Chamber and committees

A joint industry/Departmental Working Group has been set up to consider quota trading and other quota management issues affecting the UK industry.

The first meeting of the Working Group will take place on 11 April, with a second meeting scheduled for 24 May. Further meetings will be arranged if necessary.

I shall consider the Working Group's findings and recommendations and report to the Rural Affairs Committee in due course.

I refer the member to my answer to question S1W-5315.

The Sea Fishing (Enforcement of Community Conservation Measures) (Scotland) Order 2000 (S.I. No. 2000/53) comes into force on 31 March 2000. This Order allows for the enforcement of the revised European rules on technical conservation (Council Regulation (EC) No. 850/98 as amended).

In addition, I announced on 21 March that we intend to introduce more stringent technical measures, such as a requirement for 90mm square mesh panels in demersal and nephrops trawls, later this year. We shall therefore bring forward legislative proposals shortly and consult on them with the fishing industry which has already played a key role in developing the proposals.

The Scottish Executive did not support the Commission's proposal to reduce the minimum landing size of certain fish. Indeed, we argued against it because we believed it sent the wrong signals to the industry.

However, there was a logic to the Commission's proposal. The minimum landing size of fish is related to mesh size. If you increase the minimum landing size of fish, without ensuring a corresponding increase in mesh size, the number of discards is increased.

The Commission proposed a reduction in the minimum landing size because it decreases the number of fish discarded, related to the mesh sizes that are currently in use.

We successfully argued for an increase in the minimum landing size of plaice, reflecting the fact that these are relatively hardy fish that can survive discarding.

Information at this level of detail is not available.

The Executive meets HM Government to discuss the oil and gas industry very frequently. My involvement as Vice-Chairman of Pilot, the successor to the Oil and Gas Industry Task Force, involves regular meetings with the Minister for Energy at the Department of Trade and Industry. Other meetings, at both Ministerial and official levels, take place to address specific issues.

Industry forecasts predict that employment levels in the offshore industry will fall as the UK Continental Shelf moves further into maturity. One of the main tasks of Pilot is to seek partnership solutions that will extend the life of the UKCS by means of greater international competitiveness. Pilot's success in these efforts would result in more UK activity and employment than would otherwise be the case. In the meantime the Executive will work with Scottish Enterprise and Grampian Enterprise to develop those employment opportunities that continue to arise.

Fisheries Research Services in Aberdeen is actively engaged in research on ocean climate and fisheries. However, it is currently not possible to predict the effect of climate change on fish stocks due to the complex nature of the interaction between climate and marine ecosystems. The observed warming of waters around the UK might be expected to favour species of southern origin at the expense of northern adapted species - though it is not clear whether this trend will continue or is merely a temporary phenomenon.

Oil and gas is a reserved matter. This does not mean, however, that the Executive has no influence in relation to what is one of Scotland's most important industry sectors. I am Vice-Chairman of Pilot, the successor body to the Oil and Gas Industry Task Force. Like the Task Force, Pilot is an industry-led initiative, chaired by the Minister for Energy and drawing membership from industry, Government and the trade unions, to develop a partnership approach to maintaining the UK Continental Shelf at the forefront of the industry. In addition, my officials are in constant contact with those at the Department of Trade and Industry, which is the Department responsible for all oil and gas matters.

The use of inspired parliamentary questions was considered by the Procedures Committee at its meeting on 15 February, and was acknowledged as a useful method for bringing matters to the attention of the Parliament. Without them some of the wide range of activities of the Executive, which cannot all be the subject of statements or debates in the Parliament, would simply not be noted in the Parliament at all. I am sure that the majority of members would prefer a mechanism such as this to alert them to Executive activity rather than learning of them third-hand through the media. Indeed members of non-Executive parties, and in particular Mr Lochhead's party, have said so on a number of occasions.

Compared with the total number of parliamentary questions, the number inspired by the Executive is very small - only one in 50. Several members have asked more questions than the entire number of inspired questions. The cost of answering inspired questions is also much less than that of answering ordinary questions as, by their very nature, the information presented in the answer is already available and does not require further work.

As I indicated in my response to S1W-4815, questions inspired by the Executive are not separately identified in our records. The list provided in that response was compiled by calculating the interval between the lodging of each question and the lodging of the answer (the relevant questions being answered normally within a few days), followed by examination of the text of the questions and answers thus identified. This was found to give a reliable indication of questions which had been inspired by the Executive.