 I welcome to the 8th meeting of 2015 of the European External Relations Committee. I can make the usual request that mobile phones are switched off or on silent. Thank you very much. We've got a packed agenda this morning, so a swiftly moving on agenda item one is to discuss the Scottish Government's international framework. With us this morning, I'd like to welcome Cabinet Secretary Fiona Hyslopz, Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Europe and External Affairs. Colm Henry, who is the Deputy Director of the Head of the European Relations and Ian Donaldson, Deputy Director of the International Division. We'll come back to you all to the committee and we're looking forward to hearing from you this morning. I believe, Cabinet Secretary, that you've got a short opening statement. Thank you very much, convener. Thanks for inviting me to speak to you this morning. I know that over recent months your committee has been considering how the Scottish Government and its agencies engage internationally as the first strand of the Connecting Scotland inquiry. I provided written evidence on behalf of the Scottish Government to outline our international engagement. As I notified to the committee, we've published Scotland's international framework and policy statement and Scotland's action plan for EU engagement at the end of March. At the heart of these documents is the commitment and belief that Scotland is an outward looking nation and that the Scottish Government is committed to continuing EU membership in the European Union. The documents set out the strategic framework and priorities for the Scottish Government to its agencies and public bodies and the wider public sector going forward. They will guide our priorities for specific countries, for regions, for sectors and they also seek to embed internationalisation in all that we do. I want to outline the context and background to those publications. Scotland's economic strategy was published at the beginning of March. It set out internationalisation as one of four interlinked priority areas to help to deliver the Government's central purpose of sustainable economic growth to enable all Scotland to flourish. It supports the aims and ambitions of the First Minister's programme for government. On 25 March, we published the revised international framework, which, for the first time, was accompanied by a ministerial policy statement. The policy statement sets out current Government policy priorities. We will update the priorities and the external environment as the external environment changes. The framework is at a high level. It is a step change in how we collaborate the work across Government, public sector and third sectors in support of our internationalisation agenda and our strategic priorities. The framework sets out our ambitions for Scotland. It is people, businesses and institutions. There are four strategic international objectives. First, enhancing our global outlook. Secondly, strengthening our relationships and partnerships. Thirdly, increasing our reputation and attractiveness, and fourthly, engaging in the European Union. Our internationalisation agenda has to address two interlinked challenges. First, we must address capability at home through helping our people, institutions and businesses to better understand the international environment. We must support them in developing the skills that they need to engage, create and benefit from opportunities available overseas. Secondly, we must support the development of relationships and partnerships outside of Scotland to ensure that Scotland and our international partners flourish and the opportunities to influence global systems are maximised. Shortly after the international framework was published, we published our action plan on EU engagement on 27 March. That sets out how we will protect, strengthen and further enhance Scotland's place in Europe. Our objectives under the European action plan flow from the international framework. They are being a committed partner in Europe, promoting effective and meaningful reform in the EU, active participation in the EU to secure investment innovation and inclusive growth, and finally, strengthening partnerships with European states and regions. Securing more jobs, tackling inequality and creating wealth are at its heart. The action plan commits the Scottish Government to promote the benefits of EU membership while encouraging EU reform within the terms of the existing EU treaties. It is important to stress that, while allying to Scotland's economic strategy, the international framework is not only about economic gain. Scotland will continue to act as a good global citizen, promoting stability and equality and continuing our advocacy of human rights. Over the coming months, we will publish refreshed country plans for India, Pakistan and the Americas. We will also be developing an international trade and investment strategy and continue to look for ways to ensure that our international development programme maintains and intensifies its impact. We are also reviewing how we engage with our diaspora and the role of existing government and non-government networks in promoting Scotland. We are keen to broaden the notion of diaspora beyond the traditional sense to include those such as recent students with an affinity for knowledge of contemporary Scotland. We are also looking beyond purely economic indicators of international reach to include greater emphasis on cultural relations and diplomacy, and we also wish Scotland's relationship with our diaspora to be genuinely a two-way relationship. Finally, I am sure that the committee is aware that the First Minister's programme for Scotland included a commitment to develop international one-Scotland partnerships and innovation and investment hubs over the coming years. Further detail will be made available as planning is taking forward with all our different partisan stakeholders. As always, I will inform the committee as we publish further documents, and I hope that those brief introductory remarks give some context to where we have got to and also our prospects in taking the international agenda forward. I look forward to answering your questions. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary—very comprehensive. I ticked off the first two questions that I was going to ask you because you have already answered them. I am going to move on to some other things. In your contribution there, you mentioned the four priorities and then the sub-sections of that, part of that being relationships and partnerships. I was wondering if you could give us any practical examples of how that has been developed and any examples of where you have done some work on that. I know that you have recently undertaken some work in the United States in building and reinforcing some of the partnerships there. The one thing to make it quite clear is that the international framework was developed by a process of engaging with a whole range of different people in Scotland. This is not a Scottish Government document. It is actually for the whole of Scotland. In terms of business interests and the other aspects, I will give a very practical example from the United States that is in relation to our universities. Our universities are becoming more connected. In fact, Connect Scotland is one of the programmes that they are working with across all the universities and the funding council and relevant agencies. How we can work better in co-ordinate activities is going to be very important going forward. As I am sure that you experienced in the United States, the extensive reach of people who are alumni from our universities has great opportunity for us. Obviously, as individual institutions, universities might be quite protective of, particularly for fundraising purposes, not least of their alumni base, but what they are now identifying is the opportunity to co-ordinate some of that activity. There is also now developed a Scottish alumni programme, which is across all the different universities, because there is a merit in identifying support for that. That comes back to my point about the diasporas, not just about people who were born in Scotland who work elsewhere. We have now got a tremendous cohort of individuals who have had an amazing experience in Scotland who have come from other countries, studied here, perhaps returned to their own country or elsewhere, but travelled with them at knowledge and understanding and good will towards Scotland and how we can help to mobilise that to help new business starting, et cetera. That is maybe a practical example. That is when we talk about the one in Scotland partnerships in particular, and that is not just about public agencies. We have got to identify how we can look at mobilising other interests, but the first start has to be about how we better co-ordinate our own public agencies when we are in country. Obviously, we are looking at each one will be different and maybe we will come on to that, but each one will be different. I think that we have to mobilise all the skills and talents of Scotland of which education is clearly one of them. I absolutely agree with you. I had the pleasure to be at a Glasgow Caledonia university event in New York, where there was a alumni from nine different Scottish universities and colleges, and lots of people there who either studied here or have subsequently went and lived in the States. It is a very successful event, indeed, and a lot of potential there. One of the things that you mentioned was part of the relationships and partnerships in building our international reputation about securing jobs, but one of the key elements of that was tackling inequality and promoting equality. Do you mind, given that committee, some of your thoughts on the potential of any threat to the ECHR or the human rights legislation across the UK? Absolutely. The Scottish Government has got clear in its opposition to the proposal from the UK Government to abolish the Human Rights Act. Embedded in our activity and in our international positioning is our belief in the importance of human rights. That human rights is not just in terms of international rights as we see in terms of security and the rights of people across the globe, but there are practical applications in relation to employment rights and issues that affect everyday life in terms of people's terms, conditions and how they operate. It is also about a sense of justice of the type of country that we are, and human rights has been very much central and part of our international development framework, for example. It is also very much part of our different country plans and how we approach things. There is a respect for Scotland and its approach in that. That is a value that could quite easily be diminished by proposals from the UK to march this country out of human rights agenda. Thank you, cabinet secretary. Jimmy, do you want a supplementary on that point? Just on that point, absolutely. I would just like to ask the cabinet secretary to elaborate on the reforms that the Scottish Government would like to see in the EU. We have prepared and published our EU reform package. We did that some time ago and sent it to the committee. We have been very active and responsible participants in looking at what the last UK Government called the balance of competencies review. By and large, there are findings that are very similar to the UK's findings. By and large, the balance of competencies between the UK and the EU has been fair and proportionate. However, there are issues that we need to make sure that we can try and reform, particularly in relation to a greater focus on practical jobs and services. Regulations, for example, must meet that. We should try and make sure that we can improve the subsidiarity in relation to decision making, where we can, where it is practical. In some areas where competencies are clearly cross-border, environment is a very clear one, where the evidence was absolute that, by and large, environmental competencies made sense. In terms of that decision making, we think that there are practical things that can be done. I am happy to send the Scottish Government's plans for EU reform document to you again, as I did previously. However, I am happy to refresh the committee on our thinking in that area. In your papers, Jamie, you have those documents in your papers. I know, I just wanted to ask one of the questions in our papers too. I will come back to you on that. Willie Coffey Yesterday, the First Minister said that Scotland's relationship with the UK cannot possibly be the same now, since it was before the events last week in the election. Do you see an opportunity to review and refresh even our own actions plan and international framework in that context to gain greater influence for Scotland perhaps within the European Union and beyond that? Do you look at our own plans and see an opportunity there to strengthen Scotland's position in Europe and the world? The plan is to do what we want to do. That maintains that you have set out in terms of our ambitions, whether it is in terms of the economy or influencing decision-making issues, and the opportunity that the recent results of the UK general election provides us is with an opportunity of how we do that. The Smith commission is very basic and very cursory in that area. There has to be a respect agenda that acknowledges the strength of Scottish feeling about the importance of enhanced powers but also enhanced influencing. The Scottish voice being heard at Westminster is not just about Westminster, it is being heard in Europe. We come back to the situation that Richard Lochhead was in Europe on Monday, again arguing the Scottish Government's position. We are very aware that, within the current operation of the UK Government, when we go to Europe and due to be at the Audiovisual Council on Tuesday next week, our position has to be an agreed position with the UK, but there is absolutely no reason why, whether it is an environmental council where we have huge experience in terms of the contribution that we make on some of the energy issues and some of the issues that I know that members have been interested in, we can and should lead the UK delegation because of the experience and position and the priority interests that we have in different areas. I think that that position now is unquestionable and it would be folly, indeed, for the UK Government to deny that voice to be heard, not just within Westminster but also within Brussels. Some of the issues that have come up at this committee over the period that I have been a member are things like negotiations on fishing, capped forms, things like that. Post-study work visas, for example, are issues too that I have been interested in, particularly in Scotland, and also branding Scotland internationally, which is sometimes through the doors and auspices of the UK agencies and so on abroad. Do you see real opportunities there to develop those opportunities for Scotland and to take the opportunity to brand Scotland internationally a wee bit better? Absolutely. That is why the One Scotland partnerships will seek to do, as will the innovation investment hubs. Also, if you are looking about promoting a country, we punch way above our way in terms of the influence we have. The fantastic year that we had last year in 2014 gave us an enormous platform, as I think we have discussed previously. The electoral experience that we had in the last week has also given a great deal of attention to Scotland and our interests. Of course, we have got real strengths in terms of our university education, for example. I have just talked about in terms of our investment in innovation in certain areas that we are world leaders, so branding that is very important indeed. It is interesting that, in the work that I have been monitoring of the committee in relation to what other either nations or regions would do, there is a great deal more that we can do in that area. It would be foolish of the UK Government not to recognise the calling card strengths that the Scottish brand has, but we have to make sure that we mobilise all the resources that we have. Until such time as we have full control of the resources that we might need to do that, we will have to work constructively and in partnership with our UK colleagues, whether it is in the FCO, UKTI or whoever. Final question in this convener. Just looking more locally in Scotland, cabinet secretary, later on we will hear from someone from the West of Scotland European Forum. I am wondering how our action plans and strategies at a national level for Scotland impact on local organisations across Scotland, for example the West of Scotland European Forum, and how it would develop and work with the Scottish Government to take forward that agenda locally. My colleagues might tell me if they were involved practically in the development of the framework, but part of what we did in producing the framework was to try and produce a strategic document that everybody who was facing outwardly across Scotland, whether it is in that particular partnership or indeed other agencies, could know that we are all pulling in the same direction. It is also about the networking that we can do within that, and there is always more to do whether it is public agencies working in the international space. Importantly, part of our internationalisation agenda is getting equipped domestically to be able to work better together. It has been creating the one appetite, but the network at home, not just abroad. That is where some of the strengths of the focus and the expectations from everybody will make a big difference. The Flemish Government points out that it uses something called the Flanders model, whereby it brings all the different aspects into one office. I was wondering whether, to ask the cabinet secretary, the Scottish Government has given any thought to adopting the Flanders house model to ensure that the international political, economic and cultural interests in each location are linked and located in one building. We are obviously very interested in what Flanders are doing. I met with the minister President in recent months. The Flanders example is interesting in lots of different ways, not least because it has a five-tier of constitutional responsibilities between the different state aspects of that country. In relation to international, the idea of having the Flanders house model or the one house model, we can do that in Brussels in terms of our presence here and the different aspects of whether it is culture, economic or political governmental. However, the challenge that we now have is how better can we do that. Our office in Toronto is a bit more mixed in relation to governmental and SDI, for example. I am keen that we have more of a co-ordination of bringing all the different public agencies activity together. It will be different in different countries because some may have more of a cultural focus, some may have more of an economic, some quite clearly is governmental space. Bearing in mind, we are about to go into spending review and budgets will be tight. The idea of changing things from a physical point of view in terms of offices will be a challenge, but the point about the one-Scotland partnerships that we want to evolve will be exactly what you are saying is how we can better bring together different agencies together. It won't necessarily be wholesale, but what we want to try and do is identify particular places to do that sooner rather than later. I think that there is great benefit to be had by that and bringing that together, but that would be a bit of an adjustment and change for different agencies. That is an interesting model that we have looked at. The Scotch whisky association has suggested that more could be done to ensure that the SDI has an appropriate world resource presence in new and emerging markets. It says that it welcomes the fact that it thinks that that is starting to happen, particularly in places such as Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and South America. Is that happening? What is the geographic length of your wishes for the SDI to be able to really help something like the Scotch whisky industry, which is obviously something that everybody recognises as Scottish? It is very important to Scotland. When we are refreshing our America's plan, it is an America's plan because it will combine emerging areas and Central and South America, not just North America, but the United States and Canada. That is an indication of what our thinking is in terms of our Government's refresh of our plans. In relation to the SDI, I would cross-refer the committee to the other committee of this Parliament that is looking at this area, and it was only yesterday that the Enterprise Committee and the Economy Committee published its plan. The detail that you are looking for has been published by one of your committees from the Parliament, which might be helpful for you to look at. However, SDI has opened up premises and offices in Brazil. I understand Ghana and Nigeria as well, and that is part of that development into Sub-Saharan or some of the aspects of Africa but also into Central America. Indeed, in relation to some of our energy interests, if you look at Mexico, for example, we had the president of Mexico with a team of different ministers who came to the UK and specifically wanted to have an event in Aberdeen because they wanted to meet with the industries, not just the producers, but particularly in relation to the oil services industry. SDI is very strongly involved in that activity. The follow-up to that activity, I met with the ministers as part of the Scottish Government's reception for them in the event that they held in Aberdeen. That is a practical example of where that is already happening. However, one of the big challenges that we have is that the Scottish whisky industry, for example, is well financed. It has gone through some challenges in terms of export figures in the most recent times. However, the big challenge on internationalisation is not necessarily the large companies that have successfully promoted themselves. It is the smaller companies that we really need to increase. That is what the other committee was looking at was to increase the capacity. That is what the capability at home issue is for smaller countries that have not exported because those countries that are involved in the export markets are more likely to innovate. If they innovate, that is obviously going to be a success factor for sustainability going forward. The answer is yes, not just for the Scottish Whisky Association to help to promote its activity overseas but also for smaller companies. Thank you very much. I have got another one, but I will come back later. If you can come back, Jamie Hanzala has got a supplementary question on part of your question. Just coming back from Jamie McGregor's questions, I realise that you mentioned that you were refreshing the Americas in terms of our representation. However, I was wanting to ask a more general question that currently we have offices or representations in various countries dotted around the world. I think that we are primarily based at the moment where we tend to be trading, but we do not have any cultural deep links in some of these places. I am wondering whether we intend to do that and also are we exploring any new sites that we want to have representation in, if you could maybe share some light on that? In relation to our economic interests, we are constantly refreshing where we need to be on a location. I have just given you a couple of examples in my answers to Jamie McGregor. As you will appreciate, my responsibilities are both for culture, European and external affairs. In relation to our cultural reach, I feel very strongly that whether it is using and deploying soft power or cultural diplomacy, the reach and range of what we can do in terms of understanding is very, very important indeed. Hamza Yousaf in recent weeks has been developing cultural connections, for example, in the Gulf States, in terms of the US. We have a greatly expanding range of reach. The reach is there. The issue is whether you have to have a physical location to do it. For example, in the National Theatre of Scotland, a fantastic production of Dunstanane toured. Our American office held events surrounding their activity in Chicago. They are about to do it with the Scottish Ballet, with Shiekharname Desire and Heimel Fling about to tour or touring as we speak in the US just now. The issue is whether you have a physical place or whether you make the most of the international touring. I have always made a point that, despite difficulties—again, I caveat that—the pressures ahead in terms of budgets will be severe. In relation to international touring, I have maintained that, because it is about making sure that we have that reach and range. That helps in a number of areas, but the impact of having top-quality cultural experiences is also about exchange. For example, in relation to the Scottish 10, the final one of our Scottish 10 is the Nagasaki Crane in Japan. The feedback has been tremendous about the impact that offering Scottish cutting-edge technology in the digital sphere, but helping the heritage and understanding the respect of the industrial heritage, not just of our own country but internationally, has an important impact and range. Indeed, when I was at the Ryder Cup, I was discussing the Nagasaki Crane with the Mitsubishi company, who are obviously major investors here in Scotland. They were very appreciative of the work that the Scottish Government has been doing. One of the things that I had picked up from previous evidence sessions that we have had in this committee in relation to some of the regional Governments in Europe who have got international connections of their own outwith their own Governments. I am just wondering whether we will learn some of those lessons and have representations, perhaps even in partnerships, in areas in which we already have a British presence. I am wondering whether the Scottish Government would look at replicating some of that, just in a bit to enhance the opportunity of having better trade and cultural links. Certainly, in potentially different areas, I will give you two examples. One is probably about nine different ministers' visits to East with Ireland since the autumn. There may be opportunities there that we can explore in terms of the wider international reach of what we might do in terms of how we can help to promote common interests. Procurement was quite interesting. I have spoken to companies where they have worked in procurement across Europe in the energy area between Scottish and Irish firms, for example, where the expertise of one complements the other. That is a practical example of what we can do and how we are trying to enhance those opportunities. That is why we have had Irish trade ministers here. I have been in Dublin. The other example is that we already lead quite a lot in Europe. The Vanguard initiative might be something that the committee might want to get a briefing on. The Economy and Enterprise Committee might be more familiar with it, but it is very important to bring together, and my colleagues will remind me of the numbers involved in the different regions. Those are regions of high growth in Europe that exchange agendas but also help to drive agendas. It is quite an interesting perspective. I met with a number of them when they were here in March. There was a major Vanguard initiative here in March. I spoke to the Deputy Mayor from Tampere and Finland, which is one of the areas where entrepreneurs enterprise is very strong. They want to work with people that they see as like-minded but also in terms of experience. That is to grow the European-wide economy. It is interesting to talk to European Commission officials. They recognise that sometimes resourcing and supporting the nations or our regions can be more effective in driving and making better use of the economic value of the money that comes from Europe in driving particular projects. Within the Vanguard initiative, Scotland is perceived as a leader in that area. My land is involved. I am trying to think of the different countries. We have South Denmark, Badden-Wittenburg and Saxony. We can provide a list of all the different Silesia, Catalonia and other areas. Cabinet Secretary, are we hoping to enhance that in number? If so, what are the possibilities? I am not sure that it will be up to us to enhance it. I think that part of it is that people want to partner with areas that they recognise as key economic drivers of strength. If you broaden it to include everybody, you might move at the slowest ship in the convoy. In terms of the economic experience, you want to get the powerhouse motors of economic growth to be powering ahead and sharing that experience. That group has been selected in such a way that it can drive that forward. I would like to reassure you that we are recognised for my discussions that I had in March as a key driver in that. Good morning, cabinet secretary. Going back to the international framework, you state that it will seek to influence the external environment and communicate or share the interests through engagement in multilateral forums such as the European Union and the United Nations. My question is how we are going to go about doing that, given that we are a sub-state government. Particularly how are we going to do that in the context of the big show that is coming up with regard to the UK's referendum on an in-out referendum in Europe? Quite clearly, the Scottish Government has got a particular viewpoint with regard to the referendum, the role of negotiations between the UK Government and the EU. Do you see the Scottish Government as a player in those negotiations? On that second point, we haven't waited until we knew whether there was going to be one Conservative Government or an in-out referendum to be arguing the case for continued membership and the importance of membership of the EU. We have already been arguing that point, not just domestically, but also making sure that our colleagues internationally and in Europe know of that. We have already, as you might be aware, produced the benefits of Scotland's EU membership. That has already been produced prior to the results of the Westminster election. It clearly makes it more acute now, because clearly there is going to be an in-out referendum. We will argue strongly the case for Scotland's outward-looking and self-interest in the connections with Europe from a jobs and economy point of view. However, it is also important to argue the case for Europe and its own merit as the peacehold co-operation. I have just been talking about the opportunity for economic growth where working partners—you couldn't be able to do all those partnerships that we have just been talking about in relation to whether it is the Vanguard initiative or others where we are not so fully participant in the EU. It is bringing it down again to jobs and services, protections of basic human rights, which are as much to do with employment as it is to do with the international rights of those seeking help internationally. Therefore, that is very essential. The UK Government has already conceded and acknowledged the importance of the Scottish voice in relation to reform of the European Union. That is why it invited us to take part in the balance of competencies review. That is why we also, in our participation constructively of that, have already provided an evidence base as to what we think can be improved and, indeed, what should remain the same. Clearly, the ambitions of the UK Government to have treaty change will be under great scrutiny and the capability of doing that will be very challenging indeed. On the position that has been put forward, of course we have to have a role and a voice in what happens in relation to those discussions, not just internally within the UK, but also directly so that our voice and our interests as a devolved Government can be heard, not just by the UK but also within Brussels. That is what we want to make sure can happen. However, it is not something that is about to happen. It is a position that we have already been discussing with all the international visitors that we have had since the referendum, for example, here in this city visiting the Government, but also in my international visits, which I will continue to do. Secondly, on international institutions, the UN, for example, will be also an important aspect of our involvement. A lot of it on a very practical and important basis, for example on climate change, is that we will continue to be recognised and positioned Scotland as a world leader in this area, but we are in terms of UN forums and the opportunities to influence that. We have already been recognised at UN level for that activity. I think that it is well recognised that Scotland has got a distinctive stance with regard to the relationship with the EU, not least as a consequence of the First Minister's statements during the recent general election campaign, which suggests that Scotland has supported continued membership of the EU and the rest of the UK, in particular England, voted to get out. That clearly has been established among our various partners in Europe as well. I heard Mario Monti during the Weekend on Newsnight interview. It seems to me that that will influence the negotiation between the UK Government and the European Union, Scotland's stance in this matter. Should that now give us a wee bit more leverage with regard to the UK Government and, indeed, the EU in these circumstances, is that something that you are aware of? I have made it clear that we have been arguing the position of the Scottish Government in relation to EU membership for some time. We have not waited to find out whether there will be a referendum or not, because the merits of Europe have to be argued on their own point. However, that also has the impact that you said that people are quite aware of our position. That may well have a bearing impact. It is critical to say that the proposal for a double lock is something that is familiar to other countries. The idea of a double majority should result in a majority to leave in one part of the UK, but not in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That should not allow the UK to leave. The point that the UK should not leave if one constituent part says that we want to stay is not something that is unusual in terms of constitutional politics. Indeed, in other areas and other countries such as Australia or Canada or even if you look at the United States in relation to some of the constitutional issues in relation to its construct. The UK will have to decide whether it wants to remain a country that has constituent and respected and equal membership of its constituent parts or whether it wants to railroad people's position against the will. The case still has to be argued on one in relation to what the public think in terms of that membership. However, it is clear that the interests of many people in this country and the common interests of European membership are something that we will continue to advocate and articulate not just within the United Kingdom but also internationally. The Scottish Government will heavily engage the UK Government on that particular point. We already have been in many different ways on saying that in relation to the new UK Government, I have yet to have a conversation with either Philip Hammond or David Leatington, who are continuing in their posts, but previously in relation to discussions with them and positions, it has now changed previously that it was not the UK Government's position to have a referendum because it was a coalition and one partner did not want to have the referendum. It is now a majority Conservative Government, which is obviously a different light, but I look forward to my constructive dialogue and discussions continuing with both Philip Hammond and David Leatington. Good morning, cabinet secretary and panel members. A lot of what you have said and set out with the international strategy and the aims that you are aiming to achieve, can you inform us on how you will be assessing that? The Government has established an assessment programme, which is the national performance framework, which we contribute to, as do all the Governments, but I think that that is where the measure can be affected. That is where you are identifying in terms of economic impact or other. The area that has probably the biggest challenge in relation to the international framework is judging into governmental success or judging cultural, soft power diplomacy. It is far more difficult. I noted some of the evidence that you have already received from other substates in relation to that. That is more of a challenge, but in terms of whether the economic impact quite clearly has the opportunity to have an impact. Interestingly, the export figures are particularly important. There has been a 40 per cent increase in the past six years. The big challenge that we have is increasing the number of companies that are supported in relation to export activity. That has significantly grown in recent years, but we will be looking at that. It is not just about inward job, but about the investment and jobs that are created from other companies and other countries investing in Scotland. That is still important. Again, Scotland is performing extremely well in relation to outside London and still being the best in the UK at attracting and with investment and jobs. What you have seen the change with is the focus on internationalisation of smaller companies in Scotland who have not yet engaged in that export market. That will be a big test of our proposals. We are on the trajectory. We are improving quite significantly, but that will be, I think, for the country one of the big ways of measuring the success of what we are doing. That is only the economic aspect. I said that the international framework covers whether it is intergovernmental, political or cultural aspects. Cabinet secretary, you mentioned some of our smaller businesses in Scotland. What kind of support are we giving those smaller businesses to branch out and reach out to other countries? A lot of it is the advice that can be provided here in relation to entry markets. Probably best placed by looking at the inquiry that the other committee has been conducting in that area. Obviously, in relation to companies coming through business gateway, for example, they can be identified as potential to have export opportunities. They are then contacted by the SDI in order to identify, there can be briefings, there can be cross sector international trade missions, there can be trade missions into countries for people interested in that particular area. We have had, to give you a more recent example, the committee has taken an interest in Poland. I spoke at an event with the ambassador for Poland where we brought together a business conference for people interested in exporting to Poland. Again, that is about building the capacity here. A lot of it is the preparation and understanding of how things work. There is also the opportunity to put them in touch with global Scots who are operating in that sector or, indeed, that geography internationally to give advice. That is how it works. However, I would recommend that that has been the focus of the other committee's inquiry. That might help you in giving an overview of what already happens. What we are trying to do is to make it a bit more co-ordinated in country. That is where two aspects—one is Scotland partnerships. The innovation investment hubs is more where you might focus on digital or on food and drink, for example, or a particular area of expertise—will be different for different sectors and in different countries. It will not just be a Government initiative. Again, in this area, a lot of our either companies, but particularly universities, will have a key interest in that as well. Lastly, to go back to something that you said in your opening statement about the OneScotland hubs, is there a timeline for those two? I would like to say yes, but we have to do it on a practical basis. It will be a country by country and sector by sector. The OneScotland partnerships will want to make progress in the very near future, but it would be a hostage fortune to say that I can guarantee you by this time that we will have X, Y and Z. It is really important that the OneScotland partnerships bring together the different public agencies, but they are doing it in a way that is appropriate for each country. Each country will be different. In some countries, your Governmental influence institutionally is very important, because in some countries the status will provide you with opportunities that you might not have. In other countries, it is less so. The trade, the SDI involvement will be at a greater amplification, but it will vary from country to country. I do not want to give you a timescale that I can guarantee, but what I will do is make sure that, between myself and John Swinney, we keep not just your committee, but also the economy and enterprise committee informed of progress. I have a lot of the points that I was going to raise, but can I just refer you to a comment to the British Council on the international framework, suggesting that the Scottish Government's ability to achieve significant impact across the portfolio of actions encompassed by the international framework is restricted because of the size of that budget and there is a danger of spreading limited resources too thinly. Have you a general comment on that? The British Council were part of the development of the international framework. We recognised that as a partner that we work with extensively. That is probably a request from the British Council for more support for the things that they actually do, but I would not blame them for that. There is a point about focusing on which countries you work on. That is an issue that we always have. I get a demand from parliamentarians, why are not you working in this country, in that country and whatever, and then you will get the response that you might be spreading the jam too thinly if you are not operating? Culturally, we are doing very well. We have an international outlook from our national companies. I have continued to support that. I think that the James plays were extremely successful last year, where we hope that we will have an extended run. You have seen the kind of black watch roll from national theatre previously. There is something about culturally that activity, but we do focus. There is quite a good alignment in focusing. For the British Council, Celtic Connection is very important for tourism in Scotland in the month of January in Glasgow. It is very international, transatlantic, but it also picks different partners at different times. The India Connection, for example, I was in Rajasthan when we signed the agreement between the Rajasthan Folk Festival and Celtic Connection. There has been a focus on India. It has focused years. Also in that area, Australia and New Zealand are quite focused. It is also very important for the British Council to acknowledge that. In artistic and cultural areas, you have to go with the partnerships and the connections that are already there. The idea is that you can enforce a top-down approach of where you will be and what you will do. A lot of it has to evolve from the sector itself. We have a very strong sector in Scotland. We have a vibrant sector. We support it south by south-west, for example, in terms of music in the US on a very strong basis, and we are always looking for other opportunities. I think that it is wise council just to be careful that you are not doing too much in too many areas, but if you are doing so, I think that the point there is to acknowledge your budget. The one thing that is going forward is recognising that culture is very much a calling card for Scotland and its brand has been talked about. When you are looking at its non-statutory, it does not in many regards in other service provisions in other areas that the Parliament has as an overview. However, it is very important to have a vibrant and healthy cultural sector. I think that that is the warning that British Council is giving, that it is in restricted budget, so there are limits to what it can do. I would not like to see in the situation that all of our cultural activity is just domestic. I think that it is important for all the issues about cultural relations, soft power and diplomacy, that we have that exchange and that understanding. You cannot do business with a country that you do not understand, and how do you understand other countries is through their culture and heritage? That is a slightly different question in terms of the trade and investment strategy. The document refers to the development of that strategy, setting out the approach to trade and investment. Can you just develop that a wee bit more? Right at the beginning, I tried to give you the context of how, as a Government, all these different aspects are interlinked. You had the programme for government, you had the economic strategy, which indicated that we would be developing that international trade policy. We have the international framework, we have the European Action Plan, and the next one will be the international trade policy. It is part of the suite of the strategies and plans that we are taking forward, so that flows from that. We have just produced the economic strategy that is going to come from that. A lot of it will be informed by how we do things in relation to the innovation and investment hubs, for example. That, as I explained to Ann Taggart, is in development. We are still not sure on the timetable. You are not going to commit yourself to a timetable? No, I am not, because I know that you are right to be saying, have you done it? We are up against the timescale. Is that a quick question? Just on the cultural front and Scotland's international profile, we already have a reputation of having probably the best international festival in the world, in the Edinburgh international festival. Could more be done to develop the visual arts scene, which is so strong, particularly in Glasgow, by having an arts festival on the lines of the Venice Biennale, for example? I am sure that it would be an enormous success in Scotland. Glasgow does have an international arts festival that is very strong, so I will make sure and let no one ask them to invite you to make sure that you see it. I think that your point about whether you can make more of it is absolutely right. That is a fair point, because having returned our prize in Glasgow this year again is a strong recognition of the contemporary arts scene that we have in Glasgow, particularly in Scotland. One of the biggest impacts that we have was on the generation exhibition that was in 60 to 70 locations within Scotland as part of the Commonwealth Game Cultural programme. That was a retrospective of 25 years of contemporary art of a country. I am not sure that any other country—well, there may be some undoubtedly, but there will be very few countries in the world—would be able to produce such a quality exhibition because of the work that has come out of Scotland the last 25 years. It is not just about heritage and our traditions. We have a reputation in terms of contemporary visual art, and I would like to see what we can do to take up your interests, particularly in promoting not just what we know happens in Edinburgh in terms of international festivals, but the profile of Glasgow and the rest of our arts scene. We do have Glasgow City Council's international officer on the next panel, so that is a question for that. The very, very quick final question, cabinet secretary. You and I were out in the States for Scotland weekend. Outlander is huge. I did not expect it to be. I am on book 5, my total fan. On the back of Jamie's question about the visual arts, our film and screen industry seems to be gathering in some pace as well. Just very quickly, if you can tell, are some of the advances that have been made there. Again, there is another committee that is looking at that issue as well. There are great opportunities and challenges, undoubtedly, but in terms of development there, it is not just about trying to secure a studio, a permanent studio. We have a temporary studio that is filming Outlander. Outlander in terms of the spend is the biggest inward investment in terms of the screen that Scotland has seen. As you said, the impact in terms of audiences in the US is huge. You have seen Doon Castle, which is Castle Lake in the production. Its number has increased substantially, and you are getting tours in Fife and indeed in my hometown of Lannisco, because of Black Ness Castle and Lannisco Palace. The knock-on impact of locations is very important, but I answered a question in the chamber just last week. It is not just about location. I also met with international film producers and studio representatives just the other week in Glasgow. The skill base that we have is very strong, and what I want to do is to make sure that that great skill base that we have can do work in Scotland and not always have to leave to do that. I think that that is one of the ambitions that we have, but the more we show Scotland on screen, and it is one of the discussions that I had with Lionsgate, The Hunger Games, Surgeon and that range, but the more we can use locations of Scotland, it has a knock-on effect. You saw Skyfall, for example, the Glencoe scene. At the end of that, I had a big impact, and people wanted to go and see what this vast, atmospheric, amazing scenery was in real life. As was finished, we have not much talked about accommodation with VisitScotland in the tourist side of it. Scotland is authentic in so many ways. In the quality of its education, integrity of its governance, its welcome of its people and in its built and natural heritage, they are wonderful assets, but they are also authentic experiences for people coming to see here. In a world of globalisation and of film where people see things, people want to experience it as well, and I think that that gives us great opportunities for the future. Excellent. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. I am sure that we could have talked all morning, but we do have another panel. Thank you for coming along to the committee and looking forward to working with you again in the future. I am going to suspend briefly, just to allow a change over the witnesses and maybe recheck on that. Good morning, and welcome back to the European External Relations Committee. We are moving on to agenda item 2, which is continuation of our inquiry on Connect in Scotland. I am delighted to have what is around the table of guests this morning. We have Elaine Ballantyne, who is the Head of External Relations and Investors Support Economic Development from the City of Edinburgh Council. We have Anil Gupta, who is the Chief Officer of Communities from the Convention of Local Authorities, COSLA. Malcolm Leitch is a European officer from the West Scotland European Forum. Joann Scobey is the EU officer policy and partnerships east of Scotland European Forum. Gillian Wall is the International Officer for Glasgow City Council. He is sitting right next to Jamie. He has got lots of questions for you. Gillian, welcome all this morning, and thank you very much for your written evidence. We have had a huge amount of written evidence in this inquiry, and it has been very helpful indeed. We have a number of questions to go on. You will understand the format of a round table. If you catch my eye, we will try and keep the conversation as free-flowing as possible, but we will try to co-ordinate through me. I can see everybody's right to their eyes, so it is much easier for me to co-ordinate. I will start with an opening question about the importance of international engagement to you and your organisation by extension to Scotland. I will open that to the floor. Who is first and keen? There you go. Thank you, convener. Good morning. I think that for the City of Edinburgh Council, we have always taken a very international outlook. To be honest, even if we were not taking an international outlook, we received so many requests from delegations and from projects and interests internationally that we indeed have a very busy agenda on an inward basis as well. The areas of work that we are involved in include international relations projects and activities, which I have outlined in my evidence. We are also very active on the EU side through networks such as EuroCities and through the applications that we make for partnerships and for European funding. I would say that all the departments across the council have an element of international work. It varies according to resource and to subject area, but that perhaps is manifested quite importantly in the number of international visits and delegations that they all receive, where the gain is most definitely on the exchange of international good practice. The services are open to international good practice and are also very good at coming forward with examples where they can share their own experience of service delivery. For local governments, you are probably aware that we have a fairly significant role in the implementation of European legislation, particularly in areas of transport and environment, but also in economic development and various elements of infrastructure. A result of that is that local authorities are generally quite concerned about the extent of discretion locally in how they implement legislation and the need for flexibility to achieve the outcomes that the European Parliament wishes to see being delivered across countries affected by the treaty. What we are primarily involved in is to support elected representatives from local government in a variety of fora that exist in the European Union and the European stage. Of those, we have in particular the Committee of the Regions representatives, which we have fall off alongside your own. We also have representatives on the Congress of the Local and Regional Authorities in the Council of Europe. We lobby reasonably actively on the legislative programmes of the European Union. There are obviously very extended timeframes that you are aware of, which allow us to consult with our members through COSLA's own government structure. We work closely with senior officers from local authorities who have more on-the-ground experience. On a broader level, we do a fair amount of work. We have responsibilities for some work on matters such as the covenant of mares, which is a network arrangement around responding to climate change matters. We are formally involved as part of the twinning arrangements within the Committee of European Municipalities and Regions, which aims to try and improve and extend arrangements around international aid, as well as more systemally arrangements. There will be considerable work that we will be anticipating around the sustainable development goals into the future. I will stop there. I am sure that we will pick up some of those issues later on. Thank you, convener, and thank you very much for the invitation, firstly to submit Britain evidence and secondly to come along and have a conversation with you and your colleagues this morning. Just very briefly, the West of Scotland European Forum is a sort of lean, mean organisation. It is not the vast resources, so what were there very much to do is to try and encourage our member authorities to take full interest in the range of European, because we only do European rather than wider international, European issues that affect how they deliver services to their communities. That is not just looking at the funding, although that is really important, especially because we have just gone through a process of redefining how, in particular, European regional cohesion policy is deployed in the 2014-2020 period. That obviously was a major item of work that we undertook collectively via the forum, but we are also looking to try and stimulate involvement in some of the other EU funding programmes, many of which, of course, as the Committee will be aware, require transnational partners. We are thinking of some of the aspects of our eyes in 2020 of the European territorial co-operation programmes that are part-funded through the European regional development fund. We are doing a range of things to try and stimulate and promote better and more informed participation in those programmes, but we are not understanding that it is not just solely about funding. There are policies and legislation that are originating from the EU, which, as Anil has hinted, have quite direct impacts on how we arrange and deliver a number of our public services. Our role is to find the niche where there is a particular regional dimension that impacts on the west of Scotland. One of the portfolios that we have spent a lot of time on in the past couple of years has been on the regional aid guidelines that the European Commission put in place for every policy and funding period. That was really the background to the assysidairy review that took place over the past couple of years and it impacts on the extent to which public authorities can support investment that will create jobs in our communities. That was a really important issue that we handled that was not directly to do with EU funding but it has a big impact on what we can do to support sustainable growth and development in our part of Scotland. Thank you. Thank you again for the invitation to submit written evidence. Thank you to the committee for this initiative of Connecting Scotland. It has been very useful for us to see what our colleagues across the country are doing in terms of twinning initiatives and funding, etc. At ESEC, we work on a policy and funding basis. We try to identify a common European-shared agenda in terms of policy, which will have an impact on our local authorities. We seek to work together in partnerships on these transnational funding programmes as well. There is a growing realisation of how important they are. For the new programmes, for example, there is very much a focus on the interag programmes that we are eligible for. In terms of policy, the energy union that we just proposed in February is something that will have an impact on our members. We are seeking how we can somehow shape and influence that and make sure that the voice of local authorities is heard. That, of course, in the east coast, in terms of renewable and oil and gas, energy is hugely important. We are also seeking to improve our Team Scotland approach so that it is not just within individual local authorities or the east coast. We are seeking to engage with our colleagues across the country to identify that shared agenda. Glasgow City Council is committed to its international agenda, as well as a fairly high number of inward delegations into the city. As Elaine said, very similar to our colleagues in Edinburgh, where the biggest outcome is the exchange of technical expertise and knowledge. We also have an extensive twin city programme. We have over eight twin cities. Probably around any given time, just over half of them are very active. We try very hard to involve as many different sectors of our community in the city to get involved in the twin city. It is not the traditional civic ceremonial side of things. We try very hard—for example, last year we had learning disabled groups, sporting delegations, cultural and artistic exchanges. We try to involve as many different sectors of the community in Glasgow in our twin city exchanges. We also have an extensive Commonwealth and international development programme, which is about just over 10 years old now, where our primary focus has been on Malawi. We also have projects in South Africa. We are trying very hard now to look at projects where we can attract more EU funding due to restructuring in the council. We have lost quite a lot of our staff over the years, so our team is very small. As you know, any application for EU funding is very time consuming, but it is something that we are looking at more closely now, because we have a very limited budget and we try very hard to attract sponsorship or funding from other sources to improve the projects that we do, but attracting EU funding is a big focus for us now. I heard a radio report the other day about Glasgow being commended for its international business attraction and the impact that that has had right down to taxi drivers knowing the venues, to sign posts and things like that. Is that something that you would be a key element in that? Obviously, we work closely with the Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, which, as you know, has a huge success over the years in attracting conferences to the city, but part of that success is that they work very closely in partnership with a whole range of organisations in the city. The taxi drivers are a good example when we had the Commonwealth Games last summer. They were part of a huge team that welcomed the visitors to the city from the volunteers right through to people serving in shops. I think that that partnership approach has been very successful. We recently, I think that within the last two years, we now have a business investment manager who is looking solely at inward investment into the city and they have a small team again. I think that a lot of the success that Glasgow has had in terms of, for example, of conferences into the city is down to the partnership approach. I am going to go to open questions. Jamie, do you want to kick off? Yes. I am quite interested in it, especially with the Glasgow—I was talking earlier about Scotland's reputation for having the best international festival in the world in Edinburgh, which I think is fairly taken for granted that we do have it now—and more pointing to the visual arts scene in Glasgow being so strong and whether more could be done to promote that. I inform you, I know that there is an art festival in Glasgow, but perhaps more on the lines of the Venice Biennale idea. I remember asking the same question to Frank Macavity a long time ago, and it seemed to go on, but it has never come to anything. I thought that the success of the international festival in Edinburgh could be replicated all the way across the central belt, if you like—linked across the central belt. The other thing is that I would like to ask, what is the support from the Scottish Government and its agencies in developing the international cultural links? I cannot answer for the visual arts sector. It is not my sector, but I can say that the culture programme that ran alongside the Commonwealth Games last summer was very successful, and I think that it was a good opportunity for us as a city to look at what we are doing and how we might expand on that. In terms of funding, I cannot answer that question, unfortunately. It is not my area, but I can certainly take that back to Glasgow and ask. I am going on from that further with the things such as the twinning and the very good things that are bringing people together. Do you have examples of trade links or examples of where businesses have benefited from those links? I am not asking you specifically, but the question is to anybody. Neil Hamilton, do you want to comment here? It is partly in response to your earlier point about the support from the Scottish Government and its agencies. The Scottish local government and the Scottish Government have a joint working arrangement at a member level. We meet roughly every quarter to three times a year to look at issues of sports, arts and culture. The cabinet secretary turns up to that and we talk about our relationships with bodies like Creative Scotland. At this stage, we have not taken it further in the direction that you are suggesting in, namely looking at internationalisation. Given the Commonwealth Games experience last year, the issue of major spectacular events is just below the surface and I am sure that we will be wanting to have a look at how we best exploit and develop that into the future. On the question regarding Scottish Government support for initiatives, City of Edinburgh Council will tomorrow launch its incubation base for small and medium-sized enterprises in Shenzhen in China. That project has been very much endorsed and supported by the first secretary based in Beijing as part of the Scottish Government. It is a very good example of working over a long period from a very early stage of developing relations at the governmental level and at the local authority level and how bringing those together can be a very powerful force in terms of influence and also getting things to be delivered on the ground. We very much see our MOU with Shenzhen as part of the Scotland-China plan. As I say, it has been very well supported and we launch that tomorrow with a number of companies taking up space. We will also offer Shenzhen companies the same opportunity back in Edinburgh. It is the first time that we have done it, but I have to say that it has been very well supported. Excellent. I think that Hans-Alla wants to come in on a supplementary, then I will let you back in, Jamie. You let him come in and I will think of something else. That is so kind of you, Jamie. Jamie, it was just the back of your question about Scottish Government support to cities and Neil Gupta's very good intervention in terms of what normally happens, but unfortunately Glasgow's membership of COSLA is in and out and we are most still time not there but in there and therefore we probably do not get the full benefit of Neil and his office that we could get. What I can do is give you an example of why Glasgow does suffer from not getting support from the Scottish Government is the example of the Glasgow Mela. For example, it is its 21st anniversary this year and it is only going to be a one-day Mela. I know that they are going to have a few satellites dotted around the city which is rubbish but it is not the Mela and please nobody try to convince me otherwise, but to have a one-day Mela on the 25th anniversary of the biggest, most successful event in Glasgow just shows the lack of sensitivity in this area. I am not blaming you because I know that it is not directly under your area of influence but as an international department within the city I think that you would have benefited by supporting Glasgow life on Glasgow sport if you were in that, if you had that facility available to you and I think that the fact that we are not part of COSLA just now means that we do not get the benefit from COSLA as well. I know that in the Mela event it is always very, very popular in the city and I know that there are a lot of disappointed people that it is not going to be bigger. Absolutely. Thank you for that. Okay, Jamie, do you want to finish your line of questions? Yes. Just on the question of access to European funding, we looked into this before on the horizon 2020 stuff and how easy do you find it to access European funding? I mean, are the difficulties, is enough being done by the Scottish Government to make it easy for local authorities to actually know what they can access? Accessing European funding is difficult. There are around 40 different programmes all with different eligibility requirements, different budget structures etc. However, recently, Scotland your role put along with WSF, ESEC and the Scottish Government have developed an EU funding portal and this is going to be a one-stop shop that has information on all these different funding programmes and also it has a database of all the previous projects that have been funded by Europe and there are approximately 4,000 previous projects. It gives details on different sectors, on the different partners. Accessing European funding is difficult, there are so much of it, there are so much different requirements but we are hoping that this funding portal, which has been done along with the collaboration with the Scottish Government, will help to address that. Malcolm, you want to add to that? Obviously, WSF also supported the development of the funding portal. We think that it is a really positive thing and I know that it is highlighted in your Brussels bulletin that you will be talking about in a few minutes. Having a portal is necessary but not a sufficient condition to improving Scottish participation in the programmes and it needs so much more to be fully successful. That needs to be complemented by more activities than just the websites on the portal, which is good. We are very keen and indeed we have a meeting of our forum next week where we are going to ask the Scottish Government if the elected members will be just to clarify how moving forward now that most of the programmes, the funding programmes for 2014 to 2020 are now in place, how it is going to work proactively with stakeholders to improve the uptakes. Not that the uptake was poor in the previous period but we think that like the old school report card could do better on that. We are very keen to work with the Scottish Government. The portal itself will need to be refreshed on an on-going basis as new projects come on-stream with Scottish partners. We need to make sure that that database is up-to-date so that people know what spots can be approved so that they are not duplicating an area that has already been covered and therefore wasting time in an abortive application. I think that just to take up another point that was hinted at in some of the earlier evidence, a lot of these EU translational programmes are really good but success rates do vary in some of the interreg programmes that I am familiar with in the 2017-13 period. Success rate was as low as 10 to 15 per cent so this is the reality of a lot of these competitive EU programmes that are out there. Preparing a prickly translational project takes time, it takes effort and it actually does involve sometimes having to meet the people in the environment. It can't all be done by emails and skypes and all that. However, important these have been to ease communications compared to when I first started working in this field when the facts was the state-of-the-art technology. Things have got a whole lot better in communication but sometimes you do need to meet potential partners face-to-face across the room to see if there is that sort of continuity of interest and you can work with these people. A lot of these things but it won't just happen on its own by having a portal, it does require and it does in order to get the benefits, it requires a significant investment of time to get to a worthwhile project given that the competition for funds in many of these programmes is very very intense. You will know that this committee has taken a very keen interest in EU funding, how it is disseminated, how it is monitored and we do have the cabinet secretary in a wee while to come in and talk to us about that. I remember doing EU funding applications and monitoring forms when they were all on paper. I feel your pain. I've got Elaine and then Anil. I just wanted to echo the points that have been made already in terms of the competitiveness of European funding and the extent of the brokerage that needs to be done now in partnership working. You obviously need the experts from the service delivery areas plus the EU funding experts to combine forces. The key thing here is innovation and the capacity within a local authority to bring forward innovation to make sure that the bids that we spend one year or more working on are as competitive as they can be. I think that that is the biggest challenge, but there are also changes within the way that the brokerage works across Europe with what they call lighthouse cities and follower cities depending on where you are in terms of the capacity that you have to lead a project or to be a follower. The scenario is changing quickly. The outcome of that for a local authority is the capacity to build innovation and the capacity to take part in that brokerage. To be honest, it has to be in-country. As Malcolm Scott said, Skype and email are fine, but it is so fast and the brokerage events are so huge that you need probably more than one person at a time. That is a challenge for us, because we are tight small teams. You often need the person there who is from that delivery area as well as the person who can do the European funding and the brokerage. Coss has always been concerned about the competitive nature of some of the funding. I am obviously aware of the point that Malcolm Scott was making about the very low success rates and the considerable amount of resources that are going in with no result. We are very pleased between March 2011 and September 2013 to be involved in discussions with the Scottish Government with the EU structural funds high-level group that tried to simplify some of the processes and ensure a greater proportion of the total allocation of structural funds came to local government approximately a third now. That is now in place up until 2020, but we are now looking at the post 2020 arrangements and actively involved on a European level with our sister local authority associations in discussions with the commission about what shape the new things should be like. One of my members of staff who may have already met I think Seraphine Patysos Fidal is a convener of a working group on a European level, which he may well have told you, which allows him to direct access to working group arrangements to try and continue that simplification process. Clearly, as we move on down the community planning partnership route, we would like to see even more being delegated at a local level so that we are a bit clearer and the process is more transparent than they have been in the past. Seraphine Patysos Fidal keeps us very briefed of all the work that he is doing. I have contact with him when Clarey is on and we are out in Strasbourg, so he keeps me well up to date. Willie Coffey I wonder if I could open up a wee discussion on the discussion that we had with the cabinet secretary earlier. She is talking to the committee about the Scottish Government's action plan for EU engagement and so on and so forth. There are clear objectives in that nationally. I am interested in how that plans out locally. For example, my colleague sitting beside me here, Mr Leitch, from the west of Scotland, I am a comaric in Northern Valleys. I am interested in how that works locally on the ground and where we can see, for example, the benefits of that national strategy panning out in somewhere like Ayrshire. My question is, when any Government re-thinks or devises a new strategy for EU engagement, how does it plan out locally for yourselves and how do you begin to implement that locally to try and make sure that we are all singing from the same hym sheet? One of the things that we are involved in in fairly active discussions at a civil servant local government cosner level is how we provide input into the strategies and action plans at their conception rather than just downstream once they have been drafted. It is quite important that we have a more active role. Fortunately this time, I think that we are much more content than we have been previously, but it might be something useful to consider the extent to which other European practice, which involves local authority associations on a formal basis, could be reflected better in arrangements in Scotland. Some examples have already been provided to you, but a lot of them are essentially Scandinavian, Netherlands and so on. However, there are fairly good ties between the committee structures of the parliaments and the local authority associations, which allow early dialogue to take place. I thought that I just meant to mention that before talking about the practical side with our member authorities and non-member authorities. It is a two-way dialogue then. That is what you are saying. If you were a member of the public in somewhere like Cymar on Irvine Valley and you picked up the strategy and went, oh, that is lovely. What did it mean for us? How do the local people see the outcomes from this stuff, drifting down to local community? How do we see the benefits of those great initiatives that are supported by everyone around the table? How do we see that? How does the public see it? European strategies are international frameworks. Those will incorporate the Scottish Government's broader economic strategies and European objectives, as well as the European unions, such as the Europe 2020 strategy, which is about smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. That is very much aligned with what the Scottish Government is aiming to achieve and local authorities as well. A lot of the local authorities will host workshops, business briefings, for example, on subjects such as European funding and how local SMEs or even individuals can access those types of funds. It is a bit of raising awareness of the strategies on the ground through such briefings. As I said in the recent evidence that the forum has put forward, it is an extremely timely inquiry that the committee is doing. In the west of Scotland, European people are trying to refresh our strategy. What we are keen on and what our chair is keen on is the benefits that are drilled down from or even from the local third level to much more to the community-based level that a colleague was hinting at in his question. Give one example of a very good example of where European engagement can have a very significant community impact is on the urban back programme. The urban back programme is not just for large cities. There is no sort of minimum population. It is almost a self-definition, so I suggest that it is only for Glasgow, Edinburgh and D, Aberdeen or the other cities in Scotland. The whole ethos of urban back is about getting local action groups going, working on the specific topic that is covered by it, and there are one or two examples that have been put forward in some of the evidence, the ones that I am familiar with, such as the Romanet project, which is doing a lot of very good work in the Gavinhill part of Glasgow. That is very much about involving local. It is a requirement of getting access to the urban back funding that there is a local action group involving community representatives to try and work together in partnership as to how they can improve the services or address the topic that has been identified by the project. That is a generic requirement of all urban back projects, for example, that it has to have that local community dimension. The Scottish Government is talking about encouraging innovation and growth and opportunity and all those worthy things. How do local folk see that it is getting done? At the end of a year or a next year or a year after local folk come to ask folk like us, what did you do about that and what were the benefits and what did we get out of it? How do we tell them? How do you articulate it? Who reports to who about the success or otherwise of those wonderful initiatives? Where do we see this? Who do you report to? For example, recently the Scottish Government compelled its national reform programme and its EU action plan. It consulted with different stakeholders, including local authorities, for positive case studies. There are quite a few submitters in the structural funds and interag projects. It can be challenging communicating it down to the local level, especially when there is such scepticism about Europe at the moment. It can be challenging getting the right people or even the community on to those local action groups for our backed or for leader or for the different programmes. It is certainly always a challenge for us. If there has been a successful project, making the community aware that it was filtered down through European funding, sometimes that message does get lost. I think that that message is certainly in Malcolm's paper about some of the media approaches to Europe. We have spoken at this committee about how we better articulate the benefits coming from the European Union that we share. We are not very good at sharing that, and we need to be collectively better at doing that. I was interested in what your views are about how to lift that up and make it more accessible to the public so that they can see what is going on in their communities in an easy-to-read and understand fashion. Jamie, do you have a supplementary on that? It was purely on that. I note that, in the written evidence that COSLA is responsible for leading the Scottish local authorities in their policy-making in terms of the European Union. As an MSP—this is coming back to the point that you made about small and medium enterprises and individuals who actually want to seek European funding—I think that there is a difficulty here, because I think that this is part of where the Euroscepticism stems from in many ways. They see it as a huge curtain and these vast strands of different things that are very difficult to pull apart. You put your finger on it, I think. When you said that there is a difficulty in these people accessing European funding, could COSLA do something to make it more obvious to individual businesses and people who really want for the benefit of industry and creating jobs and livelihoods, who want to use this money, to make it more obvious the portals to which they should go to get it? One of the things that COSLA has responsibility for is the central resource available to business gateway, which is supporting the SMEs. It has been a while since I have been directly involved in that. Possibly Malcolm being involved in SLADE, the Scottish Local Authority Economic Development Group, can respond a little bit to that. It is used as a portal website where a lot of information is available, including on apps for phones and the like, which give quite a wealth of information about funding opportunities, but that is backed up by direct contact with local economic development officers. There are quite a few pointers about where to go. Similarly, I can remember some time ago when we were involved in the better regulation and the services directive, trying to break up the information into chunks that were useful and meaningful to SMEs about the opportunities that they were going to get in terms of the services directive to work out with Scotland, as well as, obviously, to make sure that local authorities complied with their own requirements to ease the processes. However, that is not my area of expertise any more. I was just going to come back to something that someone said earlier about people not knowing what Europe does for them. In our own area of work, certainly, when we encourage our groups and organisations to apply for EU funding, I think that there is no shortage of information out there for them. Perhaps, as Joanne said, it is the sheer bulk of information that is there and where do they go. It is also capacity, as Elaine said. It is down to capacity a lot of the time. I know for our own citizens in Glasgow, for example, if we said to our average Glaswegian how many twin cities Glasgow has, they probably could not answer. Perhaps that is down to us as well. However, when young people and people get involved in European projects and they can see the benefits and their children, they definitely think that this is a good thing. If you are not active in that area of work, you probably do not know. Since the annuals put the spotlight on me, because one of the roles I do, I am a slaged European funding spokesperson on that. We have certainly been working very hard over the last couple of years in terms of what we spend our domestic European regional development fund, in terms of small business support, the points that our colleague was making on that. Bear in mind that one of the key pillars of the refreshed economic strategy is internationalisation. One of the key drivers of our ERDF programme for supporting small businesses across Scotland, both Highlands and Lowlands, is to try and improve the internationalisation of our SME base in Scotland. That is one of the key drivers in it. By and large, the general picture is one of trying to work with companies with growth potential, so what we are not using are limited European resources on the start-up. That is kind of done by the sort of core business gateway offer. What we are trying to do is work with companies with growth potential. Indeed, one of the main ways that you can grow is by internationalising your market. It is certainly that sort of part of the Government's refreshed economic strategy is woven right through the interventions that are being done with the ERDF support, both by the enterprise agencies and by local government through the business gateway network. I think that it goes out another thing, and that is why sometimes European Commission is paranoid about needing the publicity for that. We need to make sure that when a company is getting support from a European funding programme that they are aware of it, most of the support that SME can access will not come through direct application for European funds, but will come from a public sector programme that will be delivered by, in this case, either local authorities through business gateway or through the enterprise agencies. It is our responsibility, and this is what we are audited on much more these days, that when we are doing that, when we are giving a grant or giving some consultancy support or business advice to these firms, the European dimension is upfront and obvious that the support is part financed from European funds. That is very much to the fore, and that, I think, might hopefully answer some of the questions that Mr MacGregor was always asking. A couple of examples of how we have brought SMEs and the company base into our European funded projects. I think that raising the awareness is probably best done by engaging directly with people in showing how they can get involved. Our interreg programme, which was the largest in the north-west Europe programme, brought in the universities, the academia side and the small and medium-sized enterprises in the city to look at innovation. It is called open innovation, the idea that, by sharing, there is opportunity arising. That was very successful, and we are ready to bid again with those partners. Some of the new European funding programmes, although I have indicated that they are very complex and highly competitive, allow us to bring in the private sector in a way that we were never allowed to do before. Companies that are able to provide advanced technology and innovation can sit at the table and be part of the project. That would be two examples from our side about bringing the business sector in and being able to then, with the outcomes of the project, publicise the opportunity and where we got to, in terms of from A to B, with a particular project. I think that I asked a very important question and I actually agree with him that there needs to be some sort of central pulling together of all the various strands to actually make a national report. The fact that we have so many twin cities around the world from different cities, we need to share that information more freely. We need to be able to share the successes and the failures so that we do not make the same mistakes, no point in reinventing the wheel. Also, in terms of applying for funding, that information needs to be shared once you have been successful or you fail so that people know what not to do and what to do. Those elements are very good. Perhaps the Scottish Government could come up with some sort of solution in which it can create an agency of some sort or even ask one of the agencies to take on that responsibility to actually put all that together. I think that nationally we should have that and perhaps even because things move so fast, that information needs to be available online for people so that people can actually go in and share that information with each other. When I talk about online, I am talking about the authorities themselves initially. I think that it is just the annual report that can go online for all the individuals that can tap in. Gillian, you were quite right. If you ask any citizen normally, they would not know how many cities are twin-way and what activities they do. In fact, I was looking at your report. It is very extensive, but one of the things that I am missing was last year, for example, there were 13 strong delegations that went to Lahore from Glasgow. We raised over £50,000 for charity for the two twin hospitals to work with each other. That was because of the twinning and because the hospitals are twin, the cities are twin. A lot of initiatives happen and not all of them go through the council sometimes, which is a shame because the council did support it. These are good opportunities and good things and good news stories that we need to share with people. A national body comes from the question that you raised, in fact, who you are answerable to. I am not sure that they are answerable to their own authorities, because that is where their responsibility is. Sharing that is important. We should be looking at how we should achieve that so that we can all benefit from each other. I want to share information. COSLA and the Improvement Service have a number of communities of practice, as we call them, which are intended to improve how people work partly from examples of good and, unfortunately, occasionally poorer practice. The Knowledge Hub, which is the website, is available for examples to be uploaded on to and accessible by officers who are dealing with those policy areas. I understand that that is the case for broad European areas of policy. Obviously, the role of organisations such as Slade are key in providing a cross-council perspective on what is going on. A fair bit of the co-ordination does happen at a local authority level. What might be missed out on a little is how you make sense of the individual local authorities and the collective authorities' work as it integrates with the broader Scottish work that is perhaps carried out by other agencies. The narrative there is possibly missing. What struck me when I was going through this evidence, and I mentioned it before in my opening statement, was the connections that Scottish towns have internationally. In a lot of those, most of them I was not aware of before. We have very strong links within different cities and towns regions within the European Union. Some of those twinning partnerships are 70 years old or even older. However, if you were to look at that on a map, as in a visual, you would see that we have connections with almost every country in the world. There was Russia, Pakistan, South Africa, Chile, Australia, Canada and the US. Could something be done that could produce some kind of visual for this? We could see where we are linked to across the country. I am a visual person, so that would be very interesting to see that. We are developing a new way of reporting on our committee, so maybe that is something that we can look at. Would anyone in the panel like to comment on the importance of tripped school activities externally and what benefits a crew has on problems with it? School partnerships for us are a huge part of the twin city programme. We have a dedicated international education officer who deals with international education. For us, particularly, we are keen to see our young people get involved in twin city exchanges. Perhaps young people who would not traditionally get involved, so it is not the high fliers. It is not that they do not get involved, because they do, but we try really hard to attract young people who perhaps have never been abroad or who would never in a million years think that it is something for them. It is a lot more work to get them ready for that visit, but the benefits are huge in all the orbs, such as self-esteem and confidence building. Particularly for some of our young people who come from seriously deprived backgrounds, we have seen massive changes in their outcomes. For us, it is a really important part of the twin city programme, the educational exchanges. Just to echo that, I think that engaging people at a very young age in those established relations where you have in both cities almost a protective framework because you have your equivalents who know exactly what to do when those people land in the city and how to be taken care of, but also how to look at the opportunities that could take place during that short visit. It can be absolutely life-changing. I have to say that there is a huge amount of interest from cities to engage with us in schools. If it cannot be done through schools, sometimes it can be done through youth groups and sports and other areas of youth activity and even in employability programmes as well, I think that it is an area that we are very keen to look at. I would absolutely endorse that. Does the panel think that it might have an encouraging children to learn more languages? Does it assist or makes no real difference? It would make a huge difference. Our European partners in particular and one of our most successful twin-city partnerships has been with Nuremberg. That is never an issue in the language because our German colleagues speak very good English. Our French partners, Marseille, prefer to speak French, so it can be more of an issue. Our Italian partners are the same. They prefer to speak Italian. I think that some of the cultural exchange is missing when our young people do not have the language. Certainly young people always find something in common to communicate with each other, so they always manage to get on and find something that they can communicate. However, we try very hard if our young people are going out to have a very basic grounding in the language, even if it is just, hello, how are you, my name is, all of that, but it would make a big, big difference if we could encourage more language learning in schools. Some of the European-funded programmes encourage that element of learning languages. We had some funding under the European Leonardo programme for a short exchange programme between economic development officers in Edinburgh and economic development officers in our twin-city in Munich. It was a very small grant, but it was enough to allow six people each way to spend two weeks with their colleagues in the other departments. As part of that, they had to undertake a period of language learning. It would not have been advanced German, but it was enough to be able to land with confidence. Everybody enjoyed that, and many of them have continued to work on the language. That was a good example of European funded support for that kind of initiative. From the evidence, I noticed that the Bavarian thing had said that there are natural, sort of friendly countries, if you like, with the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland, which presumably goes back in history to the Austro-Hungarian empire. On the local authorities point of view, how do you work out who to twin with? I am taking England out of the equation for the time being. Who are the natural neighbours for Scotland? Very quickly. On the European level, there is a structure available through the CEMR, Council for European Municipalities and Regions, which acts as a matchmaking arrangement. It lists what the different partners are offering and what they are looking for in an almost online dating arrangement. There are some materials available for people who are proactively looking and wish to form those links and wish to see people who can benefit. Some of that, though, is perhaps more targeted nowadays at the international development range of the spectrum, for which there is a slightly different culture in mainland Europe, with local authorities more often having direct access to funding for that sort of work on a continual basis that helps to ensure long-term relationships with twinning arrangements and the transfer of skills and knowledge between local authorities who are often at the vanguard of developmental work. That is just the formal sort of EU. Back on to the point about the language learning. It certainly is invaluable throughout our evidence. We have got several examples of educational exchanges for languages but also with skills. I would like to add on that, going back to the previous point. Those types of exchanges in Erasmus etc. are a great opportunity to introduce the European Union to young people at an early age—the benefits that it can bring. If we can explain what the European does and the benefits that it brings to those young people at this age, I think that we would set them up with the less of an ingrained erascepticism that older people might have. I am not sure who I am aiming to, but do we use some of our successful entrepreneurs, some of our successful stories that have happened with European funding? Do we use some of those individuals? Have we created a mentoring scheme that is able to be tapped into? I am not sure, sorry, convener, on who is best to answer. I think that you are right. What makes things much more real for people when they think of entering into the thickets of European funding, for example, is good case studies. Those are good examples for people who are on the business and innovation side. Elaine Roy referred to an excellent project that the Embassy of Council led on inspiring open innovation. It is in the field of education that has also been talked about. It is in the field of innovation entrepreneurship. Getting role models, getting good case studies, is absolutely the right way of trying to get the positive benefits of European and international engagement across to people in a way that is much more real to them than even the best website or Facebook page or whatever. That is very important. We need things like the funding portal that are excellent in terms of following a skeleton, but it is the personal examples or the organisational examples that give the flesh to that body. I have just had that, not necessarily within the EU context, but working with businesses and entrepreneurs in the city on our international projects. Obviously, it is helping us to pool resources, perhaps offering the opportunity to use premises when we have international delegations coming into the city, but it is also taking part to help to showcase the city internationally, not necessarily for an export reason, but to showcase the technology that we have in the city or to showcase the strength of financial services. We work very closely with the different sectors in the city, and they will often come alongside us and talk about the benefits of that public private partnership working. I agree with you, convener. It is much better if we could see one of Joanne's suggestions coming to fruition about visualising how we market what we are actually doing, how many countries we do that in, and it is far easier. I think that I would like to ask one question. What one thing do you think could improve our engagement internationally from your perspective? That is an easy one for me, language learning. I agree that languages are hugely important. I am also sharing knowledge about what each of us is doing, as I said before. There were some great case studies in here that I was not aware of before, so I am sharing that knowledge and perhaps collaborating more, working together. I am not sick about the third issue about languages. One of the things is that, because of our general less sophisticated level of language skills compared with other countries, it sometimes limits our pool of potential partners. You are pooled to Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Northern Europe, because, by and large, as Gillian mentioned, the language skills issue has never been an issue with the long-sang language that Glasgow has had with Nuremberg. We should not expect everyone to be able to conduct their business discussions purely in English, so the one thing that would unlock much more potential is a much broader base of language skills within Scottish organisations and Scottish communities. I would reflect on Gillian's point about information exchange, understanding better how different cultures approach similar problems to those that we have. To which end, we often are involved in encouraging exchanges at a local authority association level, so we have delegations coming to visit us and also member authorities. Again, largely Scandinavian, but we have had Finnish tax experts looking at council tax and providing input into the commission on local financing. We have had submissions from Danish, Dutch and, I cannot remember who else, on our commission for strengthening local democracy. The Icelandic people come and feel a little bit sorry that they are not quite in the European Union but very affected by it, and it is also a solitary lesson to what might happen if you are just going to be a passive member of the European regulatory environment. We have also had the Congress and its monitoring report last year, providing an overview about how well we comply with the European chart on local self-government, and you are probably aware that there is still work to be done. Those sorts of things are very important in preventing one from being so insular and also learning, and, to the other member states of the European Union about how we work here, our community planning partnership arrangements are probably further advanced than in many other countries, but a lot of people are now moving in that way slowly, so it is a two-way process. I would go for building up those niche opportunities that we have as distinct local authority areas and regions playing to our strengths and looking to see what we, at local level, can bring to the Scottish strategy agenda. All of us have particular areas that we could contribute towards. Having more awareness of those and building those into the early engagement and the relationship building at governmental level would stand us in good stead in terms of the delivery of the strategies. Does that answer your question, Adam? Is there any other questions from members? Any other points that our panel would like to make? My chair on that is talking about how twinning cities are decided upon. I think that one of the things that has not been mentioned is the councillor's participation in the twinning process. I have gone through the process of a couple of twinnings myself as a councillor and I know that sometimes the twinnings are actually driven by either the Lord Provost or the chair of development regeneration services committee, and between them they come up with a twinning suggestion because of various reasons. Either we have commercial links or cultural links or we have a diaspora that is in such a large number that it is their wish that that happens. There are a number of issues why some of the international twinnings take place, but I think that the important element is that if and when a twinning takes place, it should not be that you sign a twinning and then you put the forms away and you forget about it. The whole point of a twinning is to make it work. I think that is the important element. Any twinning that we take part in, whether it be international or European, we would benefit from that if we go down that process. I went to one particular twin city, which was Cuba. I was shocked that they had over 50 twin cities. I said to myself, how in heaven do they keep track of all these twinnings and how do they work with them? Sometimes you can be overzealous and just have far too many. I understand because Cuba was isolated for a period of time and countries wanted them to feel that they were part and parcel of the human race. Generally speaking, twinnings need to be limited so that they are manageable and that they are effective. I think that is important as well. Gillianne Somerville, to respond to Mr Malik. Certainly our own twin cities will get eight off. There are a myriad of reasons for twinning with those cities, but we try really hard to make sure that they are all included in our twin city programme. I think now that in some circles twinning is regarded as a bit old-fashioned, I suppose, so what we have tried to say now is that we are, for example, our projects with South Africa. We are forming a technical partnership with those municipalities for the duration of the project. When that technical partnership comes to its natural end, we will look at it again. The notion of twinning is still very important. To add to that, our twinning relationship with Munich is 60 years old and our twinning with Florence is 50 years old. We have a range of projects happening with those cities and have had ever since the first day, but it is hard work to keep those relationships going with limited resources. It takes a lot of time and patience, and it is about building capacity across the sectors and different relationships within the cities as well as across. We have many partnerships for European-funded projects and for other distinct pieces of work—technical partnerships as Gillian said. The twin cities that are active and dynamic and are mutually wishing to continue that relationship—that is a perfect relationship—but there are many others that are project-based and that can also bring new things into the twinnings that exist, perhaps from the experience that you have had in working in other partnership arrangements. It evolves all the time. As you say, Mr Malik is keeping them very much alive and being able to evaluate them. That is tricky, but there are certain ways that you can in terms of the level of engagement that you get across both of those cities. Thank you. I want to bring draw attention to what I have rounded off my written evidence and it echoes directly a point that Mr Malik made. Commitment by senior management and by elected members, whether they are at this forum here in the Scottish Parliament or on local authorities, is absolutely critical to making a success of European international work. It is from the discretionary part of local government. We have no statutory obligation to do twinning or engage in European projects. At a time when budgets are under severe pressure, senior management and elected member support is absolutely critical to making those things happen on the ground in realistic terms, as Mr Malik said in his remarks. On that point of information, I thank you all for giving up your time and your energy, your written evidence and your oral evidence today. It has been extremely helpful and I hope that you will keep track of the inquiry. We will be looking for some visual aids to help us along. Thank you very much for coming along to the committee this morning. I am going to take a brief suspension to allow us to change over and get a quick break. Welcome back to the European External Relations Committee. We are moving on now to agenda item 3, which is consideration of a draft annual report. You have it in your papers. I am happy to go through it page by page if members are content with that. Page 1 is the general introduction. Any issues with page 1? That is paragraphs 1 to 6. For a comment, it is a good summary of what we did. It could be enhanced to read it if we included some of the issues of concern to the committee during the year. It reads more of a statement of what we did rather than what we felt about certain issues such as broadband, small business expansion and so on. The issues that arose at the committee under discussion might be worthy as just a little footnote to round off. The standard report is just a reflection of what has happened at the committee. I am suggesting that it could be enhanced and made better by doing that. If the public wanted to read this and find out what the committee was doing, it is fine. What did we discuss and what were the issues of concern to us? There is a bit of discussion going on with the Canadianers group on the format of the reports. That is on-going piece of work. Any other questions or comments on page 1? Page 2 is paragraph 7 to 10. Page 3 is 11 to 14. Page 6 is paragraph 15 to 18. With the lovely photograph of Hanzala at Royal Ballet. He is not wearing a tutu. The final page is just for meetings. Are you content to publish the annual report? Excellent. Move on to agenda item 4, which is the Brussels bulletin. We consider this in a usual manner to any questions, clarifications, rod. The question is more of a comment. It is an interesting bit on renewable energy, saying how well Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania and Sweden were doing. France, Germany and the UK are not doing very well, although Scotland is in a slightly different position. It indicates that those targets might be quite difficult. That is a marked improvement. Okay. Anything else? Can I ask about page 8? It is in the health and sports alcohol. On 28 April, the European Parliament adopted and launched a new alcohol strategy to enter force in 2016. Have we seen sight of that or can we get a copy of that sent over? We can get a copy of it yet. It ties in very closely to the Scottish Government's priorities on how that impacts on the alcohol strategy that we are in. Thank you very much, convener. Can I just raise again the digital single market comment on page 4? I have to say how underwhelmed I am to read the 16-point plan to advance the whole digital economy. I am pretty sure that the issues are all fairly worthy, whatever some of them are, such as ending unjustified geo-blocking. I am sure that we will be delighted to find out what that is on earth. I just think that they have not really got the right on the big issues as far as I am concerned that might interest customers throughout the European Union about digital technology, mobile services, broadband and all of that. For example, why are they not thinking about moving to a single EU tariff for mobiles, for example? Why are they not thinking about a race to the top for superfast broadband so that the infrastructure is as good as the best member of the European Union, rather than everybody doing their own thing? Why are they not thinking about opening up access for customers in Europe to digital service providers right across Europe? We are locked in in our particular member state in buying services from companies within that member state. Surely, they can have issues should be of interest to people right across the European Union. Those things are being worthy as they are. I have no idea who decided that those are the priorities for the digital agenda in Europe. I do not know where we go with this as a committee convener. We have raised it so many times. Perhaps we could speak to somebody who is influential about setting up this kind of strategy and why it came to be what it is. I am pretty certain that, if he sat down in front of ordinary folk, they would give him a different set of priorities than this. He is a commissioner for the digital single market, is he not? Yes, we could investigate who the commissioner is. Chair, if and when we ever get to visit Brussels, could we possibly see a meeting then? Absolutely. Because it is a priority for us. We can do something with the European Parliament and we are in Strasbourg. Yes, I think we should be. Maybe that should be one of the things we want to be doing. We will not drive the agenda, but somebody is driving it and I would like to find out who it is and why they came up with this set of 16 points, which are interesting, but they are not really the crucial issues for me. I think that it is important that they appreciate that this is an issue for us and it is a priority for us as well. Next time when they make these decisions, they will hopefully remember that we had an issue with it. Okay, anything else on the Brussels bulletin? Content to make it available to other committees for the Perusil? Yes, yes. Yep, absolutely. I wondered if the stuff that they are doing about school milk and that sort of thing was intended to help the dairy crisis in any way if it is linked to that or not. Was that the dairy milk plan that there was some information about that a few weeks ago? We can certainly have a look at that and get you some more information, Jamie. I just wondered. Just at a time when the local authority in my area have withdrawn free school milk, so I've been interested in that, absolutely. The dairy industry needs help. That concludes all of our business for today. Our next meeting is an informal meeting with the international development sector on 21 May. I now close this meeting if members could stay in the seats for a few seconds, just for a quick update at the end of the meeting that I would appreciate that. I now close the meeting, thank you very much.