European Committee, 10 Sep 2002

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 10, 2002

Official Report 249KB pdf

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Cohesion Policy and Structural Funds Inquiry

The next item deals with a draft report on structural funds. We have received a positive response from the Executive. I understand that the Commission's DG regio has also responded positively to our report and has promised to study our findings in detail. That is encouraging.

I am not sure how colleagues will feel, but one or two of you may want to follow up the matter with the Commission to ensure that our findings do not simply lie on someone's desk somewhere. We have a promise that they will be studied in detail, so it may be worth while for someone to take the matter up with the Commission before reporting to the committee and the Parliament.

We would all agree that structural funds are of major importance to Scotland. We put a great deal of time and effort into our report and it should be given due consideration. The clerks will be able to see whether a meeting can be arranged, perhaps when someone is in Brussels anyway. I know that Helen Eadie and Ben Wallace will be looking at European institutions and I have to go to the Committee of the Regions, so we may be able to work in a visit and take the opportunity to press our case. Do members agree?

Members indicated agreement.

The clerks have made a number of recommendations and I assume that members have read that paper. We welcome the Executive's principle of openness and inclusiveness, although we may want to ask for clarification on it, to ensure that the committee is involved in future discussions. Obviously, we got in early on the issue, whereas the Executive is still forming its opinions and taking part in discussions. However, we should be kept briefed on the Executive's changing position.

In paragraph 6 of the clerks' paper, the suggestion is that we request a firmer and clearer policy from the Executive on renationalisation. That is probably one of the biggest issues that the report dealt with. We acknowledge that there is still some way to go on the consultation but, once the Executive has heard from a range of bodies across Scotland, it should take the time to communicate its views to the committee and to the Department of Trade and Industry.

In paragraph 7, the suggestion is that we endorse the call that any move on issues to do with geographic disadvantage and urban deprivation should be supported by robust evidence. We may wish to ask the Executive to commission some research to provide that evidence.

I fully endorse that, but we must point out robustly to the Executive that we need that information. We should say strongly that there is a real requirement for research as early as possible.

I think that we would all agree with that.

That could be done in collaboration with the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions of Europe, which has done work on such issues. There could be liaison and dialogue.

That would be important. We have had the CPMR along to evidence sessions and the witnesses were useful in keeping us informed of developments. As with any of our reports, we should see this one not as an end but as continuing work that forms part of the committee's lobbying activities.

We move now to paragraph 9. Our report mentioned know-how transfer to accession countries. The clerks suggest that we ask the Executive to keep the committee informed of activity in that area and to encourage the public and private sectors to get involved. We discussed that when taking evidence.

Have we skipped paragraph 8?

I had assumed that everyone would agree with paragraph 8, but let us go back to it. Was there something that you wanted to point out?

I wanted to say that the issue raised in paragraph 8—mainstreaming—is so important that we should not only seek clarification of where we are now but ask why the issue was not contained in the Executive's response. Was that an oversight—and potentially an extremely important oversight?

We can agree to raise that issue.

That brings us to the accession countries, on which I think we are all in agreement. The committee felt strongly about encouraging public sector and private sector involvement post-enlargement.

Paragraph 10 of the paper proposes that the committee ask the Executive

"to develop a policy in due course, which takes into account the firmly held views of Members of the Committee, and communicate this to the Committee and the DTI."

The committee felt that we might need to increase the budget for that policy. It is important to get a response from the Executive on that. Are we agreed on paragraph 10?

Members indicated agreement.

Paragraph 11 concerns the need to adapt structural funds to cover asymmetric shocks to regional economies. I mentioned that in the evidence taking. The CPMR agreed with us on the matter. In its response, the Executive says that it feels that structural funds are for planned investment rather than one-off responses.

It is up to the committee whether to emphasise the point again. When we discussed the issue, it was widely felt that, instead of the Council of Ministers sitting up for nights on end trying to agree flood programmes, we should set aside a contingency fund for such disasters. Do we want to press that point?

The issue has emerged again in the past few weeks in light of what happened in mainland Europe. We are entirely in harmony with the general feeling in Europe.

It would be unfortunate if such a contingency fund were to be established at the expense of structural funds. The money must come from somewhere, but it would be better from the point of view of our overriding objectives for the future of structural funds if the contingency fund to deal with disasters were a new, free-standing fund rather than money that was siphoned off from funds that are already under pressure and that are important to Scotland.

We must make that clear. In our request for a Community instrument, we must indicate that a contingency fund must not suck its budget from other declared budgetary areas.

We are all familiar with the problems of underspend at the end of a financial year. Money could be siphoned off from underspend in the budget and set aside for one-off difficulties.

The argument is running regardless of whether we contribute to it. The Germans are running madly with it.

Exactly. We should continue to press our case on the matter.

Paragraph 12 concerns our comments on a ward-based approach to funding objective 2 areas. We are asking for research to consider possible alternatives. In Scotland, we have often left things to the last minute. What we are saying relates to the point that we made at paragraph 7: if we prepare early and have good, robust statistics, we can determine how Scotland can get the best deal out of structural funds. However, we need to have the robust statistics on which to base the research.

That is important. We have always considered geographical areas, but there are often communities of interest that need to be served—for example, disabled people or very young people. It would be useful to have further research into alternative approaches.

We are agreed on that point.

That takes us to the final paragraph, which is about the principle of tripartite agreements. Throughout our discussions over several years, the committee has emphasised the idea of our having direct access to the European Commission on a number of areas, such as pre-legislative scrutiny. That is in keeping with the views that we expressed in our "Report on the Governance of the European Union and the Future of Europe: What Role for Scotland?" Do members agree to the recommendation in the final paragraph?

Members indicated agreement.

We will ask the clerks to prepare a response to the Executive. It should generally welcome the positive response that we have received thus far and ask for clarification on certain points.