Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, January 13, 2022

Official Report 490KB pdf

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Cross-Party Groups

Agenda item 2 is consideration of applications for recognition from four proposed cross-party groups.

The first group that we will consider is a proposed CPG on beer and pubs. I welcome Craig Hoy MSP, who is the proposed convener of the proposed group. Good morning, Craig. I invite you to make a short statement in relation to the proposed CPG.

Good morning, Mr Whitfield, and a happy new year to you and committee members.

On 7 December 2021, the cross-party group on beer and pubs held its inaugural meeting, in order to prepare for this meeting. That was in recognition of the fact that there are now more than 4,600 pubs and 120 breweries in Scotland. The industry is an emerging sector, and there is presently no committee or cross-party group looking after its interests within the Parliament. We also know that, as well as being an emerging sector, it is a sector that is presently at risk as a result of the Covid pandemic and the restrictions that were imposed on the hospitality sector.

The purpose of the CPG is to celebrate, recognise and enhance the contribution of the brewing and pub-related hospitality industry in Scotland. We hope that the CPG will operate through semi-regular meetings, occasional visits and an annual event at which the best of Scotland’s beer and pub sector can be showcased.

The CPG will aim to develop constituency-level awareness of the contribution of the beer and pub sector as well as an awards programme to encourage recognition of local pubs and breweries. I believe that the convener recognises that contribution due to the fact that, while serving as a member of Parliament, he nominated my local pub in East Lothian, the Tyneside Tavern—one of many excellent pubs in East Lothian and across the south of Scotland—for a local pub award.

The CPG will also provide a forum in which to discuss the policies that will impact on the beer and pub sector and affect beer drinkers and pub goers across Scotland. We will also look closely at the important issues of responsible drinking, the social impact of alcohol and the public health implications.

We understand that beer and pubs play a huge part in every region that we represent, socially and economically, and that they are job and wealth creators. That will also be a core focus of the group.

With the committee’s permission, I would be the convener of the group and Paul Sweeney would be the vice-convener. We also have a wide range of prospective members from across all parties. The secretariat would be provided and supported by the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group, the Campaign for Real Ale—CAMRA—and the Society of Independent Brewers, which is known as SIBA. We would also be supported by the Scottish Beer and Pub Association. With that, I will hand back to the convener.

Thank you very much for that presentation. Before we take the matter further, I note, in stark black and white, my name as a member of the proposed CPG, which is slightly unfortunate. As you may be aware, I have said that, in order to provide the distance for this committee to operate and because of my role as convener, I will not be joining or associating with any CPGs. I would be grateful if that could be rectified.

I am very supportive of the pub trade and recognise its importance across Scotland. My question relates to the secretariat and the relationship between the CPG, which sits here, in the Scottish Parliament, and the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group, which sits in Westminster. Is it the case that the actual secretariat’s support and work would be provided by CAMRA and SIBA rather than by the APPG in Westminster?

To put it simply, it would be CAMRA and SIBA. However, Paul Hegarty from the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group attended as a guest and would be supportive in helping us establish some of the programmes that have been very successful at Westminster—such as the awards programme—as well as in relation to the possibility of getting a guest ale or beer into the parliamentary estate at Holyrood.

Thank you very much for that clarification.

No other committee members have questions for you. The committee will consider whether to approve the application for recognition under agenda item 3 and the clerks will inform you of the committee’s decision in due course. I thank you for coming along this morning.

Thank you very much for your time.

The next group that we will consider is a proposed CPG on maritime and shipbuilding. I welcome Paul Sweeney MSP, who is the proposed convener of the proposed group. Good morning, Paul, and happy new year. I invite you to give a short presentation to the committee about the intentions of the CPG.

Good morning, convener, and thank you for the invitation to address the committee.

The proposed establishment of a cross-party group on maritime and shipbuilding is the first time that such a group has been proposed in the history of the Scottish Parliament. It is a vital exercise. At more than 6,000 miles, Scotland’s coastline is longer than that of the People’s Republic of China. For centuries, the maritime and shipbuilding sectors have been critical to the prosperity of the country.

As we look towards the future—particularly given the climate emergency—the economic and social opportunity that the sector presents to Scotland is very significant. I therefore think that it is timely to consider the setting up of this CPG.

I initially gauged opinion informally during the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26—in Glasgow. I was able to secure the support of 15 colleagues for the creation of the cross-party group, which makes 16 members in total. We also secured the agreement of Maritime UK to provide the secretariat.

I am very pleased about the level of cross-party support for the objectives and intent of the CPG, which are to ensure that we have a focal point in our national Parliament to allow industry, trade unions and other stakeholders from across the country to come together and create a sounding board for the progress and development of the industry in Scotland. It will mean that we can be more responsive as a Parliament, hold the Government to account in relation to what it is doing to promote the sector, and give industry—and the workforce within it—a voice in the Parliament. On all those fronts, a cross-party group makes for a very good and worthwhile exercise.

There is a similar cross-party group on shipbuilding and ship repair in the House of Commons at Westminster, with which we hope to have a degree of collaboration in developing responses to things such as the United Kingdom Government’s national shipbuilding strategy, a new version of which is due to be published in the coming weeks. That is another reason why the setting up of a CPG is a timely exercise.

Thank you very much. I invite Edward Mountain to comment with regard to the proposed CPG. I will ask a couple of questions after that.

Thank you, convener. I will not be on any of the glamorous cross-party groups on topics such as beer. However, I have agreed to be part of this group because I think that it is really important. Having agreed to be part of it, I do not think that it is appropriate that I ask questions in relation to it. I simply wanted that noted.

Thank you for clarifying that. It is now on the record.

Paul, although the organisations that have expressed interest—in particular, Maritime UK, which will act as the secretariat—are relatively small in number compared with those on some CPGs, they cover a substantial part of the shipbuilding industry in Scotland. Will there be room for smaller players, if I can describe them as such? I see that you list the University of Strathclyde’s department of naval architecture, and I am aware of other technical courses that relate to shipbuilding. I presume that the CPG is open to an approach from such groups.

Absolutely. The list is just a starter for 10, and, as the CPG becomes better known, we will be more than happy to invite a broader cross-section of participation from across the industry.

Maritime UK has kindly and proactively agreed to steward the CPG by providing a secretariat. We have also had interest from BAE Systems, which is the biggest shipbuilding company in Scotland; the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland, which is a long-standing professional body for the industry; the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions; Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd, which is the public sector procurement agent for CalMac Ferries; and academia. It is a good cross-section of interest. We have had interest, subsequently, from Malin Marine Services, which is an SME that is operating in the shipbuilding and engineering sector in Glasgow. Interest is growing at a fair pace, and we hope to continue to elicit support as we go forward.

Excellent. I have a slightly cheeky question. Was it a slight surprise to find that there was no pre-existing cross-party group on shipbuilding in Scotland?

I suppose that it is an issue of capacity. After taking out Government ministers and other members who cannot participate in CPGs, the number of members who are available to participate in any given CPG is quite restricted. I have a personal interest in the industry, having worked in the sector previously, so I felt that there was a gap in the market in which to set it up. I am grateful to colleagues for their support, and I hope that the CPG’s first year will be a success.

Excellent. Elena Whitham has a question.

Thank you, convener, and welcome, Paul. I have a quick question on the cross-CPG working that could perhaps happen. I am a member of the cross-party group on recreational boating and marine tourism, as is Stuart McMillan, who I note is on the membership list for your proposed CPG. Will there be plans to ensure that, where we can, we dovetail and work together? Do you anticipate that that will happen?

Absolutely. Thank you very much for that comment, because that is exactly what we want to achieve. Even in conversations that we have had during initial informal meetings when considering setting up the CPG, a large amount of opportunity has presented itself, with companies saying that they want to bring everyone’s attention to and increase the level of interest in building boats and ships in Scotland. There is so much work out there to be done. If we tie all the ideas together, we can seriously increase the number of jobs and amount of employment in the sector. There could be more manufacturing of recreational boats, and skills and apprenticeships—that is just one example. From fish farming to lifeboats and from offshore support vessels to bigger vessels such as ferries and cruise ships, there is a huge area of opportunity for us, so it is crucial that we tie together adjacent CPGs to ensure that we make the most of it.

Thank you very much. I am excited about the opportunity.

Do any other committee members have a question that they would like to pose? I take the general silence as a no.

Thank you for attending, Paul. The committee will consider whether to approve the application for recognition under agenda item 3. The clerks will inform you of our decision thereafter.

Thank you, convener.

The next group that we will hear from is a proposed CPG on poverty. I welcome to the meeting Beatrice Wishart, who would be the deputy convener of the proposed group. I invite you to make an opening statement setting out the ideas behind the CPG.

Thank you, convener. Good morning to you and the committee members.

The cross-party group on poverty aims to act as a forum for exploring the drivers of and solutions to poverty in Scotland. It would act to connect MSPs with organisations that are working to tackle poverty, as well with people who are living on low incomes across Scotland, in order to better inform anti-poverty policy making and contribute to the ending of poverty in Scotland, which I think everybody in the Parliament wants to see.

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The group intends to explore the drivers of poverty and the different experiences of it across Scotland, covering issues such as stigma, rurality, race and disability as well as looking at the particular risk of poverty that is experienced by certain groups such as lone parents. We are keen to explore how we can gain greater consensus on the need to tackle poverty across political parties and Scottish society at large. Given that more than a million people in Scotland live in the grip of poverty, we believe that the group is hugely necessary and can make a real contribution towards on-going efforts to prevent and reduce poverty in Scotland’s communities.

Already, we have been hugely encouraged by the enormous interest that we have seen in the group’s work. Both the inaugural meeting and a subsequent informal meeting of the group attracted a large and diverse group of organisations and individuals. Many of those organisations are smaller, community-based organisations, which often struggle to have their voices heard in policy-making processes or in the Parliament, and we hope that the group will act as a forum for them to help to shape and influence discussions around poverty in Scotland.

Subject to the committee’s decision, the group’s convener will be Neil Gray and the deputy conveners will be Pam Duncan-Glancy, Jeremy Balfour and me. The secretariat for the group will be provided by the Poverty Alliance, Scotland’s national anti-poverty network. We believe that it is the first-ever cross-party group on poverty, and we consider that it is in the public interest that MSPs of all parties, alongside expert stakeholders, work together to tackle poverty in Scotland.

Thank you very much, Beatrice. Before we move on, Bob Doris would like to put something on the record.

Our papers note that, if the cross-party group was to get the approval of the committee, I would be a member. I attended the first meeting, which Beatrice Wishart spoke about. Clearly, therefore, I may be a bit prejudiced—in a positive sense—as to whether the group should go forward. Ms Wishart, I very much hope—I am sure—that it will draw on the lived experience of those who have had to endure poverty not just currently but over a number of years.

Thank you, Bob. Your interest is noted on the record.

Beatrice, you have a substantial list of organisations, and you rightly pointed out that, often, those that are working in that field are small and are located in one geographical area but are doing extremely good work. If the proposed CPG goes ahead, will it be open to other third parties to join and to bring their lived experience—and, I hope, solutions—to the appalling problem of poverty across Scotland?

Absolutely. We are just getting going, and, if more people want to be involved, the door is open. Everybody’s lived experience and, as you have said, smaller groups in communities all help, because the issue affects everybody across Scotland. That would be absolutely essential.

Excellent. Thank you for that. Since no other committee member wishes to raise a question, I thank Beatrice Wishart for attending. At agenda item 3, the committee will consider whether to approve the application for recognition. The clerks will inform you, Beatrice, of the committee’s decision thereafter.

Thank you, convener.

The final group that we will consider today is the proposed CPG on sustainable transport. I welcome Graham Simpson MSP, who is its proposed convener. Good morning, Graham. Will you make an opening statement about the intentions of the CPG?

Yes. Thank you, convener. It is a pleasure to join you this morning.

Before I get into my pitch for the CPG, I will just say how much I enjoyed the committee’s recent debate in the chamber. I thought that it was excellent, and I appreciated your kind comments afterwards, convener. During that debate, I mentioned—I am being really cheeky here, but this is to inform the committee—that I have a proposed member’s bill coming up. The consultation for that will go live next Thursday, and I will send it to the committee.

Having got that out of the way, I will talk about the CPG on sustainable transport. The background is that, in the previous session, there was a CPG on cycling, walking and buses and a separate CPG on rail. Those of us who were members of one or both of those groups got together and decided that it would make sense to merge them and call it the cross-party group on sustainable transport. Those who were involved in those—[Interruption.]

It appears that Mr Simpson’s video feed has frozen, and I do not know whether we will be able to return to it. I will give him a moment.

From looking at the BlueJeans attendance list, I think that we may well have lost Mr Simpson—unfortunately, he has dropped offline. Ah, the travails of information technology. I think that this has happened in order to give us more evidence for later discussion.

For the record, I thank Mr Simpson for his comments about our debate and the discussions that we had afterwards. In eager anticipation, I look forward to his bill winging its way to us.

I am not getting any indication that Mr Simpson is going to be able to rejoin us. I therefore move to agenda item 3, which is formal approval of the three cross-party groups that we have heard from this morning, on beer and pubs, maritime and shipbuilding, and poverty. Does any member have comments or views to express before I formally put the proposal to the committee? There is no indication that anyone has, so I formally propose that the three CPGs—on beer and pubs, maritime and shipbuilding, and poverty—be accorded recognition. Are we in agreement?

Members indicated agreement.

Excellent. I suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.

09:52 Meeting suspended.  

09:58 On resuming—