 Good morning, and welcome to the fourth meeting of 2015 of the European External Relations Committee. I'm going to make the usual request that mobile phones are switched off-place. Moving swiftly on, we have a very full agenda this morning, so we're moving on very swiftly to agenda item 1, which is the continuation of our inquiry on connecting Scotland, how the Scottish Government and its agencies engage internationally. Delighted to welcome four excellent witnesses with us this morning. Who are going to give us evidence on how they do things in their countries and their governments. I'd like to welcome formally Roger Albiana Aysadgi, who is the Secretary for Foreign and European Affairs in the Government of Catalonia. Good morning. Maria Angeliz Elzora Zubiria, who is the General Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and Mikael Anton Zarigiotta, who is the European Affairs Director of the BASC Government. Finally, Lucas Van Dam, who is the Deputy General Representative of the General Representation of the Government of Flanders in the UK. Good morning on and all, and I believe that you all have a brief opening statement. For ease of purpose, we went by alphabetical order in order for you to speak. Roger, you're first up. Thank you very much, Madame convener. Honourable members, allow me to express first of all my personal and my Government's gratitude for this invitation addressed by this committee of the Scottish Parliament. This beautiful and marvellous building built by, or designed at least, by a Catalan architect, Enric Miralles. Let me introduce to you also our delegate representative to the United Kingdom and Ireland, based in London, Mr Suarez. Honourable members, regardless of the political process which Catalonia is going through at the moment, the Catalan executive, the Catalan government has developed foreign actions since the recovery of the democracy. Even before the statute of autonomy from 2006 was approved, which consolidates the foreign and EU activity of Catalonia in a text approved by the Spanish Parliament. For the government of Catalonia, our foreign action is an instrument that should serve the needs of Catalonia as well as the interests of its citizens. The Catalan international strategy places in the world. It is a policy that is capable of consolidating alliances and which sets Catalonia in direct contact with the European Union, with other governments and with other multilateral organisations, as well as civil society and Catalan citizens and communities abroad. The current political situation in Catalonia has led us to use our foreign action as a tool to raise awareness of the process going on in Catalonia. Our main goal is to help our allies, other countries and opinion makers to understand better that ours is a deep democratic process, whose main goal is on the first place to let Catalan people vote and decide on their political future. However, this is not the only goal of our foreign action. I will now go through the main goals and tools. First of all, internationalisation of the Catalan economy. Strategy of economic diplomacy that includes the promotion of exports, tourism and attraction of foreign investment as key elements to compensate the contractions suffered in Catalonia and with the overall objective of overcoming it and boosting our economy. Catalonia, just for your record, represents 16% of the Spanish population similar to Switzerland. It accounts for 19% of the Spanish GDP similar to Denmark. Catalonia also represents nearly 28% of the Spanish exports and foreign trade. Internationalisation therefore represents 40% of the Catalan GDP. Catalonia received last year 17 million of foreign tourists. According to the Financial Times, we were the first continental region attracting foreign direct investment in 2013 and 2014. One of the instruments we have at our disposal is an important network of external representation offices. For instance, seven government delegations around the world. Brussels, London, Paris, Berlin, Washington and New York. Washington for bilateral purposes and New York to follow the activity of the UN system. Rome and Vienna representing Catalonia's political business and cultural interests abroad. The government plans to enlarge this network in the near future in the coming months. More than 60 sectoral offices mostly devoted to trade issues but also cultural and touristic issues. For instance, in Beijing, in Berlin, in Bogota, in Buenos Aires, in Casablanca, in Copenhagen, in Dubai, in Cairo, in Hong Kong, in Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Mexico City, Miami, Milan, Montreal, Moscow, Mumbai, New York, Paris, Prague, Santiago de Chile, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Sydney, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Stuttgart, Tokyo, etc. Second issue I wanted to address bilateral and multilateral relations. One of the main priorities of Catalonia's foreign strategy is to create, maintain and reinforce bilateral and multilateral alliances with other actors and organisations at the international level. For example, since 2013, our president, President Arthur Maas, has held around 200 bilateral meetings with governmental representations and also multilateral representations. We work on a scale of defining priority countries, mainly EU member states, but especially and in particular France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, as well as the other EU states, plus Israel, Morocco, China, Japan, Korea, United States and Mexico. Of course, we have developed enhanced cooperation and bilateral collaboration with some of these countries through what we call country plans that involve the embassies and the consulate generals in Barcelona of all these countries. In terms of priority regions, we mainly focus on the European Union and the Mediterranean region. The bilateral sectorial relations go beyond the commercial and trade interests and focus on sectors such as health, research and development particularly, and development cooperation, for instance. In terms of the work we do with international organisations, well, our priority, we have also prioritized international and multilateral organisations, mainly the United Nations in the United Nations system, especially UNESCO, the international labour organization and the World Health Organization, which has an office, a regional office in Barcelona, for instance. Also, we tend to work with the Council of Europe with the organisation for security and cooperation for Europe at the level of the parliamentary assembly, with the organisation for economic cooperation and development based in Paris, with the World Bank Group, all, for instance, the Union for the Mediterranean, which has its secretariat in Barcelona. The Catalan government has underlined this commitment of working with multilateral organisations by setting up a new directorate general within the secretariat of foreign affairs to deal with multilateral and European affairs. Third area I wanted to address, the European Union. Catalonia has a strong pro-European vocation and orientation, so is Scotland as we know. Catalonia has had governmental presence in Brussels since 1986. We were, and correct me if I'm mistaken, but I think we were the first ones to have an office of all the Spanish autonomous communities in Brussels. We count at the moment with a permanent representative to the European Union in the Catalan government's delegation to the EU, and, of course, through there, we defend our interests. For instance, at the moment, we focus very much on the European Strategic Investment Plan, the Junker Plan, on the negotiations of the TTIP on the multi-annual financial programme. We try to participate in the decision-making processes, but as you know, sub-state governments do not have a clear and decisive decision-making role in Brussels, and we are trying to manage and ensure that European funds are available to Catalan companies and Catalan people at large. Fourth element I would like to talk about, the law of external action and EU relations. This is, we believe, it's a pioneer law. We don't know of many sub-state governments that count with the law as complete as this one. It was very recently, a couple of months ago, approved by a wide majority in the Catalan parliament, 100 votes out of 135, so mainly only, I think, the People's Party and a smaller party voted against, but we really managed to grasp broad consensus. It creates a set of new tools to promote, coordinate and give more coherence to the foreign action of the government as a whole, and not only of the government internally, but of the government vis-a-vis the parliament, vis-a-vis the other public institutions and vis-a-vis the local authorities and local governments. Some of the new elements set by this law are the development of the strategic plan of external action and relations with the EU, which is a plan, it's a four-year plan, which presents the priorities organised sectorially, geographically and institutionally. This plan establishes four strategic objectives for the next four years first, promoting and defending Catalonia in Europe and the world by the internationalisation of the economy, culture and knowledge. Example of that are the agreement signed on research and development and innovation issues with Israel, with Massachusetts, the one that the president of our government is going to sign in the coming months in California, among others. Second objective, confirming our commitment with the European and Mediterranean projects and defending Catalonia's interests in the EU and in other European institutions. Third, contributing to the global objectives of peace, security, human rights, sustainable development and social cohesion. The example of that, of course, is in relation with the participation in processes such as the COP 21 summit in Paris, all the discussion on the obtaining or visioning the ODS, the objectives of sustainable development that will be decided in New York in September this year. And fourth, practising a modern and effective diplomacy by supporting and giving service and assistance to Catalonia's abroad and giving a greater role to the civil society. Apart from that, which are the four strategic objectives envisaged in this strategic plan, the development of other instruments to help coordinate and give coherence to the Catalan foreign policies such as the cross-department committee of external action and relations relations. With the EU, or the Council of External Action and Relations with the EU, which is a council that gathers the president with a number of actors and stakeholders from the civil society, so from outside the public institutions. I'm going to finish just by underlining two additional points. One is public diplomacy. We have, especially during the last three years, we have developed a, let's say, a strong public diplomacy strategy. We created, three years ago, the Council of Public Diplomacy of Catalonia, which is a private public institution that count on representatives from the political, social, economic and academic arena to influence the external perception of Catalonia through international relations. The organisation of visits of parliamentarians, of people related to culture, to professors, et cetera, and by bounding relations with all these sectors and basically to promote Catalonia as a trusting and leading economy of southern Europe with its own and differentiated language and culture. Finally, next to this public diplomacy strategy, we have also been working on an internal communication strategy, which is at the moment quite important and it aims at establishing permanent and fluid contacts with media from around the world, particularly in Europe. Not only those correspondence located in Madrid, but also in their own country. And this is, of course, to ensure a continuous and close dialogue with international opinion leaders. Well, that's pretty much all. I thank you once more for the opportunity of addressing to this committee and hope we're going to have a fruitful discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. Madam Maria Alosa. Covina, Members of the Parliament, colleagues from Catalonia and Flanders, good morning to all of you. It is a really great pleasure to be here today to appear before this commission. And I will try very, very briefly to give you the key elements, the key elements of the Basque Country Strategic Framework for Internationalisation, a plan that we approved in April last year. Traditionally, the Basque Society has had high-level contacts abroad, both at the institutional level but also through its stakeholders. In recent times, and while democracy was restored, the Basque Government reinstated this tradition. In 1988, we set up a representative office in Brussels, and this opening led the Spanish government to appeal to the Constitutional Court, alleging that its competence in foreign relations had been breached. The Constitutional Court ruled in favour of the Basque Government and the sentence marked a milestone. It clarified that autonomous communities, and therefore the Basque Country, have the right, have political autonomy to develop international relations within the sphere of our competencies. Nowadays, internationalisation is more than ever in our agenda. We consider it to be a strategic goal, a strategic challenge for the whole country. And the reasons for this are very, very obvious. On the one hand, we live in a globalised context. We are part of the European Union, and our society is facing problems that are common to the societies. Are in the end global problems that require global responses. Along with these three elements, there's a fourth one, and this fourth element is the will of our society to participate, to be an actor in designing the global society. We don't want to be mere spectators. So, in short, our future is on global stage. We cannot turn a blind eye to this reality. Internationalisation is a tool to reactivate economy and to create jobs and to achieve sustainable human development. But how can this be done? In our opinion, it's starting with a global strategy, a roadmap that involves all the ministries of the Basque Government and also wishes to involve the whole society. Thus, we have constructed this strategic framework after an intense participatory process. Our goal has been to achieve a common vision based on the experiences and contributions of a broad number of actors representing a very large range of sectors. Our vision for the future would be to become a global actor, position ourselves abroad, participate directly in the European Union and intensify our international presence. To achieve it, we have also defined four strategic objectives. Their function is to give coherence to the set of activities carried out by the Basque Government but also by Basque actors abroad. The first of this objective is to showcase the Basque country internationally. If we want to attract investors, to attract tourists or talented people, we need to attain an appropriate international positioning. To reach this positioning, we are committed to a key tool, the Basque country brand, the vehicle to communicate our strengths and what makes us distinctive and interesting. Our own language and culture, our shared values, a proven track record in self-government or a very large industrial specialisation. We want the Basque country brand to be a competitive advantage. We are also committed to bringing to the Basque country events with an international nature and also we are driving for Basque agents to participate in events being organised in third countries. The second objective is to promote our multilaterally interests and contribute to the global challenges. We are talking about encouraging the insertion of Basque socioeconomic actors in global value chains and networks. Thus, our external action is going to be focused on detecting opportunities and opening doors, on setting up alliances with strategic partners to better promote common interests in the international arena. In addition, we aim to reinforce our ties with international organisations. We plan to enter new partnership agreements with some of them. We already have partnership agreements with OEA, Organization of American States with UNESCO, with United Nations Development Programme and with the Secretary for Latin America. We want to foster the insertion of Basque stakeholders in thematic networks and exchange view exchange knowledge. Furthermore, this strategic objective includes also a key element to us is our responsibility for and with third parties. If we really want to become a global player, we have to make our contribution to solve global problems, channeling the commitment of Basque society to the fight against poverty conditions in which millions of people live in these planets. Third objective, the European framework. We want to have a say in the European projects. Our aim is for the Basque country to have its own space in the European Union by means of an active participation in European fora in which discussions that affect our self-government has made. For example, in the ecofin. Nowadays, we participate in the working groups of the ecofin, but we cannot participate in the meeting of ministers. And we have our own treasury and fiscal system, so we are fully competent in this question. We are working to increase the participation of Basque stakeholders in European programmes and projects. And we are also promoting inter-regional and cross-border cooperation, especially with Accutane. Fourth objective and the last one is knowledge acquisition. The capacity to innovate and to manage new knowledge is key for our future social well-being and economic competitiveness. We therefore have to look for new inputs in all fields of activity. Nowadays, continuous improvement is required and capturing knowledge becomes a key ingredient. We are going to consolidate relations with countries and regions that are innovative models in different areas. This proximity will enable us to discover the best practices and to adapt and improve our own public policies. This strategic framework, I was describing a minute ago, wants to mark a turning point. In this new stage, internationalisation becomes a new cross-cutting aspect. Therefore, the whole Basque government is committed to it. To give you some examples, the Public Administration and Justice Department is extending cooperation with international organisations regarding transparency and efficiency in public management. We are obviously promoting the access of our SMEs to foreign markets but also support will be given to the international presence of Basque artists and culture. In the European framework, we will search for the best practices in social policy and in the meantime, we will try our people, our companies to participate in the Horizon 2020 programme. In the health arena, we are committed to exchanging knowledge on health systems, single medical history or e-prescription models. Those are just examples of the kind of things we are working on. The strategy also includes some geographical priorities. We have identified the territories in which the majority of the Basque interests are focused. I am not going to mention all of them because time is short but at least speaking about Europe, the European Union countries stand out in our strategy for very obvious reasons. More precisely, the Scandinavian countries as they are home to systems with high social welfare standards. Germany, France and the United Kingdom because they are our main commercial partners but also we would like to continue working with other regions, federated states and nations. We have, we share agreements, we have agreements already with Aquitaine, with Bavaria, in a couple of months we will sign one with Flanders and in the future we would like also to cooperate with Scotland. The General Secretary of Foreign Affairs, I am responsible for, is the authority enabled to coordinate and to foster the implementation of this strategic framework. And in this sense we rely on our international network, a network that consists of six delegations, one in Brussels, one in New York, another one in Mexico, one in Bogota, one in Santiago de Chile, one in Buenos Aires. We have a representative office in Madrid and along with this we have a network commercial network covering more than 70 countries. That is what I wanted to express here today. Thank you for the opportunity of appearing and later on if you have any question I will be pleased to answer. Thank you very much and we move on to Flanders now, Lucas Fandam. Indi, thank you very much first of all for the invitation and your interest in Flemish foreign policy. What I will do is first give a general set of short of Flemish foreign policy and then go over to the summary of the management summary of our recent policy note with five strategic objectives. And when having listened to our colleagues of Catalonia and Bas country, there are quite some similarities there. First of all, as you might be aware, Belgium is a peculiar country with specific constitutional arrangements. One of these concerns for an affairs, the main principle for us is the principle in for or internal, in for or external, which means that sub-state entities in Belgium like Flanders are responsible for all external aspects of their internal competences. So, for instance, when we're talking about the Blonia process on higher education, it is Flanders and our Francophone colleagues that will be signing a treaty and not our Belgian federal ministers. So, Belgian sub-state entities have treaty-making powers, although it will be in the frame of a general Belgian foreign policy. Many bilateral treaties were celebrating this year, 20 years of cultural treaty with the Netherlands for obvious reasons as we share Dutch language. Though there is a recent trend to go from formal treaties to memorandum of understanding. Secondly, a lot of multilateral treaties. What is EU treaties, UN conventions? When it comes, when Flemish policies are concerned, when our competences are concerned, then it is the Flemish parliament that has to approve the international treaty as well before it can be ratified by Belgium. Secondly, we are competent to set up our own representation in offices abroad, again in the framework of the broader Belgian foreign policy. That means that many of these representations are embedded in Belgian embassies, as well as Flemish representations are actually have diplomatic status. Short on our network of offices abroad, we do not have one integrated network, rather three interdependent networks of offices each reporting to their home office. First of all, we have 11 general representations that I work for in London and the UK, including two development co-operation offices in Malawi, where Scotland is active as well in Mozambique. Then we have about 70 economic offices that are reporting to the Flanders Investment and Trade Agency and about 15 tourism offices reporting to the Flanders Tourism Agency. Whenever possible, however, if all these services are in one city, we combine them in one Flanders house, as is the case in The Hague, as is the case in Paris, as is the case in New York and in London as well. There is an expression, put your money where your mouth is. I give you just some indications on our budget to get an idea. The overall budget of the Government of Flanders amounts to about 40 billion euros, that's about £30 billion for 2015. About half a percentage is for the foreign policy domain, so around £185 million, £136 million that is. Though we have to realise that a big chunk of it, £85 million, is for tourism purposes, both international promotion and leisure investments in Flanders itself. On the other side, which is excluded in this amount, are investments and expenditures done by other departments. The Department for Education gives contributions to UNESCO for instance, or the deep involvement of the agriculture department in the common agriculture policy on a European level. To give you an idea, it's something around £130 million we're investing in it. The cost of our network abroad don't have the recent figures on that, but in 2012 it was about £23 million. The biggest chunk goes to our broadest network of economic offices. That as a first introduction to see where we are more or less, I would like to go to the strategic objectives which have been identified recently since June this year. We have a new Government of Flanders, so in autumn they drafted a new policy paper on foreign affairs for the next five years. The first of the strategic objectives is obviously for any foreign policy, at its core, is the duty to defend our interests internationally. What is quite specific, it may not surprise perhaps, is that the most important lever to that end is identified as the European Union. Flanders is a strong, once a strong and performing EU, and that takes into account Flemish interests. There is direct involvement of the Flemish administration and the Flemish ministers around the table in European ministerial meetings when our policies are at stake and concerned. We, as Belgian regions and communities, make Belgian positions within the EU. When reading the Smith commission proposal, there is something hinting towards that for Scotland, so I hope it could be further developed for you as well. EU is very important, as well, obviously, bilateral relations with countries and partners outside the EU, though there is a priority on the neighbouring countries. Thanks to the Euro tunnel, we consider the UK as a neighbouring country as well with direct trains now, so it's not only the UK, also Germany, France, the Netherlands and our main partners. Next to that, we want to continue our involvement in international organisations, which also the Spanish colleagues have been mentioning, OECD, UNESCO etc. Second objective is enhancing Flanders' reputation abroad, something that's also playing an important role for public diplomacy or what Basque Country was mentioning earlier on, as well for showcasing oneself so importance of international promotion of Flanders to make our region more attractive to a series of target groups where its students, researchers, cultural loffers, fashionistas, investors, quite important tourists, and linking as well with the expat communities. There are quite a few in Belgium, a note being in Brussels, so that's also something that we take at heart, a special eye for international guests' visitors programme that's also within this goal. Third one concerns internationalisation of Flemish economy, again something that the Catalans have mentioned before for Catalonia as well, so that's vastly important that Flemish companies realise that the key to sustainable growth both for their businesses as well as for the Flemish economy as a whole is going global really. So we want to support that by strengthening our network of economic posts abroad as well as one co-ordinated strategy, so both with public authorities and civil society and companies together we will develop a multi-annual strategy on that. Obviously there is attention for more free trade worldwide as well as fair trade that brings me to the next fourth objective and that's contributing to the initial fight against poverty. So Flanders is not obliged to give any development aid but we feel as an affluent region that we have a moral responsibility to contribute to that. So we will be looking forward to the new post 2015 UN Global Framework for Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction. Specifically for Flanders we will be looking at focusing, limiting our investments, our contributions to one sector per partner country. So I mentioned already Malawi and Mozambic as well as South Africa we have been working with in the past that is under review. We are going to consider, South Africa will remain an important bilateral partner but perhaps not in the framework of development cooperation. Fourth, right now I'm going fast, is the commitment to a more democratic and just society worldwide. Flanders Government always has promoted human rights, good governments, democracy, sustainable and responsible entrepreneurship. For instance in trade agreements we always insist on social standards on environmental standards that is quite important to us. In addition to that, Flanders is also responsible for the licensing policy for international trade in strategic goods and weapons so we wanted to do that responsibly, also with an eye on world peace in the end. I mean it's quite important to do that in a careful way. Last but not least, it's peace promotion that has been going on quite a lot of World War I commemorations. We think it's very important but our angle to it is also peace promotion to go with that. So I'll keep it with that. If there are more questions or more practicalities on how you do things here in the UK and in Scotland I'd be very happy to come back to that later on. Thank you very much. I believe that there are many, many areas in all of your contributions that we would like to explore. I'm going to open to my colleagues for questions first. Just to maintain a free flow of communication, remember that us Scots sometimes talk too quick for other people. If I could just remind members to be a bit more mindful of how quickly we say things. I'm going to go first of all of all to Jamie McGregor. I was going to ask questions about the offices. I'm always accused of speaking too slowly. Also I'm very aware of the historic significance of the Basque peoples, especially their contribution to the fishing industry, which is quite possible. I believe that they took advantage of the cod industry in Newfoundland long before other European nations did. Anyway, my question today is about the geographic range of sub-state governments overseas offices and the number of offices and how they are funded. For example, Professor Michael Keating painted a picture where he said that with the view to the sub-state offices every few years a new government closes most of them down because they're the first thing that go in a crisis. Then another government comes in and opens them up again. Is this your experience? I know that Catalonia wants to open another 53 overseas offices. How will these be funded, especially in the present economic crisis? If you want, I can start by explaining how do we do it in the Basque country. As I said before, we have six delegations which represent the Basque government in the countries they are located. It's part of the government structure and they are funded by the government. It's in my budget. I have an amount for every and each of those delegations. So it's directly funded by the government. It's true that in the past known of our delegation has been closed even though they mentioned at a certain moment the Socialist Party announced the closing but they didn't do it. The question is that in some of those offices at the time, in some of those delegations, there was no delegate. And they decided that some of the delegations would have rather than act in a country, they would act in the country they are located in plus in some neighboring countries. We have changed this structure and we have delegates in all of them. It's important to have a delegate because it gives the priorities and it pushes the presence of these delegations. We have a representative office in Madrid, which is to us very helpful in maintaining the contacts especially with the diplomatic bodies located in Madrid with embassies. We have a very close relation with many, many of the foreign embassies located in Madrid. And apart from that I was saying we have the institutional network and a commercial network. How is it financed? The commercial network is not linked to the government but to an agency which is public. So we have a development agency which is called SPRI, depending on the Ministry of Economic Development. And SPRI is the one financing this network of offices. In some of the countries the nature of the offices is different from country to country. In several countries we have offices on our own, 100%. Because there is a real interest, because we have many companies operating in this market. So there is a lot to be done and we need someone to work 100% of his time for us. In other countries rather than having an office we have freelancers. We select them but we don't have critical mass to have people working just for us. So we start like this in many countries but we see that we start to receive many demands from companies to be assisted to be accompanied then we move from this scheme to an office. That is the situation and nowadays we have 14 commercial offices. Part of those 14 are located within the delegations. Because when there is a delegation the delegation covers everything and others are located in places such as Beijing, Singapore, Mumbai, the Czech Republic, Poland, Turkey. And I don't remember others now. More or less the markets we are selling in or we are investing in. Because our companies, since they are not producing final products but components, they have to follow their customers throughout the world. So they are investing and opening plans in many of those countries and we have to support them. I don't know if I answered your question. That sounds very good. I think I'd just like to talk about the different sorts of office. How do you prioritise, I mean whether it's cultural or financial or both in different areas? I mentioned two types of offices. The institutional ones and the commercial. And the commercial being 100% of the time or not depending on the amount of money. When do we move from one scheme to the other? To be honest the commercial network grew much more quickly than the institutional for obvious reasons. Because in the last year our companies have invested a lot. So it grew up very quickly also because it's less complicated to open a commercial office of a development agency than opening an official delegation of a government. That creates, is perceived differently. It's true that once you are in the country it's not the same to have a delegation to have commercial office. Being a delegation opens doors and being a commercial office opens doors but less or smaller doors. For the moment we have the delegations I was mentioning before. If we could, if the budgetary situation was different we would open more delegations because it's an important tool. It's the real tool we need for a real internationalisation process. It's of people that work with our delegations. The delegations work for the government but they are open for any to support international projects coming from any actor. Cultural project, economic project, pre-people willing to enter into contact with the universities of the country, willing to reach an agreement with the areas that are very wide. So nowadays we have what we have. This is the picture. In the future we should open delegations once the budgetary situation improves, gets better. We should open delegations in Europe and some of those in Asia to complete the picture. Thank you very much. I don't have much to add to what my bus colleague already said because it works pretty much similarly. In the case of Catalonia we probably have more, a little bit more of delegations and probably a bit more of offices. They are also financed directly by our government's budget. One of the things that the Flamish colleague was referring to, I think it's particularly important and we have been requesting it to the Spanish government in different occasions which is a possibility of being granted diplomatic status for our personnel abroad. That would simplify many of the things or many of the tasks that these delegations have to carry out but for various reasons that I'm not going to mention the Spanish government has always refused such possibility. Going back to the question you were asking about the amount of offices, well these 50 offices which are not 50 are a little bit less because we already have 7. We are talking here about institutional and representation delegations that we envisage to create in the coming future. This is part of a plan to expanding our foreign service so it's not that in the next two months we are going to open 30 new delegations but in the mid-long term we have conducted a study which would allow us to provide accurate service to our companies, to our citizens brought and also to represent the government for institutional reasons if we were able to get established in these 40, it's around 43 countries across the world. If you compare that figure with countries of our relative size you will see that normally they have even more institutional embassies outside if you compare that figure with the amount of embassies that countries such as Denmark or Finland or even new born countries or relatively new born countries such as Slovakia, the Slovak Republic have outside you will see that these increases quite significantly. So it will be a step by step process that we envisage basically to build upon our foreign service. Something that I also have to mention is that with the approval of the law on foreign action that I was referring before, we are also now developing a decree to regulate the personnel in our delegations abroad because one of the things we have discovered is that given that this is not an immediate process given that we open an office in 86, we open more offices in 2008, we are now opening more offices is that we have to harmonise the working conditions and the salaries and given that all these offices are also expanding their personnel it's also important to somehow harmonise all these aspects and this is one of the things we are now mandated to do. My question, which wasn't really answered, was how do you finance them, especially in a financial crisis? By prioritising, basically perhaps our delegate to the United Kingdom and Ireland could better explain that but we normally rent buildings or offices which are not expensive, especially particularly in London the rental costs which is actually surprising that the rental costs are fairly low but we concentrate all the units and all the sectorial offices within the same building, so for instance if you go to Paris you will notice that Spain has, just to give an example, the Kingdom of Spain has seven different buildings because they have the official residence of the ambassador of the bilateral ambassador, they've got two more ambassadors and these embassies are located in different buildings, this in a way multiplies the cost whereas we concentrate, we restrict the amount of personnel and we're not talking about big offices in terms of personnel, we also use interns, interns are very useful and profitable, let's say source of human power and we try to save as much as we can. Mr Van Dam, have you got anything to add from the Flanders point of view on that? Yes, perhaps a few points. In the question I was referring, are the offices opening and closing for what I know for Flanders, there have been some offices closed but that has been compensated by opening orders, so the one in Washington has been closed but what in New York has been opened. One in Japan has been closed but one in Spain and in Poland has been opened, so it's a bit of a reprioritising rather than a tidal wave of coming and going. Specifically on why opening a post in a certain city or not a certain country, it's also good to add that our most important, largest network of economic offices, they report to Flanders Investment and Trade Agency which has a governing board with not just government representatives but also private sector representatives in the governing board and is their private sector industry that is co-deciding where posts will be opened according to their needs actually. So it's really market driven. When it comes to cost effectiveness, you can see there is quite a variety in sort of posts that are open. We have offices with just local staff, one person maybe two, others which are more costly with an ex-pat, Flemish representative abroad, bit more costly and as the one in the UK we have a larger office. We have an office in London with five people but also one in Edinburgh and what we do as well to strengthen our network is we co-operate with our Walloon and Brussels colleagues. They have a post in Birmingham so our Walloon colleagues can use our office in Edinburgh and we can use theirs in Birmingham. The question of collaboration and when it comes to cutting costs is also being in the same building together, hiring premises at the Belgian Embassy for instance which is more cost effective. Can I ask about the constitutional powers that you have to act internationally? How have they been developing over time? Have they been increasing or have they been very confined? Perhaps on this one. The curious thing, the general principle is that for everything you're responsible at home you're responsible for your external relations. So our powers increase as much as there's more devolution within Belgium. So we had the recent state reform with more powers on welfare so we will be taking care of more welfare programmes. There will be for instance a mission coming probably later on in September to Scotland to visit the Scottish NHS to see how things are dealt with in Scotland when it comes to retirement homes etc. Because it's a new competence we have so but not a big constitutional change on having more powers that has been since the early 90s already the case. In our case as I mentioned before I'll try to more or less describe which is the situation and according to the constitution is the state, the one that has exclusive powers, exclusive competence is regarding international relations. But according to the constitutional codes this international relations has to be understood in a restrictive way. So by international relations exclusive to the state we are talking about the power of entering into treaties, of opening diplomatic missions abroad, recognition of states or creating open relations. There are no obligations that bind Spain as a state. That is the sense of this exclusive competence. On the other hand the autonomous communities we have according to the different statutes, statures and number of competences which in our case are very very large. We are competent not only to act inside our autonomous community but we are competent to exercise these competences also abroad. This is what the constitutional code ruled in 1994 when the Spanish government applied the code after the opening of our affairs. That is a complex system in which there are two powers. The state having exclusive competence in external relations understood us in this restrictive way and we have the political autonomy to act abroad within our competences. It is a system that requires finding trade-offs and requires mutual loyalty. So in our case external relations is not the monopoly of the state and that creates ongoing tensions among the state that tries to control and limit autonomous communities such as ours that demand our political autonomy be respected. The last chapter has been recently the Spanish government as Roger has mentioned before approved a new law, a law for the state external action. We announced that we would apply the constitutional code because we understand that the law again there was a will to control and to limit our capacity to act internationally and in the end we have found an agreement with the government, an agreement on how should this law be interpreted and the agreement comes back to this ruling of the constitutional code. So we accept all of us, we accept that external relations understood us strictly is in the hands of the state but not all activity done abroad is external relations. For the rest we have the capacity, the political capacity to act. Following on from that, you have the powers to act internationally to further the competencies devolved to you. Does that extend to representation to key international decision making bodies rather than going through the state representatives on those bodies? It's not an easy answer because it depends. We are not members of international organizations, is the state, the one that is member of UN or UNESCO or whatever. At the European level, for example, there is a funny situation to be honest. For example, there was again an agreement reached in 2004 because there was a will from our side and we were asking to participate in the meetings in the sectorial meetings of the council of ministers in Europe that discuss questions matters that affect our self-governments. So an agreement was reached between the Spanish government and all the autonomous communities and nowadays we can participate in four of the sectorial meetings. We participate in agriculture and fisheries, environment, employment and I don't remember their youth I think. Health. The system is one autonomous community, represents the rest of the autonomous communities which have the competence and participate in the meeting of ministers as member of the Spanish delegation. This system is an important step but for us it's not enough because there are other matters or the questions in which we are competent, fully competent. So the ministers are discussing about questions that affect us and we are not present in this meeting. For example, it's the ecofin, the council of ministers for economy and finance. The fiscality in the Basque Country tax regime is decided in the Basque Country by the Basque institution. We have our own legal tax system which is different. That is an area you would like to see your powers extended to so that perhaps a minister in your government could play the leading role in the council of ministers on particular matters that have been devolved to the Basque Country. Recently in December we had our minister of culture attending one of the council of the ministers together with the Spanish minister and we had also our minister for employment participating when discussing matters about employment. But the tricky thing is that we've stopped at this point with just four sectorial meetings and it's a pure question of will to open the door to the rest because it's the same logic. The powers are in our hands and the discussion affects our self-government. So we are asking the ministry to change this situation but lastly it's very difficult for bilateral forum to be called and to be because we have a bilateral forum, a bilateral commission on European affairs, a bilateral state Basque Country forum. We asked last year for this forum to be called. We even proposed an agenda and we are still waiting but we will keep demanding because I think we have the right to do it and apart from having the right we have a huge interest. Those are very important matters. It sounds very familiar to us here in Scotland. Would anyone else want to comment on these matters? Yes, I would like to. Since the early 90s we have an internal co-ordination agreement in Belgium with the federal, state and regions and communities for the EU specifically. So when there are our competencies it will be Flemish civil servants that will be participating in EU council working parties with fisheries, culture, youth, sports, environment, agriculture etc. And it will also be Flemish ministers in EU councils without any federal ministers going there when it's purely our competencies. So for fisheries, lack of sea in Wollunia it's a Flemish minister that goes each time. When it goes to environment there is a changing role. So it will be the Brussels minister one year, the next one, the Wollun minister next year, the Flemish minister. But what these ministers will be communicating, the Belgian point of view, will have been co-ordinated beforehand with everybody involved so that there is one person, one minister speaking but for the whole of Belgium. So that's what's been laid out. Obviously there is a bit of the quarrel should we be more implied in some other councils like the Ecofin Council. And we're currently in a process of reviewing the Belgian co-operation agreement just to adapt it to the recent state reform so it could be a bit more enlarged in the field of transport where the federal government is still in the lead to see if that could be turned over. And when it comes to other international organisations it depends a bit of the nature of these international organisations. For instance for UNESCO as it is on purely community matters culture science education, mostly it is the Flemish and the French-speaking community that are actually doing the bulk of the work and ministers being able to participate in those meetings as well. That sounds a bit more collegiate than elsewhere. Well that sometimes depends on the political tension, sometimes it's less collegiate I guess. Okay, that's probably good, thank you. Thank you very much for your presentations. Can you give some examples in which way that you measure the effectiveness of the work that you do in international engagement? And also the less tangible aspects such as the cultural diplomacy, can you give me some examples and how you measure it? I'll take the lead then. When it comes to more clear cut things like economy, tourism, these offices have clear targets, that many meetings, that much turnover, that many visits etc etc. For the general representations it's less clear cut obviously. We have yearly programme that has to be approved, we have to make that happen, realise that, implement every year programme. But as it is highly political on some issues you depend on a lot of different factors, it really depends on how things go a lot more. It's indeed less concrete, less clear cut than it is for economical things. So unfortunately when it comes to culture we try to do our utmost, but obviously a lot also depends on how much funding is available and we do it in the means that are available obviously. I think it's a very relevant question because in many let's say established countries or established states with their own foreign services normally this question is not being raised up. We all assume that a country has to count with a large network of embassies and consulate generals brought. Now some countries are starting to review the amount of representation offices they have brought because sometimes they have been expanded too much. But I would tend to agree with a Flemish colleague. When it comes to issues related to trade and economic development and representation of interests of businesses abroad there are some clear measurements besides of course the general statistics. Every trade office is normally charging symbolic fee for the services they are delivering to the company so you can actually see how their activity is developing. When it comes to cultural or tourism it's more difficult to measure that especially culture. Tourism, I said before that Catalonia is a world leading destination and last year we welcomed 17 million foreign tourists. Mainly from Europe but also from Russia of course going down due to the present situation but also from Asia and from the US. All our sectorial offices on tourism are of course reporting and are by their engagements and agreements with tour operators. You can actually control the activity that these offices is actually performing but culture wise it's more difficult. Of course you can measure the amount of impact for instance when the Ramon Lluwyl office in London working mainly in the territory of the United Kingdom. Well you know exactly to how many festivals and how many Catalan artists and Catalan novelists they are brought here. What kind of presence Catalonia has in international fairs, book fairs for instance where we are very much present. And besides that our strategic plan comes with a permanent evaluation so a year to year evaluation which is given to the parliament. The government is accountable to the parliament and indeed in that part specific part the parliament also exercises its function as controlling the role not only in terms of expenses or expenditure but also in terms of activities and of course there is a long process of scrutiny of the activity undergoing in all the sectors related to our foreign service. To be honest it's a complicated question because many times the things we do not only in external relations but also in other public policies don't create immediate results. Sometimes the connection even between what is done and the result is not always clear because there are many other factors intervening but somehow to try to answer your question. And as I said in our commercial offices we deal with enterprises in the delegations also we deal with companies we help them and go international. In those cases it's very very easy. We know the number of SMEs, the number of companies we are in touch with every year. Some of those companies many of them SMEs come because they want they are looking for commercial representatives. Others because they want to set up an office, a commercial office in the country and they don't know how to do it. So we help them with the procedures. We give them advice till the office is open. We assist the companies when investing in a country, investing in industrial investments, all the contacts, all the links, all the relations we maintain with public authorities are help us to obtain the best conditions for our companies. This is one example and this happens in many cases in many countries. Talking about the European Union as I said we are not an estate. We are not a estate. We are not sitting in the council of the state of the council of ministers but as a part of the Spanish delegation. But since we spend more than 25 years long time in Brussels working with the delegation I think we have created a very nice link with many people in the commission. We have the capacity to influence and to talk with many people. We try to approach them not only looking for money for our projects but we try to approach them to let them know what are we doing to propose a practical experience of a government that touches the reality. Sometimes we go to share our successes, sometimes we go to share our problems but we always try to propose something and that gives us the possibility of having access to a lot of contact, a lot of information, all these contacts, all this information is of great, great value when you try to, when a new regulation is prepared or when a new programme is being defined, being that knowing what happens gives you an advantage that then helps our companies, our research centres, our cultural actors enter better or have a better access to the European programmes for example. Other examples we are in New York, we have an office in there, we are invited to many of the UN events and side events, many times not invited as public but invited as speakers to share with others our expertise in many fields. For example, we are being invited to talk about transparency, that is transparency on how to make people participate in the definition of public policies. We are sharing with UN women our expertise in the field of equality between women and men. We have an experience, a long experience, many things to do but some small successes that we are sharing with them and now we are regularly invited to participate in different fora. For example, we also have close and very good ties with the United Nations programme for development where our agency, the BASC co-operation started 25 years ago and still we maintain it nowadays even though we are in a crisis, we maintain our co-operation. Last year we launched calls for 48 million euros and then we have a very close tie with the UNDP programme and they organised last year in Avisabeba, a conference, a state conference. States were invited to talk about the post 2015 and the only under state agent that was invited was us. So this is the result also of many years of work of trying to approach other agents and trying to go not only with asking for money but bringing proposals. To give you an example, in this case we have in China something like 7-8 years ago one of our main industrial groups which is a co-operative group in Mondragon opened an industrial park in the Jiangsu province. This is a big park where many BASC companies have located their plants. We signed, the government at the time was a socialist party signed an agreement, a general agreement with the Jiangsu province which we consider is good and we are trying to implement this agreement. The other days we are proposing, we are working with the University of Nanjing, thanks to this general framework in order to open a confusio centre in the BASC country. So these are examples, very specific examples of the things we do and the outcome they may bring. Good morning to you. I would like to ask a question to you about TTIP. Mr Isagi, you mentioned it in your opening remarks. Could you tell me firstly what each of your Government's policy is on whether TTIP should allow access to health services in your territory and what will happen if the Belgium and the Spanish Government agrees to open a confusio centre in the BASC? To access health services through TTIP, what would happen in your Governments then? Well, unlike the case of Flanders as well as other sub-state Governments like, for instance, in Canada, we do not have the policy or even in Germany because the Bundesrat has to give green light to international treaties and trade treaties. We do not have the power to block or even to influence. I mean, we can influence this kind of policy through lobbying. I mean, we can lobby the European Commission last week. Mariana and myself had a chance to talk to Commissioner Malmström in the framework of her visit to the Planetary Session of the Committee of the Regents. And our President has a regular, regular contact with, before it was kind of the Horde, the Belgian Commissioner. Now it's Cecilia Malmström. But we don't have an official way to influence this kind of policy. However, the position of our Government concerning TTIP, which doesn't mean that it's the position shared overall by all the political groups in the Catalan Parliament, is rather prudent, caches, but positive in the sense that we acknowledge the improvements that these kind of framework agreements, basically because we are a pro free trade Government, will bring to the European society and to the US society. At the same time, we are also prudent because of course we are carefully, carefully trying to monitor all the negotiation rounds, the eight negotiation rounds that have already passed and what kind of, let's say, achievements these negotiation rounds are bringing. To us, it is not a matter of downgrading the social and the environmental standards because maybe in Europe, it's clear that in Europe we have social and environmental standards higher position than in the United States. But basically it is a matter of working in those standards that are similarly positioned in the same degree and of course advancing into free liberalisation when these standards are positioned at the same level. Another matter of concern is transparency. We have been rather critical on the level of transparency that these negotiations. I'm really only asking about health services. I know there's many wider issues about TTIP. I have no specific answer. I don't have a specific answer on behalf of the Government and the health sector. What's your policy on access, TTIP access to health services in your territory? Again, I'm not as specialised for the Transatlantic Treaty specifically on health services. In general, the Flemish Government is pro agreement as Flanders is a big trading region, about 80 per cent of our Belgian exports are coming from Flanders. So that's quite important to us. As I mentioned earlier on, it has always been important to Flanders and Belgium in general that there is due respect for social services as well, protection of culture as well. But very specific on this agreement on health, I wouldn't be able to give you details but the broad indication is pro the general agreement, but indeed care and attention for social services and environmental issues. What I'm going to say is more or less similar to what has been said till now in general terms, we see that there is an opportunity, commercial opportunity, an opportunity for investment. But I think that during the negotiations we must be prudent in order not to downgrade the standards, the European standards, as Rujerhan has mentioned before. So we will follow the negotiations, we don't have the right, we cannot, we are not empowered to, we cannot oblige the state not to sign it and the discussion will be run in the Parliament in Madrid. But we consider that we have to find the balance between the commercial interests, yes, but always taking care of maintaining the highest standards of living we have in Europe of standards of protection. Thank you. Thank you, convener, I will try and be brief. Just following on some of the themes that my colleague Mr Ingram was mentioning earlier on. What are the lessons from Scotland? Is it about constitutions? Is it about relationships? Should we be having a Belgian cooperation agreement? What are the lessons from Scotland that you would advise in terms of engagement on the international stage? What I think is quite important is, what is important to Scotland, I mean humble me, is its involvement in influencing EU policy making as there are a lot of laws made in Brussels that have a direct impact on Scotland, just to name fisheries, that's quite important. So I think it would be quite important to take the Smith commission proposals and really go for good internal mechanisms, coordination mechanisms within the UK so that Scottish voice on Scottish matters can be heard. I know there's a lot of discussions going on but I think that is quite important and would be helpful for Scotland obviously. I would be perhaps not prudent if I was trying to recommend or tell you how you need to act. What I can say is that the way how the Spanish cooperation mechanisms function with regards to the external action of its autonomous communities is not a good thing. It's not a good example so I would actually recommend you to keep away and I think that my colleague Marianne was very clear when pointing out the difficulties that we have to be present officially at the EU decision making bodies or at the level of international and multilateral organisations. I think that you can find in Canada and in Belgium and even in Germany much better examples of how this cooperation between the sub-state governments and the central governments or the federal governments actually function. From our experience I would say, I don't know if this is a couple of comments that come from what we see in the vast country and if this is of help for you, perfect. I would end up to talk about what Scotland should do. I don't think it's my task. I think it's yours. But from our experience I would say that it is very, very, very important to clarify, very clearly clarify which is the role of each of the administration, which competencies are in the hands of the state, which in the hands of the vast country or in your country. In that case what does Westminster and what is for Scotland and to have mechanisms to guarantee that this is respected, that there is mutual loyalty and mutual collaboration. I think that is very, very, very important when two levels have to coexist and find trade-offs and balances. And the second element concerning once you have a number of a set of competencies that allow you to act internationally, in my opinion is very important to have a strategy and to make people, get people involved in the definition of this strategy. In order your strategy to be as close as possible from the interest of the different stakeholders of Scotland. I think that is very important because otherwise you can be doing your best, working and moving everywhere and not doing what people, what your stakeholders need. And I think that gives to the external actions an incredible legitimacy. That will make two comments. That was a superb final question to finish with. I am sure that we will learn lots of lessons of how things have been done by many of the regions and the states that we are speaking with. I thank you very much for your very open and frank exchanges with us this morning. They have been extremely helpful and I believe that the committee will be looking forward to continuing some of those conversations when we meet over lunch. I look forward to that too. Thank you very much. I am going to go into a brief suspension for a quick five minutes and back in your seats please. Good morning and welcome back to the European and External Relations Committee. We are moving very quickly on to agenda item 3, which is our Brussels bulletin. I ask members if we can just pass the Brussels bulletin and move on. If there are any other issues that arise from it, can we maybe make the clerking team aware and we can take that forward from there? Is that okay? Excellent, thank you very much. Make the Brussels bulletin aware to the other committees that require it. Thank you very much, which allows us to move on to one of our second substantive issue of this morning, which is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership inquiry that we are taking part in. I welcome to committee this morning Lord Livingstone, who is the Minister of State for Trade and Investment and Edward Barker, who is the head of the Transatlantic and International Unit in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills at the UK Government. I welcome to committee and I believe your Lord Livingstone of Parkheat, which is a first-wile fellow weegee. Parkheat is the way to say it. We are delighted to have you along this morning, but I believe that we have a brief opening statement before we get into questions. I am delighted to go straight to questions because of the time, so I am delighted to... I am going to go with the first question, as convener's privilege. You will understand, Lord Livingstone, that there has been a lot of keen interest in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The delegation that we had this morning from some of the other states across Europe were saying that they have seen opportunities in it, but that seems to be the exact same feeling that we have here in Scotland. There could be opportunities there, but some of those buts are the things that we have been looking at. The main one is around public services. Especially in Scotland, with a fully devolved health service, the impact on the health service. I do not know if you managed to get a site of the press release and the information that went out from Unite the Union yesterday on the legal advice that they have sought. I am just going to read it right off it that the NHS is included in the material scope of TTIP. Could you maybe give us some insight into your thoughts on that and maybe some reassurances? I think that we will be looking for pretty strong words from you this morning to reassure this committee and certainly the people who have contacted us on TTIP. If I can take a step back on it, what is the intention of all the parties? That seems to have been lost in this before I get on to the legal aspects and what our trade experts who we got an opinion pretty late last night were trying our best to get it earlier. If you listen to the European Commission, you will hear them say very strongly that public services are not included in TTIP. They do not intend for them to be and in particular they have made comments about the NHS. You may well have seen, and if you have not, I can absolutely give you the letter from Commissioner Malmstrom to me from a few weeks ago, which I think she set out the position pretty clearly in terms of the NHS being in it. The NHS is expected to carry on as it is before and it is going to be up to individual commissioning authorities, Scottish Government, UK, and appropriate places to what they do. Hopefully the committee has seen that letter, as I said, if not we can provide it. If you listen to the other commission, they also make it very clear that the NHS is not included. Commissioner Malmstrom is Swedish, but her predecessor was Belgian. His exact comment was that the NHS is exempt. The NHS has always been exempt. It is just used in your country for political purposes. Maybe Swedes, Belgians, et cetera, all have some reason why they are trying to mislead the UK. The UK Government is very sure that it is not included and nor does it seek to have it included. In fact, public services more generally. Does the US Government want that? Will you seek that reservation, then, when you go into the negotiations? I will go through what the reservation is. The reservation is about public health services more generally, so let me talk about the reservation. To be clear, I have not met another country around Europe who wants their publicly funded health service included in TTIP. The European Commission, the UK Government does not seek to have it in TTIP. What about the Americans? Will the Americans, the chief negotiator for the Americans, make a statement and we can give you the quote in which he said, There has been a lot of discussion about public services. The US Government does not seek to include public services in its trade agreements. It is happy to confirm that it is not seeking to include it within TTIP. The Americans are not looking for it. The British Government is not looking for it. The European Commission and the European Governments are not looking for it. If we start from that position, unless and hopefully we can come to the conclusion that they are not all lying, you might not trust the British Government, you might not trust the Americans, perhaps you might trust the Commission as well, but not everyone is making it up. The question is, if that is the intent, have we adequately covered the issue? If I can just read the reservation from CETA, which is the state of the art agreement with Canada, it says that the EU reserves the right to adopt or maintain any measure with regard to the provision of all health services that receive public funding or state support in any form. That is the reservation. There is actually about three or four others that add to it as well, but that is a pretty good start. There is a clear reservation regarding health services. What there isn't is that there isn't words about NHS. The reason there isn't words about NHS is because we are dealing with 28 states. They all have their publicly funded health services. If we start saying that we will have the NHS but we don't specifically mention the French or the German or whatever, we are dealing with all publicly funded health services. We also don't suddenly say that we will have a special one for the police. The police is also covered in one talking about publicly funded health services. It's pretty clear. I did ask our trade experts last night about this opinion. To put it in context, I'm sure that she's a very fine lawyer, but the lady concerned is not exactly leading counsel. She is an associate, not a senior associate, not a principal, not a parent. She's an associate in her firm. Her expertise, I believe, is in public health in the EU. It's not a trade expertise. We basically don't agree with her analysis. What I'm very happy to have done is, if there's a view that something needs tightened up somewhere, there's a lack of clarity on the issue of private and public ambulances being mentioned to us, which the UK has a special reservation for in addition to health service. I'm happy to have that conversation, but the conversation should very much start from the point of, it is not the intention of any party to include publicly funded services, not just health services but other publicly funded services. Unless you believe either the commission and the EU are liars or incompetent, given that that's what they believe and they try to put it in the agreements, they've been pretty good in negotiating trade agreements over the years, we're in a pretty good place. I dare say when you look at some of the clauses, you might say, can we tweak this or what exactly is the position on this and is there a bit that it falls through, which is fine to have as a conversation, but publicly funded health services are excluded. You've talked about CETA, providing the state of the art. It's my understanding, and I'm open to correction, that neither the House of Lords European Select Committee nor the House of Commons European Security Committee have undertaken any specific work in relation to CETA. In terms of examination at a democratic level in this country, we haven't done very much on CETA, so it may be the state of the art, but perhaps you can illuminate on how much scrutiny has actually taken place in relation to CETA at the present time. CETA was agreed at a political level a number of months ago. We have, through the scrutiny committees, kept them regularly updated about what is involved in CETA and the issues and otherwise. I know personally spent quite a lot of time writing letters regarding mode 4 immigration as an example, so they have been very much involved. CETA will be a mixed agreement and there will be an opportunity for that to be reviewed, but when I say it's the state of the art, the wording today represents what the EU starting point is on negotiations now. We could take the Korean agreement, which is past and everything, but it actually represents where the EU is. There will be scrutiny on it, but the final agreement before the legal scrubbing and the translation etc was how many months ago? Four or five months ago, and that's the process scrutiny takes. It will take 18 months, two years, but we have certainly been a lot of correspondence. However, the wording represents what is the wording that I would think that the commission would look to start off with the US. Is trying to aim to do the same thing? Some way to go in terms of ratification of CETA. I could only trace one European planary debate on CETA. In terms of proper examination of CETA, we aren't really there at that at the democratic level at the moment either. Well, no, because it's a matter of time on CETA. The full text has been published, however, and it represents the latest wording regarding how we are trying to protect Europe as well as do modern trade agreements, particularly with other advanced countries, and that's what CETA represents. It could be that there's a Parliament somewhere in Europe, the 28th States, who rejects it, but the reason I quoted it is because that is what the commission would use as their basis for trade agreements, and I was asked about what's the reservation. I can't quote TTIP, it doesn't exist, but what I can do is quote what the state of the art is and what we and the basis upon which, when the commission tried to protect the public services across Europe, what wording they put in. That's what I can do, and that's perfectly reasonable. The point is that CETA is yet to be fully scrutinised, and therefore that might be a premature point. Sorry, it's not premature that that is the wording of CETA. It is not premature, and that is the wording of CETA. I'm not saying that CETA has been adopted, I'm saying that that is the state of the art in terms of the wording. Can I move on to the second point in relation to that? I'm a lawyer by trade, I haven't studied the United Opinion, I can see it's quite lengthy, obviously I would pay respect to that and study that in due course. In my trade, as it were, there's quite often the parlance agreements are reached where one party says this isn't necessary, but they adopt a belt and braces approach to try and get agreement to suit parties all round. So why does the UK Government not want to listen to deep concerns on the NHS and go for a belt and braces approach? Having the phrase that adopt and retain any measure with regard to the provision of all health services which receive public or state funding in any form is pretty belt and braces, but we are in part of the EU. Refering to one, if you've heard just the NHS for instance, does that include if there's publicly funded health services that aren't within the NHS? The definition of the NHS when you've got effectively the Scottish health service does, so do we have separate wording for the Scottish health service, for an English one, for a Welsh one? Publicly funded health service covers over a very long time a very wide gamut. I think it is a pretty belt and braces. I mean, I can go on to talk about additional private exceptions regarding privately funded medical services, which are further reservations. The UK, I think, historically has had an out in addition for private ambulances services, etc. I was just taking the first of the main reservations. That is very wide range and should cover us in terms of the public provision of health services. The point that it's trying to do in that, even if you for instance choose to have a private sector providing part of your health service, it's still publicly supported and still covered by that. It's actually wider than talking about NHS, but it also covers 28 nations. I think it would be wrong for us to sit here and say, well, we have one nation, the words relating to a particular activity. Now, this is very, very belt and braces, so publicly funded, I repeat the words again, any publicly funded or state support in any form. I think you've got belt, braces, tie, ropes, everything in there. Given that during evidence from the Cabinet Secretary, John Swinney, and the European Commission, it was suggested that there can be winners and losers in any trade deal. I just want to discuss with you, ask you which sectors of the UK economy might potentially gain and which sectors might lose out. Of course, that includes the Scottish economy as well. I think it's a case of imports and exports and how they do. You're absolutely right. Some of the gains in the UK economy, the car industry, I think will do well. We think that food and drink should do well because there are many products that we can't sell to the US just now, or they've got tariffs. You look at where there's tariffs. There's some cheese products, for instance, of 18 per cent tariffs on them. It will particularly aid small companies because the regulatory differences are particularly tough for them. I think that in terms of the areas that might lose, and some of it is in the short term some of the electrical machinery market where the US is particularly strong in. If there was an energy chapter, maybe on some parts of energy production, although given there's a worldwide price, I think that that may be less than given we import from other people. We might well want to replace cattari gas with American gas or give us more options. In terms of the gains and losses, that would be some of the sectors. Anything else, Edward, in terms of gains and losses sectors? I would just add that in terms of beneficiaries, I think that we would expect the pharmaceutical sector to be another significant beneficiary. Life sciences generally. When we talk about losers, it is a relative position, so it's possible that you would still see growth in sectors that we're describing as losers, but their relative share would diminish is what the study suggests. Is this not a rosy glow over trade agreements here that somehow or other increased competition will lead to increased jobs all round? If there's a market and we lose market share, that means we'll lose jobs in those areas, will it not? For every job we gain perhaps in tech sales, as tariff barriers come down, then we might lose a job in the food industry as cheap American imports come in and displace our own products. In some sectors, there will be an initial shift. Quite a small relationship to charity, but there will be some initial shift. The question is whether some of the sectors then change. Take the example of New Zealand. When the UK joined the EU, the New Zealand farm sector was really devastated and it's now as a result of becoming the most efficient farm sector in the world and it's growing tremendously well, so you will see that sort of shift. It's quite important. It goes to a general question of whether you believe that free trade between developed countries, but I believe more generally, enhances overall prosperity. To give you an idea, the last major trade deal that we did was with Korea that's adopted and UK exports have doubled. A chunk of that is oil, but that's good news for Scotland, but has doubled since that agreement, which has to be good for the economy. The UK now has a trade surplus with South Korea of over £2 billion. It didn't use to have. If you look, for instance, at some of the research done on the WTO Uruguay round, we've seen price reductions for families of about £500 a year, and that's produced by which we did that study a number of years ago. There's some real evidence that trade agreements can help, and certainly I believe that things like the single market and free trade agreements do assist. I think that the alternative of putting up protectionist barriers when we look from other things doesn't work. I think that some industries will adapt, some industries will do very well from the get-go, some will have some losses and then will adapt, and some regretfully won't. The net will be a decent-sized net gain to the economies across the UK. The point that I was trying to make is that we haven't got an agreement in front of us, so we can't actually assess whether it's going to be positive or negative in terms of the flow of jobs, for example. In the North America free trade agreement, the Americans believed that they were signing up to something that would increase jobs in their economy and actually export jobs to places like Mexico. We can't take anything for granted in terms of what the outcomes of this agreement would lead to. You can absolutely say that we do not have the final agreement. I'd be happy to come back in a couple of years' time or whatever when we might have a final agreement, but you asked me to come today, so that was rather it. However, what you can say, taking NAFTA as an example, and a lot of people have different views on NAFTA, but the Mexican economy is a very different one from the US economy in terms of labour cost, for example. It might have led to some movement of jobs, but the US economy, since NAFTA, has powered ahead an employment rate of about 5.6 to 5.7 per cent in the US. One of the few that is equal with the UK in terms of unemployment rates has created millions and millions of jobs. Also, it's gotten its neighbour, now a much more prosperous neighbour, and in Canada as well. Certainly, when I speak to people, for instance, from Canada and the US, they generally think that it's been a very good thing, but when we look at other trade agreements, things like a single market, I think there's a strong belief that it's been a good thing. I think that the more one does agreements between, unless you do a bad agreement, and I accept it. If the EU does a really bad agreement with a wave all the tariffs with America and America doesn't wave any of its tariffs, that's not going to happen, but if it did, then you could have an asymmetrical outcome. However, when you've got two sets of developed economies that are negotiating on equal terms, you will see benefits in both of them from increased trade. In fact, you'll also see benefits for third-party countries because there will be growth in two of the biggest economies in the world. Sorry, June. That's all right. If I can remember what it was. Yes, my other point was, you know, there have been concerns also expressed by farmers and others about food safety standards, and that was one thing I was wondering if you could comment on that. And the other point was, and I apologise for being a bit local here, we have the TTIP agreement I've been told may impact on the EU protected food name scheme, which might impact on products such as Scotch lamb and Stornoway black pudding, which happened to be very important in my region. And I just wondered again if you would talk perhaps about the EU protected food name scheme and the food safety standards. Food safety standards, the EU have been very clear that standards will not be lowered and then you get that it's always a race to the bottom. The single market wasn't a race to the bottom. In fact, me, the complaints about the single market has created so many roles. It's created a high level set of roles. So the EU in terms of, because the phrase is often heard, oh, there'll be chlorine washed chicken and hormone fed beef. And the EU trade commissioners have said repeatedly and consistently and the Americans know it. And that's a case where the Americans would like to export it, but they're not going to be able to. They've said it's not going to happen. EU rules and EU food safety rules are EU food safety rules. We should remember, by the way, that the Americans have quite a lot of concerns about EU food safety. As you may know, for example, they won't allow haggis into their country because they believe it's not safe. In fact, we even had problems with Canadians not allowing iron brew. People have some strange views on some things. You may be able to be aware of the rustic haggis fed. Well, apparently the Canadians thought there were some unnatural ingredients in iron brew. That's a naturally occurring colour. I think to be honest in the agreement, there'll be a bit of a price to be paid for saying we're not going to lower our standards because the American Farm Lobby would want some of these things in, but the EU has said no, they won't. I think there'll be a price at certain things that EU might want that they won't get in return. Will there be more non-hormone fed beef? Yeah, I think there probably will be. I know that Irish have concerns about just efficient producers etc, but it won't be a food safety standard thing. The second part of your question was on... It was only EU protected food names. At the present moment, we do have some protected names in the US like the Scotch whisky, which is pretty important obviously. There is a big push to have more geographical indicators recognised in the US. That particular is coming from places like Italy for parmesan cheese, where the Americans consider parmesan to be just general like cheddar. We could argue about cheddar as well, but a general name rather than a geographical location. That's causing quite an argument. Things that refer to where they are from tend to have greater protection because you're stating a thing. You're stating that it's Scotch beef, so someone else is saying that they're providing Scotch beef and that it's not from Scotland, or saying that it's come down Welsh cheddar or something. That gets greater protection, I might ask Edward to add to that. I don't think that there's anything that we're going to go back on. The question is how much help can we get, as we did in the Canadian agreement, quite a lot of movement in Canada on protecting geographical indicators. We might get less than we got with Canada in the American agreement, but certainly there's a big push among better producers and parmesan producers. Fortunately, not among hamburgers or else that could get silly, but it will be a push. I don't see a situation where things are getting worse than they are today. It's about push about making it better. Edward? Just on your point about the more specific the indicator, the easier it is to argue that it's unique. West Country farmhouse cheddar is the one that I tend to think of because I rather like eating it compared to cheddar. I think that our first priority is indeed to protect what we already have in terms of the spirit's Scotch whisky protection. I think that I would hope that products like Scottish Farms salmon, Scotch lamb and Scotch beef would all be strong candidates within what the EU is asking of the US. For the US, that is a difficult issue, but that is what the EU is pursuing. We've had difficulty in trying to find some clarity on this. It's really about the lack of awareness across the Scottish business community about the T-Tip negotiations. Can I ask you, Lord Livingstone, what work the UK Government has undertaken today's awareness of the T-Tip among the business community both here in Scotland and the UK? Of course, one of the things that's interesting about normally trade agreements trying to get any interest in themselves has been really difficult. This is remarkable. I never recall the career agreement, but what we've done, getting any attention, is work particularly with the main trade associations, the Federation of Small Businesses, the Institute of Directors, the CBI to help to get through their members and a number of the individual trade things. We've had roadshows, including some of them in Scotland. We've also set up a website with resource. One of the things that's very important is when an agreement is done, and we did this in the career and we will do it in Canada, is to go to the particular areas that have opportunities or impact. Work with them as to how we can take advantage of it. That's exactly what we did in Korea. Today, we've spent a lot of time and I've spoken at a number of business events. I've also spoken at a large number of NGO events and to NGOs. We spend a lot of time, and if you speak to FSP, IOD, CBI, they're very much involved, but everyone in the team, you do a lot of work. Do you want to add? Yes, I mean, just a couple of things I'd add to that. Firstly, when the negotiation was first guessing underway, we did a fairly broad consultation into which we got a lot of online submissions that helped us with our initial identification priorities for the UK. We have regular stakeholder sessions with businesses, but also with NGOs, consumer groups, the full range of interests. I've been to Edinburgh a couple of times with The Roadshow, Lord Livingston mentioned, and I think Ken Clark spoke at one of the Roadshow events in Glasgow, and we'll continue to do those over the coming months. We've just recently tried to improve our website to make it a bit more useful and accessible. Good morning, Lord Livingston. Can I bring you back to the health issue? I'm pleased to have a further discussion in that, if that's possible with you. You said at the end of your initial comment that publicly funded health services are excluded. That's what you said. I wrote that down. Can you tell me where, in the negotiating mandate that was agreed in June 2013, does it specifically exclude health services as part of the T-tip negotiations? For recollection, there's a relation to public services, but what I was referring to was the wording that we used. I don't think that there's a specific reference to, in the mandate, there's not a specific reference to many things, but I think that there is a reference to public services protecting health and safety and public policy. I think that I would focus on the text of the agreement, because quite a lot of the framing of any agreement that the EU negotiates would start from a number of assumptions, including one that public services are protected. That reflects GATS, and one of the things that the EU starts with is the agreement on services that already exists, and that the EU believes has a strong exemption. We've had GATS for 20 odd years. One of the somewhat strange things with all of this is that we've never had a trade agreement before, some of the discussions. We have had an agreement on services for many, many, many years, and that is where they started. They've updated it for CETA, and that will be included. Rather than asking the mandate to look at what, in writing and verbally, the EU is very clearly saying about the position. I think that they've made the position incredibly clear. I repeat that people don't believe what the commissioner is saying. I refer you to the letter that she wrote to me. I refer you to the letter that Bognacio also wrote to John Healey. The UK Parliament has a number of witness statements, all making the same point. I know speaking to the commissioner, because even on Monday she was in the UK, in London, speaking at a number of events, and she was at the end of it saying, why are people keep on asking me the same question when I've been clear about it? I think that the EU has really tried to be really, really clear about it, and I think whether the original mandate referred to it, what the mandate certainly didn't say is that public and funded health services are going to be open to competition. To be absolutely clear, you said that public health services are excluded. I would expect to see that clearly within the mandate, otherwise what's the status of the mandate? Perhaps that might explain why there's confusion and concern across the United Kingdom and across Europe about this? The mandate will build on gaps. Gats already has it excluded. If it changes gaps, the other way it would say it, but it builds on gaps already. I'm sorry, I do not accept that the reason there's confusion is because it's not in the original mandate. The EU has been really, really clear on repeatedly. The only reason there is confusion is because people are putting out confusion and choosing to disregard what the EU is saying. That is the situation. You can decide, as I said, there's only one, two explanations. Either the EU are lying, different people in the EU, you've got Belgium's line, you've got Sweden's line, you've got lots of people, except you probably won't believe the British Government on the issue, or you think that they're not lying. They mean it, but they aren't competent enough to put the right wording in the agreement. I can't see any other option, because, as I said, I refer you, and if you don't have it, I've even got it here, the letter from Manstrom, which is, as of that was dated end of January. Or I could give you the quote she said in her speech on Monday night. It's been said time and time and time again. I genuinely worry that people are using the NHS as some sort of political football here. It's also missing having a really proper discussion about what you want included, what you don't, how do we make sure we tighten things up, what has happened in the world in the last 20 years that might cause different things, because people are starting from the wrong position. I think that's quite dangerous, because we'll miss things, because I think that there are genuine, and I'm happy to talk about them later, genuine issues that have to be debated within TTIP about wording, about intent, about position, about what's acceptable for Europe, or else we don't do a deal. Those things need to be debated, but please, I would ask you to start with the position that the EU is not lying. I'm certainly not going to get into that territory, but can I refer you? It's the only logical explanation. You either think that they're lying when they say it, or they're not able to put it in. I don't believe that that's actually true, and I think that it's actually a diversion for the real argument here. Yes, there is the reservation in CETA, which, for my point of view, states it quite clearly. Yes, commissioners in the EU have stated very clearly their intention. I think that what we need to know is what is the UK Government saying in all of this. We need to go to the negotiating table with the CETA agreement saying that's what we want, and that's how we want to protect our public services. I think that that's the main question here. I can give that answer very clearly. The UK is very happy with CETA, and we'd want to see that replicated. Will it be in your negotiating plan when you go to negotiate the UK's position? I don't go to negotiate the UK's position. The EU negotiates the EU position. I sit in the council meeting, and I have talked to the commissioner repeatedly about the NHS and ensuring that she is entirely onside about it, and she is. There is no issue with—that's why I asked for the letter. That commissioner once from letter was in response to me requesting to be 100 per cent clear in her views. So it is very, very clear, and the UK Government is happy with her letter. It makes it clear the position. We are fully supportive of that. Will the UK Government now be in a position to answer the First Minister's letter when she seeks those reassurances? I have answered—I answered Alex Salmond's letter. I responded to Nicola Sturgeon. I got a letter from Alex Salmond. I responded to Nicola Sturgeon very clearly. I am happy to give you a copy of the letter if you don't have it. I responded. It was written by Alex Salmond. I responded. We made it clear that we had made this repeatedly. The fact that we choose not to accept it is a different matter, but we have made it repeatedly. If you don't have that letter, I'm very happy to give it to you. Milly, do you want to finish your line of questions? Yes, thank you very much. Your colleague, a chap called Earl Howe, in September, who is a UK health minister, I don't know whether he still is or not, said quite clearly that trade talks must not exclude access to healthcare. He went on to say that exempting health would not be in the interest of British pharmaceutical firms. So who's right, you or him? There's a difference between health and publicly funded health services. Health, for instance, is a pharmaceutical and life sciences industry. Scotland has a very good and very high-tech life sciences industry. Do you want it to be able to have access to the US? That's the question. That's why health is different from publicly funded health services. The pharmaceutical industry, for example, is making sure that that's included in access to the US markets. Or that revolutionary treatment on hip joints, or touch bionics, for instance, I think maybe an Edinburgh firm and some of the work that they do, that British firms, of which Scottish firms will be a big part of it, aren't locked out of the market. So they're entirely consistent. Health as a whole shouldn't be off limits. Publicly funded health services, yes, they are reserved. We can see that. I mean, I know you're saying that. I appreciate what you're saying at the time again. I really appreciate that, but where can we see that in terms of UK Government policy written down in the statement? Well, as I said, CETA represents the state of the art, both in government policy. We are clear what we agree, and the CETA agreement is very similar to where we would start with the US, and you're very welcome to see it in the CETA agreement. You mean anywhere else? That's what it represents, and that's the policy. The UK has been very active in the European Council. We've got to remember, of course, that it is a European decision, but we are very happy about that. I want to protect the health services as much as anyone. There's one of the things that I think... Well, you mentioned earlier, a part key. There's two reasons I'm a part key. One is, of course, the winners of the 1960s or the first British winners of the European Cup. The other one, however, is my dad was a GP in Parkhead, Deniston area for 40 years. My sister is a psychiatrist. My wife does research on Alzheimer's. My four first cousins, including two of them, I think are in the royal, are all doctors in the health service. My father to his dying days was a big disappointment to him. I wasn't a doctor. We are protecting the health service. It's true that the UK Government may have a different view of how some aspects of the health service provided. We certainly don't want anything being put in agreement that forces us to do things. That should be a matter of government policy. Scottish Government may have a different policy to the English health service to the Welsh health service. That should be fine. Last question. Ultimately, it's a matter for the United Kingdom Government to determine whether it goes along the lines that you are suggesting there, or whether it may change its view, for example, after me. I can't guarantee it changes its view after May. I can't even guarantee I'll be here around after May if you know how to vote. That's where the power to decide this matter. I'm not even allowed to vote, you know. That's where the power to decide this matter would be. No, but it will rest with the British Government if they are not happy with the reservations to say that, but the state of the art says X and also the EU commission has been really, really clear about it. It's not even pushing out an open door. There's complete agreement with the EU and nobody's saying otherwise, including, by the way, the US. They've said publicly they're not seeking to have publicly funded services in agreement. They don't want their police forces either to be open to competition, et cetera. So, you know, it doesn't force to change in the way that the health service operates. And we have had gas for a very long time as well, which already has requirements. It doesn't take beyond that. I can only keep on saying it. The European Commission is... Sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm sorry. Can we suspend it? Just resume at that point. I've finished. I've got Hans-Alla and then Rod with a quick supplementary. Hans-Alla. Good morning, Rod Livingston and Mr Parker. Welcome to the Parliament. I see you're getting a bit of a hard time and you might think it's unjustified. But I think I want to raise two points here. First of all, I'm a little concerned that there's not enough work done to try and determine the actual eventuality of how the jobs are going to be affected in Scotland, whether we're actually going to be winners, losers or be a status quo. We have a very high rate of unemployment in Scotland and we obviously want to protect our jobs in our industry. So we want to try and get some realistic figures of how that's going to impact on our employment population. And secondly, in terms of the health service in Scotland, I think people are a little nervous because it's perhaps not as clear in the mandate that it could have been. And I think that's what's perhaps making people nervous. And I think, although you've gone to great lengths to try and reassure the committee that that's not the fact and the facts you've repeated several times now, but I think we need to ensure somehow that we get some sort of governmental commitment, not just about the European Union itself, but also the British Government in office just now to say that this is not part of the plan at the moment, regardless of what happens after the election. I think we need to send out a very clear signal to people who feel very nervous and very uncomfortable with the status quo because there seems to be, I'm not suggesting that it's your fault or anybody else's fault, but clearly there seems to be an apprehension in the community out there and that needs to be showed up and reassured. What steps could you take to do that for us? I mean, you've reassured us here at committee level, but I think end of the day the population out there is genuinely worried and fearful. What steps could you take to try and reassure them as well? I agree with you that some people are getting fearful largely because there are people who are going around saying that the Tories are going to sell off the health service to Americans. I mean, that's, and they're being told that repeatedly. And what we are saying, note is not true and various government ministers, myself included, the Secretary of State for Health has said that the operation of the health services will not be affected by TTIP. The decisions about how they are operated will continue to be that for the democratically elected Government of the individual area. That's quite clear and straightforward and we will repeatedly say that that is a British Government's policy. I think, as I said, the reason that it wasn't a negotiating mandate and you could look back to 2013 and say, oh, if we'd known now it would be such a big thing should we have had it in the mandate. It was already in the Gats agreement, the reservation, so it wasn't a new thing. I mean, bear in mind you can't have absolutely everything in the agenda, but there was no disagreement and there was some areas of disagreement. But if we can sort of part the mandate and say that the mandate was what it was at the time, which was building on existing agreements which were quite clear on the issue, people have made it very clear. The UK Government has made it very clear in what it said repeatedly and we are very supportive of the EU's position on this. There is no argument with the EU. I mean, I can't create an argument to say that we're opposing them. I know people have tried to have we're opposing this, but there is no disagreement. So the EU have been clear in it, we are clear in it and I can not only keep on saying that we will continue to, that from a UK Government, as its Government stands today, say that what is in CETA seems to us to be good. We do not wish, seek or would agree with the changes in the operation of the health service being caused as a result of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. In fact, one thing I can tell you, there's another agreement trading services being negotiated and I understand one country, not in the EU and not in the US, tried to put something in about it to do with health services and we and the European Commission pushed back extremely strongly and said it's not even on the table and that remains a Government's position. It's not what we want to see in it and it's not what Americans want to see in it. So hopefully I can keep on saying that. The job of jobs is complex. One of the problems, to the degree, is that the best economic modelling today has been done on a full employment model in order to see what the impacts were on the economy and they assumed that the benefits came through higher wages rather than through net changes in employment because if you assume full employment that would be the case. I think as the agreement develops we'll have to do more work on what's the pluses and minuses but what I would say is certainly we've done some work on some of the export industries and I think Scottish exports would benefit pretty much in line with the rest of the UK looking at our export industries, things that Whiskey would do well and benefit from it but also some of our pharmaceutical industry would benefit from it but the exact impact on the jobs will depend ultimately also on how the companies react and how they go after exports, for example. If we just sit in our hands and don't do anything about it it will not be as advantageous as if we go after the market places and certainly speaking to a number of small companies they do speak to a lot of small companies about it. The number of them that talk to me about they don't export to the US because it's just too difficult because they've got to their clothing manufacturers and clothing's an area where I think we'll see benefits and quite often they have to do testing fire destruction testing has to take place in Europe and in the US so they destroy if you're producing a million garments it doesn't really matter if you're producing high quality as of course a lot of Scottish network industry does a few hundred garments it's rather expensive to do these sort of destructive testing so I think it's how the companies and that's why I stressed earlier that we're really going to try and help as UKTI and STI I'm sure as well help the companies get after the opportunities and make sure actually we get the best result but generally I think the question you have to ask yourself as well is free trade a good thing do you agree with the single market do you think somebody said to me free trade agreements are bad that's your belief set I don't agree with it but we shouldn't be doing any free trade agreements we shouldn't be part of the EU and I know that wasn't what you were saying but we do start from the position that free trade does actually aid the wealth of the economy partially it's up to us then to make sure companies around the UK including Scotland go after these opportunities and I think given that we tend to be quite an open economy in the UK it gives us a really good opportunity to go after it remember the US is our biggest export market today My question about job losses is important because as you'll appreciate we have limited opportunities of employment in Scotland as it is and the reason why I'm asking about whether we're going to be winners or losers is to try and then build on that to say that if we are going to be on the losing end how do we then support industry that's going to be losing end and for example you made a throw away comment about we won't be able to export haggis for example now I eat vegetarian haggis I don't see what's wrong with vegetarian haggis it's full of vegetables but I mean that's just an example Both sheep's lungs that they have a problem with actually so what I'm trying to get at is that I don't want to see any losses in jobs in Scotland I want to know what you're doing to try and find out and how you're going to protect those jobs in Scotland for us and how you're going to support us to build on that and when you talk about people need to go out and find business that's fine but I think it's not fine if you're a small operator and a small part of the UK and you're having to compete against a big giant you need support for that and I'm just wondering where that support would come from if that was required Well one of the things with taking on any agreement is the length of time that you put in to give people time to adapt and that is not abnormal it takes a long time for a number of these things to do but a lot of the changes for example are going to be about reduced tariffs both ways which are valid good for prices as well and as the agreement develops and at this point we actually don't know all the areas that may be in or out because there's some negotiation to do we don't have an agreement for instance on services tariffs and yet services represent the majority of the UK economy and so there's a lot of work to be done on exactly which area we're at as we develop what's going to be in and out what's going to be the regulatory hearings the efforts we will make as we did with Korea to help create the winners and to help those other companies adjust will be very strong the reason we're doing this is to help the UK economy that's the reason we're doing this it's not, there's no sun, ulterior motive we do believe that free trade does help and yes we provide things like export support we'll work with SDI very closely in fact I'll see SDI later today and as the agreement develops and it'll take a number of years before it's implemented we will help the businesses and see what can be done to help them export and also to look at what the implications are for businesses that for instance might be against more imports and because the farming industry or something like that there will be, you know American farmers are quite efficient or what can change or what specialisation but it's too early to know this we are some distance off knowing and the implementation will take many years first things first working on the Canadian one we'll probably be the next one Thank you Rod, have you got a very brief supplementary? Briefly, just done IASDS, obviously not part of the current negotiating process the commission after 150,000 responses public consultation they're kind of engaging with stakeholders can you just outline the UK Government's current position on IASDS provisions? Current position is we believe the right IASDS clause should be in the agreement we'll stress the word right IASDS clause IASDS is sometimes presented as being something new the UK has 97, I say 94 IASDS agreements as well as for instance the energy charter treaty which effectively has IASDS clauses as well in it so we've had IASDS for a long time in fact the 94 agreements we've got have been in existence if you add it all up for 2,000 years in aggregate and do you know how many cases we've lost in that period? sorry, that's a rhetorical question I wasn't asking a question it's none I never lost a case in the UK so we believe IASDS is not something new but we do believe it can be improved cos actually there are some bad IASDS clauses around and B we want to look at areas where we think it's being abused and misused and to tighten it up and again CETA went quite a long way along the line to do that now what we're doing is looking at the responses to understand where people's concerns are and what further needs to be reflected for instance would it be good to have an appeals mechanism in it but some of the stuff about also appeals talk about secret courts past IASDS that was largely true but the Americans and the Europa both signed up as we did in CETA for it to be open including NGOs can submit cases and things like that so there's quite a lot of changes so we believe given that we are the biggest investor in the US and the US is the biggest investor in the UK it is helpful to have the right clause but one that makes it entirely clear that the government's right to regulate is protected but the same token that's protection for discriminative action against our companies in the US and to find that balance so that's our position and bear in mind with 150,000 it has to be said I think 97% or something plus of them were indeed standard letters but all of them will be reviewed in all the comments but the same comment appears on 80,000 occasions it's difficult to separate it off so we'll be working and that's why they've suspended the discussion in the IASDS to really take that on board as well as looking at CETA which I think as I said moved a long, long way away from old IASDS clauses okay I think we have to finish there because we do have another item on the agenda that we have to deal with before we finish today and our committees are not allowed to sit well the chamber sits and it will be sitting in nine minutes so very quick can I thank you very much for Lord Livingstone for coming along to the committee as you can see it has been a matter of great consternation not within this committee but as you realised with the public gallery there has been a lot of very keen interest in this a lot of fear possibly a lot of misunderstanding but maybe some very very clear statements from the UK Government would address some of that and maybe allay some of those fears so I hope that we have learned a lot from you this morning and we hope that you have learned a lot from us this morning as well hopefully you've heard some very very clear statements thank you moving on very very quickly to our last agenda item which is to seek agreement from the committee to take the to take the the committee's draft report on t-tip and private till I was to do with that agreed okay yes and the one on the EU engagement strategy as well sorry it's both things if we can have that agreement that's very helpful and I now close this meeting and thank you very much for your patience and your participation this morning