Official Report 251KB pdf
Item 3 is the convener's report, which has been circulated to members. There are four specific issues and we will take them one by one. The first is a letter from the Scottish Executive on the UK presidency of the European Union from 1 July 2005 and the proposed involvement of the Scottish Executive. The Minister for Finance and Public Service Reform is giving us advance notice of several events that are planned around the UK presidency.
It would be good to have the minister before the committee sooner rather than later. He makes the point that the UK presidency coincides with the G8 summit and it would be interesting to question him about that, particularly because I understand that a cross-cutting committee of the Executive is considering how to showcase Scotland at the G8 summit and during the presidency. What kind of events is the Executive planning? Perth and Kinross Council has been planning, as has the Executive, and it would be interesting to hear about that work at an early stage.
Following on from the points that Keith Raffan has made, it is important to recognise that some of the events are fairly major, and that there can be logistical difficulties with hosting them outwith Edinburgh.
The Executive's letter is a helpful reply. The list of meetings and events in Scotland during the UK presidency is impressive, up to a point. What is missing is anything in the way of ministerial-level or Council of the EU meetings in Scotland. I may be out of date but, as I recall—certainly, as far as some portfolios were concerned, this used to be the practice—during the course of each presidency, British ministers who chaired the various council meetings during the six months would hold an informal council in their home areas. I was parliamentary private secretary to Jack Cunningham when he was Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and I remember that he took the opportunity to hold an informal meeting of agriculture ministers in the north of England. That was quite useful at the time in various ways.
There was a heads of Government summit at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in 1992—I seem to remember that many of us demonstrated outside, but those days are long gone.
Was that not a Commonwealth event?
No, it was the EU heads of Government summit.
I agree that the Executive's reply is helpful, although I notice that a lot of the proposals are still to be confirmed. I endorse the feeling that there appears to be an emphasis on the central belt. There are direct links from Edinburgh, Glasgow and London to places such as Inverness and Aberdeen and I do not see why we could not do more up in those areas. That would be worth while, especially given what is happening with regional development and so on. The economies in those areas are important to any discussions. I think that we should submit a bid for one council meeting in Scotland.
I go along entirely with Margaret Ewing's point about the agriculture and fisheries council. I had intended to pick up on several other points, but if Mr McCabe is to give oral evidence to the committee, it might be better if I ask him to expand on the issues then, rather than waste time going into the details just now. I back the convener's opening suggestion that we should invite Mr McCabe to come before the committee.
Let me draw our discussion to a conclusion. We should invite Mr McCabe to appear before the committee to set out further the thinking on the Scottish Executive's input into the UK presidency of the EU. We probably want to hear from him no later than March of next year, but we will bid for him to come before us as early in the new year as is practicable. I suspect that our work programme is such that we will draw the report on our inquiry to a conclusion in January, so it will be the turn of the year before we can call him to give evidence on the UK presidency. He will, of course, appear before us for our current inquiry.
I agree, but am concerned about the minister appearing in March. You said "no later than March", but I think that he should appear no later than December, as it would be unfair to have him before the committee and expect him to take on board our views and to make changes at such a late stage. The more time we can give him, the greater flexibility he will have in taking on board our views and perhaps effecting some minor changes. Making major changes might be difficult. Seeing him should take no more than 30 or 40 minutes, so I do not see a reason for delaying meeting him until the new year.
Okay. I am happy to try to accelerate the timescale and to have Mr McCabe in front of us between now and then.
That was probably the whole idea.
It might well have been. I think that we should ask for considerably more detail from Margaret Curran, particularly on which concordats have been reviewed and which have not.
And at whose request.
Indeed. We should also ask what material changes have been made to the concordats, so that we can continue to have some form of parliamentary understanding of those matters. From my recollection, the concordats are generally published.
Yes. The concordats are publicly available documents. The overarching memorandum of understanding is also publicly available.
It would be helpful to have all of that set out for us by ministers in order to clarify matters for the committee.
I totally agree. However, nearly half of the concordats have not been reviewed for four years, so I am not sure what the minister's definition of "periodically" is. It might be helpful for her to say how often they are reviewed, as it is clear that nine of them have not been reviewed since 2001. It would also be useful to have detailed background information on the routine and format of the reviews.
As there are no other comments, we will seek that information from the minister.
I raised the matter and I am grateful to Irene Oldfather for writing to the Commission about it. The response is illuminating. Apparently, the term "political project" should never have been used. That was the fault of the translators, who perhaps should have used the term "policy project". However, I am greatly concerned by that policy project.
I thought that you had reached a point of comfort on a European issue at long last, Mr Gallie.
Not at all.
I should not have allowed myself that piece of comfort.
The letter says that
We are back to that issue, are we?
I must disagree with Phil Gallie. The objective of writing the letter in the first place was to clarify a particular point that Phil Gallie raised about the Commission having a political dimension. To be fair, Liz Holt has answered the question clearly. Phil Gallie's points about the financial perspectives are a different matter. I think that we have already agreed to keep a careful watching brief on that matter, to which we will no doubt continually return. We should therefore lay the matter to rest.
The committee has already agreed that a paper on developments within the EU financial framework will be prepared. The clerks are working on that paper, which will come back to the committee for our consideration. Elizabeth Holt's letter certainly clarifies the point. It might not necessarily address all Mr Gallie's political concerns, but that would be a big task.
Mr Gallie is always intent on scaremongering on such issues, but I thought that he would have been reassured by Liz Holt's comment in the third last paragraph of the letter that the content of the policy-based programme should not be
The last time I was told that I was scaremongering was when I said that there would be no change out of £100 million for the Scottish Parliament building, and we all know what happened with that. Therefore, scaremongering is perhaps justified.
Convener, given Mr Gallie's traumatic experience, would it be appropriate to arrange counselling for him?
I think that we will simply draw the matter to a close. We have said enough on this particular point.
In fairness, Mr McCabe is volunteering to come to the committee to discuss these issues. It is a matter for committee members whether they prefer the original idea—which was that the head of the Brussels office who was responsible for the report should come to the committee—or whether they would prefer to hear from the minister. I am willing to hear what other committee members think. Initially, I thought that I would like to hear from the head of the Brussels office, but now the minister is willing to appear.
The minister might want to bring the head of the Brussels office with him. We could have two for the price of one.
That would be helpful. We will pursue that suggestion with the minister.
The minister says that the committee is briefed fully by the regular presidency forward look and ministerial appearances. However, my experience is that the committee has not been fully briefed on the Executive's forward priority policy dossiers by ministerial appearances. I understand why—one minister cannot be expected to have a full command of every minister's brief. However, I am concerned that we have still not received replies to some questions that we asked Mr Kerr on his last appearance and which he said that he would pass to other ministers.
The point of asking for the head of the EU office to appear was to have that detailed dialogue. I propose to assert that to the minister; we will see what response we get.
That is fair enough, but I urge caution if we are to invite representatives of the Executive's Finance and Central Services Department to give us comprehensive information. I doubt whether our clerks' word-processors have the capacity to download all that stuff.
We are looking for an idea of what the Executive intends to do on the front foot.
That is fair enough.
I do not want trees to be culled to put that into practice, but it would be nice to have an idea of what the Executive proposes to achieve.
The slight risk of entering a war of attrition exists. That would not be useful to the committee or anybody else.