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The next item is the committee's work programme for 2006, in paper EU/S2/06/6/1. At the previous meeting we agreed that we would focus on structural funds, the Lisbon strategy and energy policy. The briefing paper in members' papers takes forward two of those issues: the Lisbon strategy and structural funds. A briefing paper on energy, which is the third issue, will be before us at our next meeting on 9 May.
I want to make a number of points about structural funds, but I thought that other members might want to come in first.
Does anyone want to come in? Irene Oldfather can then sweep up with her remarks.
Structural funds are very important to private businesses and public bodies and are, to a degree, also important to academia, as there is room for them to be used to fund certain areas of research. However, I picked up from the paper an emphasis on academia, which I would not like to be overemphasised in our inquiry. Although academia has an important part to play, the funding of research is not the most important role for structural funds.
I will follow up on Phil Gallie's point. The paper indicates that we would take
Phil Gallie obviously does. Do you think that we should expand the reference to "interested parties" and include more stakeholder groups?
Yes—within the bounds of the inquiry remaining manageable.
My goodness—Irene Oldfather has a tome with her.
I have a substantial number of points, so it may not be appropriate to take up the committee's time going through them all. In essence, my focus is on the future funding programme. The draft terms of reference concentrate a little too much on what has happened in the past. Clearly, we will be in a slightly different ball game. For example, on page 6, it is suggested that we ask:
Are you going to move on to a different section of the paper now? I am not trying to stop you, but you have said quite a lot about the eight key questions in the draft terms of reference. I want to address those before we go on to the next section of the paper.
I was almost happy to leave it at that, although I have similar points about the delivery of the programmes, which will be done entirely differently and through entirely different mechanisms. I have several suggestions about how we could make the draft terms of reference a bit better by making them more forward looking.
We must acknowledge that we are time constrained, in that we need to respond to the UK Government strategy and work out matters for ourselves. The basis of the inquiry will be how the Executive intends to disburse the very much reduced structural funds. The Executive has said that it will change the way in which the funds are disbursed, so we must focus on that. We do not have an awful lot of time to change the draft terms of reference, although some issues come to mind. I accept, as I am sure other members do, Irene Oldfather's point that it may not be terribly useful to concentrate overmuch on what went before and that we should concentrate on what is coming. Therefore, perhaps the first two of the eight key possible questions that are noted in paragraph 23 of the paper could be combined, so that we focus more on what will happen in future.
I would like two issues to be added to the list, but I have suggested others that could be removed from it. I have already mentioned one issue, which is the links with the new member states; the other is the solidarity fund that was set up by the European Union. According to the annual report for 2004, the fund received only 13 applications and only one proposal was approved, which was for flooding in France. Therefore, I suggest that there are opportunities for Scotland to get a bit more out of that—
I must interrupt you there. I think that those suggestions are about other issues. We have a tight inquiry into the disbursement of structural funds, and that is what we want to take evidence on.
Those were my two extra suggestions. Given that we want a tight inquiry into structural funds, I suggest that we add something to the question at the third bullet point in paragraph 23. At the moment, we are to ask:
Are you talking about the Government's urban regeneration strategy and community planning partnerships?
Yes.
The issue, then, is the extent to which the dispersal of structural funds links with Government priorities. That would catch everything that we might want to tap into.
Also, the question at the fifth bullet point of paragraph 23 is:
My concern with that suggestion is that the Executive has more or less said that there will be only one fund for lowland and upland Scotland—the funds will cover the Highlands and Islands and then the rest of Scotland. The danger with opening up that issue is that the people who give evidence might just rerun all the arguments about why the old way was better. That would focus attention on the old rather than on the new.
Certainly, we cannot go back to the old way. That is my point about the questions at the first and second bullet points in paragraph 23, which refer to the advantages and disadvantages of the past. We should not ask whether the previous structure was better and more successful, because we do not want to go back over that. All our questions should link the structural fund programmes to future delivery. Given that the Executive will deliver in future through urban regeneration strategies and community planning partnerships, we need to incorporate them explicitly into our questions. There is no scope for going back to having four or five programme areas, but it may be possible for the community planning partnerships to put forward valid reasons for the need for, for example, a west-central Scotland programme.
At some of the fora that the Executive held—some work on the issue was also carried out by consultants—stakeholders were asked about the extent to which structural funding should match Government priorities. I think that that is the catch-all that would cover Irene Oldfather's suggestion.
We have to make it clear to potential witnesses that our eight questions are designed to stimulate answers but are not intended to be exhaustive. Witnesses may range far and wide, and so may we. We often do; in fact, we usually do.
I am concerned that, on a very important issue, we are going to try to produce a report that appears to be informed but which will in fact be informed only by the evidence of witnesses at one meeting of this committee—and, as I understand it, those witnesses have not even been approached yet and have not had the chance to pull their thoughts together and put them on paper. A fortnight today, we will be expected to consider their submissions—if they have provided any—and make pretty profound judgments.
We are taking two bites.
So the first bite is simply that we will receive an initial response that people will accept as being fairly ill-informed.
Remember that there are two issues. Our response to the United Kingdom Government is time constrained by the Department of Trade and Industry's consultation on that acronym that I can never remember—the NSRF. Then there is our own inquiry into the disbursement of structural funds.
Okay. That is fine.
We are asking for written evidence for that inquiry and we are not time constrained as we are with our response to the UK Government.
May I respond to what Phil Gallie said? A fortnight is plenty of notice if an expert is going to live up to the title of expert. To me, an expert should be able to give a view at two minutes' notice if they are worthy of the name.
Do we agree in principle on what we are looking for, so that we can put information on the web and people can start responding as quickly as possible?
I agree in general with what is proposed. I would be concerned if we were to second-guess what the answers might be to questions such as
Perhaps we should get Dennis Canavan on to it once he has finished with Ireland.
If we discussed the issue now, it would lead us down an important track, but not one that would allow us to focus on what we are meant to be doing.
We were all clear from our recent visit to Brussels that the seventh framework programme on research and development is a far larger cake than the structural funds cake. To tap into funds, bodies will need international partners in other member states. There is therefore relevance to the discussion on structural funds. In due course, some stakeholders may feel that, forby structural funds, they need an alternative route—perhaps the seventh framework programme—to future resources.
Information on that could be drawn out as part of our inquiry. If we keep the inquiry tightly to the disbursement of structural funds under the new programmes, that does not mean that other things may not arise that the committee is interested in working on. From what you have just said, I suspect that that is likely to happen.
I do not disagree with Charlie Gordon. The only point that I would make is that the other item that we have to consider is the Lisbon agenda. We will talk about FP7 in that context. It is relevant to both subjects; we might want to decide when it would be more fruitful to discuss it.
We have already agreed the timetable for the committee's inquiries. We have agreed that we will have a fairly tight inquiry on the disbursement of structural funds. Do we agree to the key questions, subject to placing less emphasis on what has happened and more emphasis on the future? It was also suggested that more detail should be provided on whom we will invite to respond; that less emphasis should be placed on academia; and that the business sector, for instance, should be brought in. Is that agreed?
Any committee member who wishes to can chat with the clerks before the evidence sessions. The committee tends to agree not questions but general themes that we would like to deal with, so that we cover all bases. If anyone has a view on themes that should be raised in oral questioning, they should ensure that we all know them.
Do we have a list of witnesses yet?
Paragraph 24 lists suggested witnesses. Jim Wallace talked about other interested parties and suggested that we should expand on the proposal. Any suggestions from committee members about whom it would be useful to take oral or written evidence from should be passed on to the clerks.
Given the current difficulties in Scottish Enterprise and the future focus on urban regeneration and community planning, to which I have referred, I would have thought that we would want local government leads on some matters rather than representatives from Scottish Enterprise. If we take evidence from local government, we will hear about a strong emphasis on community planning and urban regeneration. I recommend that we approach local authorities for evidence.
We should also aim for a geographical spread, because the situation in the Highlands and Islands is likely to be different from that in the lowlands and uplands.
We will all suggest that to the clerks.
They will consider themselves suggested to.
Bullet point 4 of the remit says, rightly:
I had written on the remit that the suggestion in it was a good idea. We want to compare Scotland with regions that have similar powers and population structures to ours. I disagree with Bruce Crawford: if we compare Scotland with smaller member states, we will not compare like with like.
We would find it difficult to survey the European Union and find another constitutional region whose powers exactly mirror ours, unless there is one that is very similar. As far as benchmarking is concerned, we should be throwing our net wider to get a proper comparison.
Well—
We are about to end up with a spat between two members. Would anybody else like to give an opinion?
Convener—
We are not "anybody else", Irene—we are the convener and deputy convener.
I want to add something. The committee has a history of bilateral partnerships with other regions, through the network of regional parliamentary European committees—NORPEC—and other organisations. We have co-operation agreements with regions such as Tuscany, and there are regions with which we exchange a lot of information. We did some work with Flanders, Catalonia and other regions for the future of Europe debate. A number of regions find themselves in a similar position to ours. Catalonia is one of the obvious ones. I would not have any difficulty in identifying a few regions whose representatives we could invite and take evidence from.
I do not see why we cannot do both. It would not be too complex to make comparisons with other parts of nation states, such as the members of NORPEC, while considering small EU member states. That would be a useful comparison.
The only difficulty that I would envisage would lie in the economic background to the various countries and their national identities. We recognise that there will be massive changes as a result of newcomers to the EU. Most of the newly joined small countries will be looking for fairly large contributions from the UK economy in particular. It might make things a bit difficult if we try to cast the net too widely. The value of NORPEC has yet to be ascertained, but the organisation is in place and would seem to be a reasonable basis on which to make like-with-like comparisons.
One factor that is possibly more relevant than whether the comparators include regions of member states with devolved powers or member states is the extent to which Scotland finds itself at the same level at the starting blocks, as it were. For example, we could not do a proper comparison with Estonia, which has emerged from Soviet domination only recently in its history, and which will have different issues. Finland might be thought to be more comparable. Rather than think about constitutional status, it would perhaps be more relevant to consider countries' population and economic structure.
The paper before us suggests:
Jim Wallace's approach is sensible. It should be more about the size of the countries or regions and how comparable they are, irrespective of whether they are constitutional regions or member states. What commonality do they have with Scotland's population, background and current economic development? I am not putting that into a suitable form of words for the remit now.
Are you suggesting that we should consider comparable member states and constitutional regions?
That would be helpful.
We talk about the need to focus when we carry out inquiries, but Bruce Crawford's suggestion would require us to undertake an exercise to ascertain which member states are comparable with Scotland in economic terms. I thought that our role was to consider the principle of devolved Administrations within member states and whether the Lisbon strategy is sufficiently decentralised in that regard. One criticism of the Lisbon strategy that has been expressed throughout Europe is that member states have too much control and insufficient power is devolved to regional Governments. A big issue in Europe is whether regional Governments and Parliaments have enough of a say on the Lisbon agenda in the context of their member states.
A proposed remit is before the committee, which we can agree or amend as appropriate. Mr Crawford, do you want to propose an amendment?
The remit could indicate that we will consider comparable constitutional regions and small member states.
Does anyone want to second Mr Crawford's proposal?
I will second it.
Before we decide on the proposal, we should not ignore Irene Oldfather's point. What is our inquiry about? Is it about Scotland's performance against the Lisbon targets or is it about how Lisbon can be implemented effectively through devolved Administrations? The proposed remit is not clear on that. The paper says that the committee agreed
The focus of our inquiry is for the committee to decide. The paper—
The two issues are not mutually exclusive.
Exactly. The paper says:
The proposed remit says clearly that we will consider
Yes, but the proposed remit has not yet been agreed.
Jim Wallace asked for clarification on the remit of our inquiry—
We have not agreed a remit.
We discussed the remit and the clerks produced a paper on the basis of our discussion. The proposed remit that the paper sets out reflects my understanding, which is that we will consider the regional dimension, because decentralisation is a subject of discussion in the wider EU.
Every member of the committee has the right to put forward ideas for inquiries or changes to proposed remits for inquiries. Bruce Crawford has put forward a proposal, which has been seconded.
I do not have a problem with Bruce Crawford's suggestion in principle, but I was considering it in the context of the fourth bullet point, which starts with the phrase
I was not thinking that we were going through the remit bullet point by bullet point.
I might have misunderstood.
We can cover Charlie Gordon's point and Bruce Crawford's point by changing the second-last bullet point to read something like: "The committee may wish to compare the performance of Scotland with other countries in the European Union and other constitutional regions within other member states."
Bruce Crawford's proposal, which is seconded by Dennis Canavan, is that we agree the remit for the inquiry as drafted with the addition of independent states to bullet point 4, as referred to by Charlie Gordon.
They should be comparable.
So the spirit of what you are saying is that we should consider comparable countries and constitutional regions.
When you say comparable countries, do you mean comparable member states?
Correct. Jim Wallace mentioned Finland as a good comparison.
But then he asked for clarification of exactly what the inquiry is about.
I think that it is about both questions.
We have a proposal; is there a counter-proposal?
I am happy with the remit as it stands because there is more than enough in it to do. If we add other member states, we will not be comparing like with like. The agenda in Europe at the moment is decentralisation.
Are you making a counter-proposal that we agree the remit as drafted in the paper?
Yes.
Is there a seconder for that?
No.
Therefore the committee agrees the addition of comparable member states to the fourth bullet point.
Has evidence taking on petition PE804 been timetabled or have I missed something?
There is a nota bene at the end of the paper: it is yet to be scheduled.
I was looking at the grid.
You need to learn to look outside the box, Jim.
Jim Wallace's point on that petition was fair, but other petitions come to the Parliament week by week, and evidence taking that is necessitated by other business that injects itself into our work programme will have to be accommodated. Therefore, I presume that the programme is not set in stone but covers the issues that we have identified to date.
Yes. It is important that when we ask people to come and give evidence, we give them firm dates. Anything else would be organised around that.
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