European and External Relations Committee, 26 Sep 2006

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Official Report 250KB pdf

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Sift

Agenda item 8, which is the final item to be considered in public this afternoon, is our usual sift of European documents. Do members have any comments, or are they happy to refer the documents to the appropriate committees?

I will disappoint the committee on this occasion, but I will be brief.

I had some constructive dialogue with the clerk when I made this point. Every week, we sift through the European documents that should be referred to other committees. We feel that we have done our job in analysing European documentation simply by passing it on, but we never receive any feedback and we do not know what happens to the papers that we forward. To be honest, some of those can be fairly important, but other committees do not have the time to consider them. I suggest that the clerk should follow up such papers when members highlight specific important issues. Perhaps the clerk could say whether another committee is taking the issue forward.

I have a view on that, but I will let Bruce Crawford respond first.

I will defer to you, convener.

Over the past six or seven years, we have looked at how we can get other committees involved and engaged in European matters. However, that is difficult for other committees because they deal with primary legislation and it would be difficult for us to tell them how to prioritise their workload. We prioritise matters that we think are relevant and should be forwarded to them, but it is difficult for us to tell them that certain items should be a priority on their agenda. However, I am open to other views.

I understand Phil Gallie's point, but his suggestion would clearly involve a lot of work for the clerks and I am not sure what we would do with the results. If we sent five directives to the Health Committee and the clerk told us that the Health Committee had not considered any of them, we might get upset but what could we do apart from that? Would we write a stiff letter of rebuke? It is an interesting idea, but I wonder how much work it would involve for the clerks given that we could not do anything with the results. In a sense, once we have passed the information to the relevant people, our responsibility is over.

The clerk had some discussions with Mr Gallie and carried out an exploratory exercise with other clerks. Perhaps he will comment on the matter.

The committee has already discussed the need for a more strategic approach to its priorities in its consideration of the issues that have been identified by the Commission. As Phil Gallie said, I have had some discussions with him on this issue. I have suggested that we produce an approach paper for the committee in December that will take forward members' views and consider how we might improve the system as it stands.

That is fair.

I should say that I was very happy with the clerk's reaction to my suggestion.

In response to Gordon Jackson, let me say that I recognise that other committees cannot always take on board the issues that we highlight. However, we occasionally deal with important papers on European legislation that could affect people in Scotland quite considerably. If our committee was informed that no other committee was considering a particular matter, we might be able to take it up as part of our work programme—although I recognise that our time is also limited.

I will reserve judgment until the clerk produces his paper in December, but it sounds to me like the clerk might neatly avoid extra work for himself by suggesting that extra work be imposed on the members of this committee. I have my doubts about that because we need to have strategic priorities. However, human beings being what they are, I suspect that members of other committees think that our committee is supposed to do all the work on issues relating to European and external affairs. That is not the real world either.

I welcome the clerk's good suggestion. I also understand the need for Phil Gallie and the rest of us to understand what the outputs are before we can judge whether we have been successful. However, given that we will need to produce a legacy paper before the end of this parliamentary session and the election, it might be more appropriate for our legacy paper to suggest that an early part of the work of the European and External Relations Committee of the new Parliament should be to understand those strategic perspectives. The reality is that our suggestions will not have much impact before the election, so the issue is more appropriate to the longer term.

On the matter of a legacy paper, I have always had a bee in my bonnet—as people who have been with me a while will know—about the need for a dedicated minister for European and external relations. Tom McCabe has too big a job to have responsibilities for those matters as well. That has always been my position. We are told that a designated minister is not necessary because all the departments deal with European issues, but I think that we might discover that no department ever looks at any of them. I have a theory that, if everybody is responsible, nobody is responsible. If we had information about what happens to European issues, that might be another string to my bow. Now I am interested in the proposal. If there was a minister dedicated to European issues that would help to monitor what happens in all the departments. I am curious about that.

The committee has certainly identified that as an issue over a long period of time. In that respect, Gordon Jackson is right.

To sum up, the proposal is that the clerks produce a paper on the issue in December and consider how that might dovetail with our legacy paper. It will be difficult for us to take the matter any further forward until we see the suggestions and discussions in the clerk's paper. However, if the committees were all as enthusiastic about Europe as Mr Gallie is, the problem would resolve itself.

We would eliminate 90 per cent of the proposals that come through.

With that, colleagues, I will close the public part of the meeting. We have agreed to take the next two items in private. I thank members of the public for their attendance this afternoon.

Meeting continued in private until 16:21.