European Committee

The first year of operation for the European Committee has been a challenging one.

European Community law and the implications for Scotland of decisions taken by the EC/EU is a subject of immense complexity, enough so that it merited a completely separate concordat (agreement) between the Scottish Executive and Whitehall.

The Committee has met on 18 occasions during the period for this annual report. Of these meetings, none were held fully in private, with only 2 containing an item taken in private.

The European Committee has taken its role of "policing" the handling of EC/EU business in Scotland very seriously. One of the main activities over the year has been to scrutinise, at as early a stage as possible, how the Scottish Executive has presented the Scottish case as part of the development of a UK negotiating line for any draft European legislation and to the assess how the Executive has, or will, implement such legislation when passed. The scrutiny of draft European legislation has led the Committee to investigate and analyse over 1,100 items emanating from Brussels. The objective for the Committee is to encourage Scotland's views to be heard in relation to these new laws and to make the process more transparent.

The Committee has also been active, under its own initiative, in investigating a broader range of European-related issues of interest to organisations and the people of Scotland as a whole. The major focus of the year as a Committee has been to conduct a series of inquiries on the past and future management and plans for the next round of European Structural Funds.

Individual Members of the Committee have also acted as reporters enquiring into a range of subjects in the environmental policy, agricultural, economic and social fields.

In doing so, the Committee has taken on board the need for accessibility and, from the outset, chosen the challenge of trying to communicate the benefits of EU membership to a wider Scottish society. The Committee has organised informal seminars, funded through the Civic Participation scheme (e.g. 17 March 2000, Stirling), and has taken the whole Committee out for a formal meeting in Glasgow, the first in the city (17 January 2000). Moreover, the Committee has published 4 versions of "Europe Matters", its electronic newsletter, which is sent to about 200 plus recipients in the UK as well as being placed on the web.

The Committee has travelled further afield, completing a successful three-day fact-finding visit to Brussels, where they met Commission President Romano Prodi, Commissioner Fischler, MEPs and other dignitaries, as well as visiting Scotland House and Scotland Europa. These fact-finding and briefing meetings to the institutions will become a regular occurrence as the Committee seeks to develop early intelligence on forthcoming issues.

In a more "diplomatic function", delegations have been received by the Committee from Sachsen-Anhalt (Eastern Germany), the Swedish Parliament (twice), the Norwegian Parliament, the Basque Regional Government (Spain) as well as from the Luxembourg, German and French Embassies. Officials also held a video-conference with the Committee with the Finnish Parliament.

Finally, within Scotland, regular meetings are held to exchange information with the President of CoSLA, all Scottish MEPs and with politicians/ officials from the UK and devolved assemblies, with plans for ongoing meetings.

All in all it has been a challenging year. It is the Committee's intention now to review how it works, to best make use of its resources and to serve the Parliament and the people of Scotland to the best of its abilities.

Finance Committee

The Finance Committee was the first of the Parliament's committees to meet.

Since its inaugural meeting on 22 June last year, the Committee has met 21 times and considered items in private on 9 occasions, although no meetings were held entirely in private. The Minister for Finance has appeared on 7 occasions before the Committee.

From the outset, the Committee has been active in its principal task which is to lead on behalf of the Parliament in the scrutiny of the Scottish Executive's expenditure proposals. This function is the result of the work of the Financial Issues Advisory Group (FIAG), a subset of the Consultative Steering Group (CSG), which produced innovative recommendations for the budget scrutiny and approval process. Much of the Committee's work in the first year has been dictated by the need to set down ground rules for the way this procedure will work in future years.

Several of FIAG's recommendations on the budget process were implemented in the Public Finance and Accountability (Scotland) Act 2000, in respect of which the Finance Committee shared responsibility with the Audit Committee at stages 1 and 2. This was the first piece of legislation passed by the Parliament using pre-legislative scrutiny. The Act has since been supplemented by written agreements between the Parliament and the Executive which lay down the detailed arrangements. Throughout, the Committee was keen to impress on the Minister the need for the budget process to be as accessible as possible and as a result, the Minister made several concessions.

The annual process will be a partnership between the Parliament and the Executive - the budget which is passed in February will be the product of prolonged and informed scrutiny which involves the people of Scotland. Just as committees in the Scottish Parliament have the opportunity to introduce legislation, the Finance Committee has the option of recommending to the Parliament an alternative set of spending proposals to those put forward by the Executive.

A Budget Act in respect of 2000/01 was passed in February and by the end of the parliamentary year, the scrutiny process had already begun for the 2001/02 budget. The Committee issued guidance to the subject committees and will co-ordinate the responses of the subject committees to the Executive's draft expenditure proposals.

The Committee has been keen to foster a mutually beneficial work relationship with the Executive and has on several occasions sought to broaden its understanding of the often complex areas of public expenditure by taking evidence from the Minister for Finance and receiving briefings from senior officials in the Executive.

In spring 2000, the Committee undertook an inquiry into the finance functions of the Scottish Executive - to enable members of the Committee to understand the role and workings of the Executive as part of their commitment to the budget process. As part of this wide-ranging inquiry, the Committee heard evidence from executives from the private sector, officials from local authorities, academics and a senior official from HM Treasury.

Health and Community Care Committee

Since the Committee first met in June 1999 it has undertaken a significant amount of work covering many diverse subjects.

In the course of the Parliamentary year the Committee has held a total of 28 meetings. Of these meetings 17 had only public business on the agenda, 10 meetings had both public and private items and only 1 meeting was held totally in private.

In the spirit of openness and accessibility the Committee has heard oral evidence from nearly 40 individuals and groups and in the first year published 16 reports.

A demonstration of the Committee's commitment to access by the public and ability to respond quickly is shown by two, in-depth, inquiries held as a result of petitions sent to the Committee. One of the petitions covered ward closures at Stracathro Hospital, Angus and the other concerned the siting of a medium secure unit at Stobhill Hospital, Glasgow. The Committee took the view in both cases that it would not consider the merits of decisions taken at a local level but would look at the wider strategic issues. As a result of the Committee's investigations recommendations were made to the Executive, the main thrust of these was to recommend the creation of guidelines for Health Boards for informing, engaging and consulting with staff and the general public on new proposals. The Stracathro petition became the subject of the first full plenary debate based on committee work and was debated in the Chamber on 16 March 2000.

The Committee has used the system of appointing reporters to great effect. The work carried out on the Stobhill petition involved the use of a reporter, Dr Richard Simpson MSP. He is a member of the Committee and was delegated to gather evidence on the Committee's behalf from a considerable number of organisations and visited them in Glasgow. He went on to submit his findings to the Committee which formed the basis of the Committee's report.

The reporter system was also used when the Committee considered the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Bill. When considering, as secondary committee, this piece of legislation the Committee had very limited time in which to take evidence and appointed a reporter, Ben Wallace MSP. In addition members also attended meetings of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee to hear evidence which went on to shape the legislation.

The Committee has also conducted major inquiries into the allocation of resources within the National Health Service in Scotland (the Arbuthnott Report) and made a substantial number of recommendations to the Executive. The Committee has undertaken an inquiry into community care provision in Scotland. Regarding community care, the Committee has particularly focused on the care of the elderly and on mental health issues, which are felt by the Committee to be neglected areas that deserve a higher profile. The Committee also carried out a series of fact finding visits throughout Scotland in relation to this inquiry.

The scrutiny of subordinate legislation forms a substantial part of the Committee's workload. The Committee also scrutinised nearly 50 Scottish Statutory Instruments which add detail to Acts of the Parliament. On a number of occasions the Committee has called the Minister for Health and Community Care to debate these regulations.

In the coming year the Committee will continue the work it has started and intends to play a full role in the examining health priorities and continue its rigorous scrutiny of the Executive, including a close examination of the budget process.

Justice and Home Affairs Committee

Since its first meeting in June 1999, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee has been one of the busiest in the Parliament, meeting for around three hours each week.

Particularly during the latter part of the year, the Committee has had an exceptionally heavy burden of legislation to deal with.

The Committee has attempted, throughout the year, to balance its role in handling legislation with a more pro-active scrutiny function. Members identified at the first meeting a range of areas of interest, and the Committee has kept these priorities under review during the year.

In particular, the Committee has considered ways in which the law could afford more protection to victims of domestic violence, perhaps by extending to all victims of actual or threatened violence the right to apply for an interdict with a power of arrest attached. The Committee has appointed a reporter to take this issue forward, and hopes to propose a Committee Bill in due course.

Another major area of concern has been with the prison system. The Committee began by considering the annual report by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, following which members visited two institutions particularly criticised in that report. Later in the year, the Committee took evidence on the Scottish Executive's decision to divert funding from the prison service, and the restructuring proposals that resulted. The Committee has also taken evidence on the particular problems affecting women prisoners, and has signalled an interest in the issues of young offenders and drugs in prisons.

The Committee has conducted Stage 1 and Stage 2 of two major Executive Bills - the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Bill and the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Bill. Despite fairly tight timetables, the Committee took a wide range of evidence on each, and succeeded in achieving important improvements to both Bills during their passage. The Committee was also lead committee for Stage 1 of the controversial Member's Bill to abolish poindings and warrant sales.

The Committee produced a substantial report on a petition by the Carbeth Hutters' Association, took evidence on petitions relating to road accident deaths, and responded to the Executive's consultation on freedom of information. At the end of the Parliamentary year, the Committee was engaged in scrutinising the Executive's budget proposals for 2001-02 and taking evidence on the draft Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Scotland) Bill.

In all its work, the Committee has striven to achieve a constructive, non-partisan and - where possible - consensual approach. It has developed an effective relationship with the Executive which recognises the Executive's right to pass legislation efficiently, while vigorously asserting the Committee's right to scrutinise, question and seek to improve that legislation in the process. It is perhaps significant that the Committee in its first year has needed to resort to a division only once in agreeing the conclusions of its reports.

The Committee met 31 times during the Parliamentary year. None of those meetings was held entirely in private, but items were taken in private at 16 meetings.

Local Government Committee

The eleven member Local Government Committee has the remit 'to consider and report on matters relating to local government.'

Within this broad framework, the Committee has aimed to retain a strategic overview of the local government field, while bringing a more focused level of scrutiny and investigation to the key issues.

The establishment of the Committee, along with other Scottish Parliament committees, coincided with the publication in June 1999 of the Report of the Commission on local government and the Scottish Parliament, (The McIntosh Report). The report's recommendations were wide-ranging and far-reaching, and the Committee decided to concentrate during the first few months of its existence on considering in detail the recommendations of the report. While the Committee took evidence from a wide range of individuals and organisations in relation to the McIntosh findings, it decided at an early stage that, in order to obtain first hand information on the possible implications of McIntosh across the country, it would be necessary to visit as many councils as possible. The Committee wrote to all 32 councils seeking responses to 10 core questions on issues arising from the McIntosh Report. Between November 1999 and February 2000, 'reporters' from the committee, with small groups of supporting members, visited 15 councils, to question senior members and officers on their responses to the core question, view examples of service provision and speak to council service users. The information gained from those visits - which encompassed urban, rural and island councils - was invaluable to the Committee in formulating its final response to the McIntosh Report.

The Committee also conducted an inquiry into the revaluation of non-domestic rates.

A total of 5 petitions were considered on a range of subjects. Over the course of the first year the Committee took evidence from almost 60 witnesses and published 9 reports.

The Ethical Standards in Public Life etc. (Scotland) Bill occupied the Committee for lengthy periods throughout the year, with the Committee taking the opportunity of publishing a pre-legislative scrutiny report on the draft Bill in addition to reporting on the general principles at Stage 1 of the legislative process. Most press attention focused on the section of the Bill concerned with the repeal of Section 2A of the Local Government Act 1986, and the Committee's Stage 1 report took into account the views of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee and Equal Opportunities Committee on this issue. However, the other aspects of the Bill also received detailed scrutiny from the Committee, and this resulted in the Executive bringing forward many significant changes to the Bill at both its second and third stage.

The Committee also passed its views to the Justice and Home Affairs Committee at stage 1 of the Abolition of Poindings and Warrant Sales Bill and also scrutinised 21 items of subordinate legislation.

The Committee has held a total of 25 meetings. Of those meetings 16 considered business only in public, while 8 considered both private and public business. Only one meeting was held completely in private.

Over the coming year, the Committee intends to carry out an inquiry into local government finance. The Committee will also be investigating a number of other issues including Best Value, Community Planning and the Power of Community Initiative, and the potential effects on local government of the Immigration and Asylum Act.

Other issues which the Committee is likely to consider further include reform of voting systems for local government, remuneration for councillors and other issues arising from the findings of the Kerley and McIntosh reports, prior to the anticipated introduction of further local government legislation in 2001. As part of these inquiries, the Committee will visit counterpart committees at other parliaments and assemblies in the UK and Republic of Ireland.