Official Report 116KB pdf
My goodness, we have reached the final agenda item, which is the convener's report. I refer to paper EU/S2/06/2/4.
I think that the Cod Crusaders said that the petition had been submitted to the European Parliament—it did not specify that it had been sent to the European Parliament's Committee on Petitions. The petition may be elsewhere in the European Parliament. Perhaps it is with the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, the Committee on Fisheries or another committee.
Alasdair Rankin has told me that he has asked the Cod Crusaders to check whether the petition has been submitted in any other way, but the organisation has not yet come back on the matter. There could well have been a misunderstanding.
I am happy to note the letters, which are helpful. They underline what I thought the position was at the previous meeting, which Gordon Jackson clearly expressed. Having an inquiry may not be the best approach because I do not think that the committee will reach agreement on anything in the wording of the petition. Ross Finnie's letters clearly bear that out.
We will wait and see what comes back from the Environment and Rural Development Committee.
Does the item have anything to do with the Dunfermline by-election?
We will ignore that remark.
I think that Jim Wallace suggested at the previous meeting that we should take evidence and ask someone from the Executive—not necessarily a minister—to come along to a meeting to tell us a little bit about how the project is developing and rolling out. That would be helpful.
You might remember that we tried to get someone to come along, but the problem was that no one was available. By sheer chance, of the two officials who are actively involved in the project one was off on holiday or something and the other was away at a conference on the day of our meeting. If you think that such an approach would still be useful a bit further down the line—
It might be if there is something to discuss, but discussing matters in the abstract might be a bit awkward.
Have we received a written brief on the project?
No. That is the issue—we have not received anything. I suggest that we ask Alasdair Rankin to keep in touch with his counterpart in the working group to check what is happening. Meanwhile, we will continue to do what we intended to do. When we reach the appropriate point, at which probing and discussing the project further is worth while, an official who is dealing with the project could come to a meeting to discuss it.
I think that we asked whether our parliamentary officer could attend the conference on democracy, dialogue and debate. I understand that he did so.
He loved every minute of it.
I understand that he is preparing a written report for us, which I hope will be considered at a future meeting. Is he doing so?
Yes.
It looks as if Alasdair Rankin wants to tell me something.
A report has been produced and can be circulated to members.
Has a report been produced already? My goodness. The staff are so efficient.
On the theme of building bridges with communities in other parts of Europe, the presentation that we were given before the meeting was the best thing that we have heard for some time.
It was excellent.
The people involved should be seconded on to the project. There are certainly lessons to be learned about bottom-up rather than top-down approaches.
Yes. The next time that we discuss properly plan D for democracy, dialogue and debate and the building a bridge project in general, it would be worth discussing what is happening on the ground and whether we can note such things as part of our response. The presentation was super.
I wonder whether it would be worth while if the clerks wrote to the local authorities, for example. I think that I mentioned to the convener before the meeting that my local authority is actively involved in educational links with Europe and in involving young people in bilateral conferences, workshops and so on. That is not simply about learning languages; it is about cultural development, historical links and, in my area, maritime links. It might be useful to find out about those. If my local authority has an active role, other local authorities will have an active role, too. Perhaps writing to the local authorities could be part of the trawl of information.
Perhaps the first step should be to check whether the Executive is doing that as part of its project. If it is not, we can perhaps plug the gap.
I do not disagree with Irene Oldfather, but we should note what was said in the presentation. The local authority's involvement was pretty minimal. That is not a criticism of the local authority, but the approach was perhaps a strength of the project. Irene Oldfather has made an important point, but such a trawl would miss out such projects.
We are in limbo until we know what the Executive is doing. We should get a wee bit further down the line and then have a fuller discussion.
What we heard about sounded like an example of very good practice that has evolved in a community, which could usefully be replicated in other parts of Scotland, if not other parts of the European Union. We heard only one presentation—
There must be other examples.
The presentation was quite inspiring.
It was.
There should be a vote of thanks to the convener.
Our next meeting will be after the recess, on 28 February.
Meeting closed at 14:19.
Previous
Sift