, interest was expressed in the issue. The Northern Ireland Assembly has already done some work on the matter and Scotland could certainly be doing better. It is another area that is relevant to people's everyday lives. I understand that the National Assembly for Wales, in a conference with civic Wales, held a working group on waste minimisation. It was brought home to the participants that Europe can affect their everyday lives. They agreed that the conference was a very useful exercise.

As members will remember, I had the luxury of having an intern who did some background work for me on the sixth environmental action programme. We decided to consider waste because we saw it as a way of judging how well we had been implementing that programme. Sylvia Jackson's previous report suggested that that was worth doing. I would be happy to talk later to the clerks about our work. Some of the information would be a useful starting point for an inquiry.

We had a meeting with Paul McAleavey of Margot Wallström's office. The meeting highlighted the fact that until now Europe has considered every waste stream in a separate directive. What we should really be doing is designing out waste at the start of the manufacturing process. We must consider that there are high-level industrial interests, such as Scottish Enterprise, and there are different industrial sectors such as the housing and electronic industries. There is also the environmental sector, which is trying to tackle such issues.

The background report on the action programme is very timely. I would like to discuss with the clerks what we can pass across for inclusion in the new inquiry.

How far along is the intern with the report?

The report is complete, but I am not sure whether it is ready to bring to the committee. I will need to talk to the convener and the clerks about that.

Waste minimisation is an important issue, which is on the doorstep of many communities throughout Scotland. Jack McConnell, the First Minister, got involved in the issue earlier this year. He placed great emphasis on the fact that we should press ahead with waste minimisation work. He used the phrase "environmental justice"—I would like a definition of that and what it means for our communities.

In communities throughout Scotland, there have been noteworthy examples of recycling and landfill initiatives. When he visited Scotland from the United States, Dr Bob Bullard said that landfill, dumping and recycling all tend to take place in some of our poorest communities.

If we are to make recycling more manageable, we need to find a more equable approach that involves the wider community in consultation. We must connect with people who feel very aggrieved about landfill. It is the nimby—or not-in-my-back-yard—factor. Landfill must go into someone's back yard, but inevitably it will be the back yard of the poorest people. We need to move away from such a strategy.

We should also emphasise that producers and retailers must take more responsibility for proper disposal of products that have come to the end of their shelf life. That is my idea of environmental justice.

Speaking of nimbyism, I believe that all the waste from the city of Edinburgh and the rest of the Lothian area is deposited in my constituency, so I have an outside interest in this matter.

The convener displayed her characteristic diplomacy when she said that Scotland could do better in waste minimisation. That is a bit of an understatement. I have a hunch that Scotland must be the worst place in Europe as far as that is concerned. As a result, I am delighted with the convener's proposal. The Parliament should focus a lot of attention on the issue.

I agree.

If there are no more comments, I seek the committee's agreement on the finalised work programme and on the amendments to the terms of reference of and the way forward for the employment strategy inquiry. Although we have a good starting point for the terms of reference for our waste minimisation inquiry, we might want to alter them slightly when we find out how much has been covered in Sarah Boyack's report. That said, I think that we generally agree with the terms of reference and the background to our work on the subject. Are members agreed?

Members indicated agreement.