Diolch i ddweud. Ynddo chi ddweud am ddechrau'r ddweud y 24 oes y Ysgrifennid Gwbl Fawr, ddweud o gwbl Fawr yn gwneud ei ddweud, i ddweud i ddweud yr Ysgrifennid Gwbl Fawr. Felly, rwy'n cael ei ddweud i ddweud yr ysgrifennid Gwbl Fawr. Mae'r MSP, ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud. Yn ddweud yma, mae'n ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud. Fawr, ddweud. ond, gan unrhyw deall액ion felly unrhaid ne pavegiau mewn teimlo ond y adroddaeth honno'r cyflawn錯un ac thosegywydd cancelled ahog eich ddsรife orsiau gyda ni, yn cael brakesol ac yn credu y cyfan gennyn nhw oedd unrhyw deallach ni'n Won膱 oedd mawr panfoddol Ynlam rydych yn bendorol han22. Ben law gan ■ot arudeimlinei sibling ac rydyn ni. Mae'n medau oaidd i yn ein nod NorthwestCrowd yddweith ac hen nhw sefful我要ld easyful u��us rydyn MRI Am chang y cyflawn ar y cyflym? I'm Hans Lamall, I'm the Wife, can we now? I'm David Anderson, current UC Scotland president. Claire Adamson, Central Scotland MSP. Mary Alexander, Unite the Union. I'm Roderick Campbell, MSP for North East Five. I'm Scott Walker, from the National Farmers Union of Scotland. Willie Coffey, MSP, Cymarraith and Irvine Valley. Stephen Boydman, assistant secretary with the Scottish TUC. Jean Arkart, Highlands and Islands MSP. Ian Andrewanger, lecturing competition law at the University of Edinburgh. Liz Murray, from the World Development Movement. Alec Rowley, MSP for Cowanbyd constituency. Richard Dixon, from Friends of the East Scotland. Jamie McGregor, MSP, Highlands and Islands. Dave Watson, from Unison Scotland. Good morning, everyone. I thank you all for excellent written evidence. I think that we were all ready with our highlighters last night, and we had some very interesting points in the written evidence. It was very, very helpful to inform how we are going to ask questions this morning. I'm going to open with quite a general question. Many of you have been in round tables and committees before. You know the etiquette, catch my eye and I'll let you in. We'll see if we can get a bit of a flow of a conversation rather than it being across the table. If you could just make sure that you channel all your comments through me and keep it civilised and under control. Mainly, for us in opening this inquiry, we've obviously been lobbied by many, many organisations. One of the key factors of this, and the one that's been highlighted the most, is generally from Unison and Unite on Health. We can see right across the board that there's many, many areas that are affected. Certainly the farmers in my constituency have been lobbying me on some of the challenges and the concerns that they have. Certainly some of the people I know in the financial sector have some really interesting evidence that we had from Friends of the Earth or some things that we hadn't really touched on. That was very, very helpful. I really want to open our discussions this morning with maybe a wee taster from each of you in your area where you think the challenges are or the opportunities are. In that case, we've taken a number of evidence sessions right into the new year. You're the first one, so you're going to help to inform the foundations of the inquiry.  Dave, do you want to start? Sure, I'll have to do that. Thank you. Obviously, our primary concern is around the area of public services. I'm particularly concerned that we haven't seen what we would want, which is an unequivocal exclusion of public services from the TTIP negotiations. We'd like to see the negotiations essentially operating based on what's called a positive list and the things that are included rather than trying to exclude things and leave everything else open. We're concerned particularly because we think there's a lack of enforcement procedures, particularly for issues like ILO standards. We're very concerned about the fact that there are allegedly going to be common regulatory standards and the US has much lower ones. Our biggest concern is over the dispute mechanism, where we're concerned that there are the present very few trade barriers between the UK and the US, and therefore big US corporations obviously have a big footfall in the health service in the United States. We'll see this as an opportunity to come in and privatise large chunks of the NHS.  Will we just go round the table then? Does that work for opening, Richard? Thank you very much. The key concerns that we've outlined in our paper are that at the heart of the rationale for TTIP is more fossil fuels coming across the Atlantic to Europe. That's a bad thing in terms of climate emissions, and it has negative impacts for those who live with the extraction of those resources in the States. The second thing is the deregulation agenda, and I've used the example of chemicals to highlight very different regimes, and if we try to bring those together, that means slackening our protection for people in the environment from toxic chemicals. Finally, agreeing with Dave, the dispute settlement system is a real worry. An example that I've used is about unconventional gas and fracking, and I think this is a very clear example because we in Scotland are doing something different from the rest of the UK. The UK is very enthusiastic about unconventional gas as a Government. The Scottish Government is much less enthusiastic, has put in place much tougher planning rules, has had an expert panel look at the issue, and that's created two extra pieces of work, one looking at health impacts, one looking at fixing the regulatory regime, which is not fit for purpose. We're always told that there are fracking nightmare stories from around the world, but it won't be like that in the UK because we'll have the best regulations in the world, and the US of course has some pretty lax regulations, but if we're bringing these regulations together, we won't necessarily have the best regulations. So in Scotland we've been moving towards certainly being very cautious, perhaps even saying we're not going to have this. Most of the UK is different. Some of Europe has bans in place, so in France there's a ban. Other countries are also cautious. We have this example of another dispute settlement process being used, the NAFTA process, by Lone Pine Resources, a US mining company, taking the Canadian Government to court or to the tribunal, but over what the state of Quebec has done. So I think that sitting in Scotland you'd think, right, that has done something to protect its people and its country is now in trouble through a dispute settlement process. So that very clearly shows the potential, if we do this wrong, for what could happen to Scotland. If we do something that we think is the right thing to do, we could easily end up in the wrong place. This is happening in Europe as well. The other example I gave is about the Swedish power company Vattenfall taking the German state to court and again about something that we are interested in. This is about banning nuclear or phasing out nuclear in Germany and here a big energy company can say, well, I'm going to lose profits because of that, so I'm taking you to one of these dispute settlement processes. Again, something that's very important to Scotland because we're on that same track of phasing out nuclear. Thank you very much, Liz. So I'm going to echo probably some of what Dave and Richard have said and what I'm sure the others are going to say, so the heart of our concerns are the fact that this treaty is very much taking a neoliberal is a neoliberal move towards liberalisation, particularly of public services. Obviously, we're concerned about that ISDS within that, that that hands power or tips the balance of power away from governments towards corporations through the ability for them to sue, and that in turn shrinks the policy space for governments to devise policies and regulate in the public interest. So that covers a whole range of things from food safety in the public services, the environment, human rights and the other issue for us is the regulatory harmony that Richard, harmonisation that Richard spoke about a moment ago, which we believe is a threat to progressive legislation. The anti-tip, particularly the regulatory harmony aspect of T-Tip is something that's going further than other trade agreements have and has been touted as setting a gold standard for other trade agreements and so our concern is also then for countries, particularly developing countries, operating under similar trade agreements in the future. We've questioned the basis of some of the political sport, especially in Westminster, for T-Tip on the basis of economic growth and jobs, and that's certainly, there's varying research showing based on different kinds of modelling techniques that show different outcomes, very different outcomes for economic growth and jobs and I've put some of that in my evidence. And then from the point of view of Scotland, obviously there's a range of possible areas to be considered and to be concerned about, and that is the public services here, including Scottish Water, as well as the NHS perhaps. Difficulties over renationalising the railways, for example, with the example of the East Coast Rail this morning and the post office and local authorities as well. We saw a leaked text in July that indicates that schools' food buying practices might be exempted from T-Tip, but that public hospitals of more than 500 beds and public universities will still be currently included. That threatens policies to boost local economies, for example, and in Scotland there are procurement policy that can support local economies to open up, so there's a clear disadvantage for public policy but also for SMEs in Scotland in that different competition space. And there's the issue of transparency, although that is beginning to be addressed now, there was some news on that yesterday but we still would like to see that going further because I think there's a distinct lack of information, particularly for policymakers. Thank you very much, Ariana. I suppose that I take a different, as you will have seen from my written evidence, I take a slightly different tack. I would like to preface my evidence by saying that I'm a competition lawyer and my interest lies in issues of market access and now I'm conducting some new research on markets and healthcare provision, especially in the space of public health. And I would like to start by saying that the European Union, either as an internal actor or as an international actor, works within a very well-defined framework that we call conferred competencies. In other words, the EU cannot act unless it is acting in areas that are conferred upon it by the Member States. The Member States remain the masters of the treaty. So unless the treaty states expressly that the EU has a competence in acting in certain policy areas, then the EU cannot take any such action. If on the one hand trade is enumerated as one of these exclusive competencies, we have to bear in mind that the exercise of competencies, even though they are exclusive, has to work within the complex framework of the treaty and the principle of conferral. My interest in public health has permeated in researching this particular issue of competencies. In respect to the provision of healthcare systems, Article 168 of the treaty provides for competencies to the EU, neither exclusive as trade, nor even shared. The EU has got very limited competencies when it comes to the provision of healthcare services. These are competencies of a support in nature. So this means that the EU can only act to the extent that it coordinates or supports the action of the Member States. It is clearly stated in the treaty and we have to remember that the treaty is the constitution of the European Union, no more, no less, and can only be amended through treaty amendment procedures with the consensus of all Member States. The Member States remain free to decide how to design frameworks for the provision of public health services. This cannot be changed unless there is a treaty amendment, less so through an international agreement. In fact, you will have seen from a written evidence in respect to, for instance, these concerns for the NHS that has been raised and are quite legitimate and I think that the public should engage in these discussions more widely because these are live issues today, is that it is not true t-tip that that power of the Member States to the side, whether to provide healthcare services through the market or outside market is stress and simply because the EU has no power, unless the Member States accept confer to the EU powers to do that, to modify the choices of the Member States, less so to mandate the Member States in what type of form, what type of form, what type of framework the Member States want to construe for the provision of healthcare services. Now, people will be familiar with the patients directive and other pieces of legislation that the EU has enacted in the field of healthcare. However, again, these have to be seen as part and parcel of the supporting and coordinating competence. For instance, the patients directive is there to facilitate the provision of healthcare services for individuals in different Member States, from Member States in which they are resident. I am probably shining an example of that because I am Italian and I sometimes find myself working in other Member States and pieces of legislation such as the patients directive enshrine a number of rights that are not new because they are part of the ACI, they are part of the case law of the Court of Justice, that I can exercise vis-à-vis healthcare providers in other Member States for the purpose, for instance, of the provision of care. Now, this is not going to change with T-SIP because a change in that nature of competence is only possible through treaty amendment. And there is extensive case law that allows Member States to justify derogations from principles concerning, for instance, the single market and competition based on the public interest in the field of health. Going to public procurement is another area in which there is extensive EU legislation. However, in as much as public procurement legislation adopted at EU level is applicable, what is clear is that whenever services are what we call essential services to the person, including healthcare, what is applicable to the award of these contracts is what we call a light touch regime. So there is just a principle of transparency and a principle of non-discrimination whether Member States can or they can state principles that are inspired by non-market concepts with a view to, for instance, localised services. Because, for instance, in the field of healthcare protection there have been cases saying that you can identify an area from which providers have to come from because that is germane to continuity of care. So, again, what I would like to stress as opposed to the very outset is that the EU might have exclusive competence in trade or whether that exclusive competence must be exercised within a framework of constitutional principles that are inspired by principle of conferred powers. Healthcare being not an area of exclusive competence not even shared but supporting that means that actions of the EU cannot have consequences that are so wide-ranging as perhaps it's been depicted so far. Again, public procurement is certainly very important and is there so that everybody can have a go-up public contract. However, if the chair of the committee wants me to entertain you on this respect, there are a number of ways in which, for instance, healthcare can be provided so what public procurement does not even come into the picture. OK. Jamie, did you want to end with a quick supplementary first question on that point? T-Tip would be a mixed agreement, wouldn't it? A mixed agreement so it would be shared competency. In other words, it would have to be ratified by all 28 member states. Correct. What happens if one member state retires? One member state retires it then in that case the treaty will not have effect. It wouldn't go ahead. Exactly because the ratification has to be across the whole membership, yes. Yes, it was. I suppose that that again is very much for member states to decide upon because each and every member state has got its own ratification process. Is it possible that other member states would bully member states who wouldn't sign up to it? I am a lawyer. I'm not a politician. I suppose that we have to draw a very clear distinction between the legality of the conclusion of such agreements and their entry into force and the judgment that it is as to their opportunity and that is a political judgment. Of course member states that are so inclined and are interested and believe in T-Tip because they see it and that is completely acceptable as a political judgment that T-Tip would be beneficial for them. They could exert diplomatic pressure on another member state however ultimately it is a judgment as to opportunity so we'll be on my pay grade I'm afraid. Can I have just one last thing? I understand that there's been seven rounds of negotiations so far. What level would you say we're at? I mean if the negotiations were what stage are we at? Are we halfway through or are we quarter way through? It's very difficult to tell because negotiations have been taking place as far as I understood them on the timeline in parallel across a number of different policy areas. So it depends very much where you're sitting. It depends very much whether you're looking at negotiations in the area of regulatory standards or because some areas are more advanced than others in terms of the amount the extent of the discussions and the extent to which you can say that there is some shared understanding. For instance taking for instance the issue of intellectual property intellectual property now seems to be off the table and you know for very good reasons I think even from the legalities from a legalities standpoint. Another area in which negotiations are suspended because the commission wishes to take more evidence is the area of the investor state dispute settlement. So I my educated guess is that probably we are about a quarter ahead because there is still a number of areas in which discussions are not as advanced as in others. Thanks. Claire, did you want to come in quickly? Good morning. You mentioned the case law in member states being able to defend positions with it. Can I ask if that case law is within the context of the single market in the EU or is there a case law in terms of member states defending against existing bilateral agreements? Not the EU. That case law concerns the extent I assume you're referring to the case law in the field of health care? Yes. Thank you very much for allowing me to make that clarification. That is the case law of the court of justice of the European Union in respect to the implementation of rules on the single market and the extent to which justifications can be constructed with a view to justifying for instance restrictions on the principles of free movement on grounds of public interest and in that case law the European Court of Justice made it very clear that member states retain their power to the side how to design the health services because the EU takes the provision of the highest possible level of health care as one of its keystone principles its keystone objectives and so it is a germane objective if you like and member states remain free to the side how to provide that health care and they can carve out justifications from principles of free market, free movement for instance, free movement of services especially because that can be essential for continuity of care provision and eventually the survival of their own population. Thank you very much. Okay, I think I'm going to let our other witnesses finish and then I'll let our members back in. Sorry, Rod. Steven. Okay, thanks. I joined this morning obviously by a number of colleagues so I'll leave the specific sectoral impacts to them and confine myself to a few brief comments about the economic rationale for TTIP and the potential impact of it. I think as our submission makes clear we are very very skeptical about the economic benefits of TTIP. I think for two main reasons as a couple of people have already pointed out traditional barriers to trade between the EU and the US are already very low and therefore you know the gains that are likely to be made from TTIP are likely to be minimal at best. I think a number of the studies that have been used to promote the economic benefits of TTIP as well are hardly convincing. The models that they use are as always with economic models very sensitive to what they leave in and what they leave out particularly in terms of ways in which TTIP might actually impede growth in jobs things like the frivolous patents that are common in the US and are likely to become much more common in the EU as a result of TTIP and also the cost and availability of prescription drugs which I think is significantly higher in the US than it currently is in the EU and unless your model is going to include these negative impacts then the model isn't really telling us very much. I think probably more importantly we are very concerned that TTIP will lead to a general lowering of standards across the economy as a whole and it will be actively detrimental to the social model that the Scottish Government is trying to create in Scotland but certainly trade unions are trying to work with other partners to create as well but you need to be clear that it's not about removing what we would traditionally describe as barriers to trade it's about imposing a common regulatory structure that will be policed by an international mechanism that would not be passed by the normal democratic processes in each country and I think that's really crucial to understand. I think it's also, in looking at the gains to trade we tend to be, I think, the economic orthodoxy it's much too relaxed about assuming the benefits from any gains to trade and they don't look at the distributional impact and I would argue that the evidence shows that the lower the traditional barriers to trade such as tariffs and quotas are any move to extend free trade further the distributional impact tends to be much greater so even some of the models that have been used to promote the economic benefits have actually been quite clear in saying that there will be job losses as a result of this. The people who are displaced are very unlikely again evidence shows to gain jobs in the future that pay similar rates or employ them at a similar level of skills so although you might be able to argue that the economy as a whole will benefit in the future there will be big distributional impacts and if we're always concerned about inequality as we all proclaim to be at this moment in time I understand that trade agreements have a major, major impact in that moving forward Okay, thanks, thanks Stephen Scott Thank you, good meeting In relation to T-Tip I'm going to talk about food and agriculture which for the private sector the non-government sector is probably unique in the sense that we've all got to consume it so the impact of T-Tip will impact on everyone who consumes agriculture products and within Scotland agriculture stretches across whole of Scotland into all the rural communities into the central belt of Scotland manufacturing everywhere so the extent of T-Tip impact will be quite significant for agriculture Potentially there are some gains and I'll talk about them later on today but I want to just talk about potential negatives that we see so far and really concentrating into two areas just now The first area is about the different approach to food standards that the US takes compared to the European Union and on this I would flag up two specific issues just now one is about the competition issue that domestic producers face particularly in Scotland if we look at empatsy in Scotland that will be felt strongest in our beef sector which is really one of the big achievements of the food and export market from Scotland and we face strong different competition in the beef sector here because of the standards crossing in the USA The other thing to do with standards is by recognition by consumers so under the T-Tip rules as I understand them we won't be able to label these differences to consumers so consumers won't be able to make those differences to the products that they make Studies up until now have tended to show that while consumers perhaps say the right things when asked about which products they wish to consume all too often when it comes to purchase decisions within the supermarket they make those purchase decisions on prices alone so if the trading standards are different between the United States and the European Union that negative impact in a lot of agriculture production here which in a time of volatility and concerns about food security we've got to be concerned in that area The second aspect has been touched on so far already this morning but in relation to agriculture about protecting intellectual property and we've got a unique system here within Europe about geographical indicators so for Scotland in relation to the likes of Scotch whisky Scotch beef Scotch lamb also goes down to individual products but a two is the likes of Arbroath Smokies and Dundee cake which the United States of America don't recognise our use of geographical indicators so potentially again it comes back to competition that is faced in the agricultural sector on that I would stop just now our overall view is of general concern about the impact on jobs and security within rural communities OK Mary Thanks Our concerns have been mentioned by most people and Dave highlighted at the beginning of the discussion the concerns around the NHS and the public bodies We welcome the first former First Minister Alex Am's letter to David Cameron which is asking him to use his veto to exclude the NHS from TTIP and I quote in it it says Scotland must not be bound into a trade deal that threatens the public ownership of the NHS and could undermine the democratic decisions of the Scottish people Now we're part of a broad coalition campaign if you go on to hashtag no TTIP there's quite a lot of information there and there's no doubt that there's huge opposition to TTIP and what it means I won't go over the arguments about the inclusion of ISDS but I think we've all seen examples in the evidence of corporations soon governments such as Philip Morris soon the Australian Government over the plain packaging legislation in 2012 the German Government being sued by the Swedish energy giant Vattenfall for losses in consideration of Germany's phasing out of the nuclear programme Occidental and the 1.77 billion they've sued Ecuador well the one damages from Ecuador 4 despite the fact that Occidental actually broke Ecuadorian law and that was the reason for the contract being terminated in the first place so we have huge concerns about the democracy, transparency accountability and of course labour rights the treaty on labour rights is a major cause for concern for trade unions it's well founded because often any labour rights chapter is incorporated as a non binding appendix to free trade treaties rather than being part of the substantive text and we've already heard from republican congress men that they are only willing to agree TTIP if extending EU labour standards to the US ruled out in advance so for instance US trade representative Ron Kirk has said that the agreement would seek substantial progress on addressing liberalisation in areas of service investment labour and the environment and Dave mentioned earlier the right to work states and what that means for American workers and we've got very real concerns that being extended to the EU and being participating in the race to the bottom the ETUC General Secretary Bernadette Segal has also underlined that trade union is opposing inclusion of the investor state dispute settlement provisions in the agreement considering that both parties are advanced economies with well developed legal systems the ETUC sees no reason to create a bypass to national courts for foreign investors and again that is a really big concern that we have that there are corporate lawyers behind closed doors with no openness around the decisions that they're making about national states and corporations and we believe that TTIP should include a comprehensive and enforceable labour development chapter the European Union and US have got their own legal systems and we would want them to commit to the ratification and full implementation of the core labour standards of the UN international labour organisation and that's a key thing for us Thanks very much David I suppose being last there's very little left to say I would like to agree with a number of points that my trade union colleagues have made this morning but highlight something that Dave mentioned on the importance of a positive list for areas that are included within TTIP rather than calling for exclusions of particular areas that's particularly important when government can change the classification of one particular public service the example that's given is further education in England which previously had been regarded as part and recently has been reclassified as a non-profit institution servicing households which moves out of the public sphere into a semi-private and open to competition area excuse me the importance of highlighting the role of education universities in Scotland play a significant role in the economy and society and culture within the country I think it's important to recognise that while universities themselves are autonomous and independent institutions they form a mixed economy of public, private and third sector support to deliver that research and teaching and it's very difficult to classify that within one particular sector it plays a unique role and it's something that having a positive list of areas that are included would then provide protection for the areas that we don't want included and helps to focus the debate on what may be the benefits and I would agree that the evidence for the benefits coming from TTIP is limited and whatever those benefits may be keeping that in a narrow area protects the rest of the areas that we're concerned about Okay, thank you Rod, you were wanting in halfway round I would like to focus a little bit if I can hand on the investors to dispute settlements so I could pose a question to the devil's advocate rather than ordinary advocate which I am the UK is currently a party to 90 bilateral agreements all of which have ISDS clauses in them to date there have only been two actions against the UK neither of which involve kind of matters of public policy Why is that? Then why would you distinguish what's now proposed from that and also a bit of clarification would be helpful as to why the European Commission has suspended hearings on ISDS at the moment So, I think we are talking about something which is very different in terms of scale and different in terms of who we're negotiating with so this will be the biggest free trade agreement in the world and it will be with the most litigious country in the world so that suggests that the ante has going up seriously we have had, of course, reassurances you have some of them in the spice briefing so we've had reassurances from UK ministers and from commission officials and commissioners telling us that of course they will protect all these things and that we don't need to worry too much but you would assume that Germany had reassurance when they signed up to the energy treaty that they're now being asked to pay out nearly 5 billion for phasing out nuclear you would assume that the state of Quebec thought that they probably wouldn't be in court or in a tribunal because they were doing something right about putting a moratorium on fracking so I think we the scale of what we're signing up for and the country that we're signing up with suggests that there is a much greater danger that we will end up in a lot of complex disputes which will go to tribunals and I think the other side of that is that if that starts to come true what that starts to mean is that for every elected representative you start to think well shall we put a law in place about that shall we pass this piece of policy because we might end up in court because of it so it starts to slow down your powers as the Scottish Parliament you're always at the back of your mind thinking oh hang on how will the US react to that will Europe crack down on us because it's going to get us in trouble with the US so there's this regulatory chill effect that potentially comes so I think the answer to your question is yes some of these exist and the UK perhaps has been lucky but other countries have certainly suffered because they've been part of these dispute systems but the one that we're potentially signing up to is of such a bigger scale such a more potentially dangerous partner that we will certainly suffer if it's not written right or simply got rid of Arianna, do you want to come in on the question about I think that that was clear though you wanted to comment I was just going to add a tiny bit of detail only to what Richard was saying and that was to do with the scale and particularly the foreign direct investment that from the US to the UK which is substantial and that's another key factor in the difference between perhaps the other bilateral trade agreements that the UK signed up to and this one it's a quarter of a trillion dollars that the US over FDI the US has to the UK and it's also helpful to look at NAFTA which has been around for 20 years now and perhaps to consider Canada as a similar possible example to the UK and the number of cases that have been brought against the Canadian government by US and that's 30 in the last 20 years many of which haven't been settled some of which have been thrown out on merit but some of them have resulted in compensation being paid or certainly legal costs being paid by the Canadian Government and one or two of them have resulted in changes of policy as a result of that kind of chilling effect that Richard described Dave? Focusing particularly on the health thing bearing in mind the points that Adriana you'd be pleased obviously it's dangerous having two lawyers giving evidence at the same time and you'd be pleased to hear I'm not going to have a legal debate with Adriana on the final points of European law because I largely agree with her I think what I would have had is more the practicalities of it is that it may well be a theoretical legal position as Adriana has set it out but the practical examples like Slovakia in the health insurance system that we highlighted particularly the Australian when expecting a challenge from William Morris on the tobacco controls Richard is right about the regulatory chill point I've got a fair amount of experience over many years of dealing with Scottish Government law officers and local authority legal officers trying to do things and the usual reaction from a law officer in any public sector is you might get challenged minister and this is the real threat here that it's not actually necessary that it's going to be a challenge or we will get to European Court of Justice it's just that freezing if you like of not doing anything that might be a wee bit risky on that basis and the big change here is that US corporations are notoriously litigious they have huge legal departments that make the Scottish Government law officers like a wee high street solicitors in comparison and that's the real challenge here on that basis the other health issue in relations is that Scotland of course is not the member state here I appreciate that that might be an issue of debate but clearly on the it's not the case at present so if Scotland isn't the member state it's the UK and therefore where's the legal challenge going to come here is the UK Government really going on the health for example to mount the sort of legal challenge that we might want to mount in Scotland when we have very different health systems there's a fairly broad consensus on that point so I don't dispute the strict legal view but I would say the practical examples over the straight that we do have a real problem potentially with tip tip and the way to sort that is just to exclude and use the positive list approach and therefore there won't be that risk in the first place In relation to your question the reason why it talks on the investor state dispute system and mechanism have been suspended who was the trade commissioner and then now the current, the new one the one that's a member of the Juncker commission wished to have greater scope for debate so the reason why the talks were frozen was because the EU decided and quite rightly to my mind unilaterally to gather extra evidence so there was an online consultation that is either already expired just expired or is about to expired in the next couple of weeks the talks have been suspended because there was clearly a need felt for greater debate in terms of investor state dispute settlement In relation to the comments that have just been made I would like to say it is true Scotland is a regional government within a unitary state and the EU takes a view that the member state is the member state and then the member state itself has a very specific institutional set-ups decide how to best distribute powers whether vertically or horizontally across administrations but obviously the liability feel like the rights and the liabilities for instance in the context of the treaty fall with that member state seeing almost as a best failure answer to the entity so I can see whether Dave's comments on Scotland and Scotland choices come from that Scotland enjoys powers to fully regulate the health services in Scotland according to the Scotland Act so to be completely honest I see that actually as a safeguard for Scotland because before that can be changed there needs to be had a debate in Westminster about the Scotland Act and the way things are evolving in this respect there seems to be quite a lot of appetite for devolving more powers the Holyrood to this parliament is supposed to taking them away so to be completely honest unless politicians were completely schizophrenic in this respect which I frankly don't believe I don't see that backtracking on the NHS happening and finally in respect to the ISDS as a lawyer I see it as a source of some concern because I actually believe in the benefits of having an effective core system as all the democracies in the world have and it is really important that disputes are heard in what we call in the continent the Jewish natural the natural judge for that particular climate and so I think that the great danger of ISDS is that it takes away from the court disputes are very important and to be completely honest I don't see why judges should not be well versed in dealing with those disputes however at the same time in terms of the liability of states for consequences in terms of changes in policy there is a well established principles in international law that changes in policies dictated by public interest and made in good faith and carried through according to well established through rules are not challengeable in respect to total liability so in many ways there are checks and balances in the applicable rules in that respect that will have a bearing on the limits of liability of states Willie Coffey Thanks very much We will hear no doubt in due course what the United Kingdom Government's view on this is, if their representative comes to this committee and particularly I'm interested in the comments that Mrs Angeline made about the conferred competencies now if all the member states agree to this then all of these things of these worries and fears can therefore happen is there a view amongst colleagues round the table about what the current views of the member states are with respect to providing access to healthcare services within their jurisdictions are they all against it or are they all in favour of it or do we just not know I think the concern here frankly is I well understand the argument and it's absolutely right that if it was to go out with the current competencies yes it would need a change an approval by each of the member states and that varies of course in the UK it probably would only require a piece of secondary legislation to do that in other countries it would need a piece of primary legislation or at least approval of their parliament so I think there are different mechanisms my concern is actually that this might not get to that stage because the EU negotiators will say well actually this doesn't impact on we're not exceeding the competencies there and therefore it will end up a legal mechanism so it will be judges not parliaments making these decisions and I think that these decisions are largely political ones about the way that we run our health service for example and other issues as well and I think that's where it ought to remain rather than take a frankly a punt on a judge's or an arbitration panel under a mechanism like ISDS Who have I got next sorry Jamie, Willie do you want to come back on that first right Jamie I'll come to you next sorry I wonder if Mrs Angely could maybe clarify this then if the member states don't agree that access can be made to their respective health services how can that be overcome and how can the will of the member states be overcome even through the court simply here the principle of conferred competencies says that the EU can only act in those areas that are identified as areas that are conferred to it by the treaties and clearly for instance healthcare services that is provision of public healthcare services that is an area where the EU enjoys a very limited competence and I don't see that happening even if the EU successfully came to a head a negotiated t-shirt and agreed to a common text then that common text would be effective to in respect of those areas of competence that fall within the competence of the EU at that particular time so if healthcare provision does not fall in those areas in which the EU can if you like commit the member states in according to the principle of confer competencies bar for a treaty amendment that change cannot happen member states remain free in their respective jurisdiction to say well it's okay we accept that healthcare is a service and therefore enjoys the principles of free movement of services for instance or whether we remain sovereign if you like on the way in which we are gonna provide these services to our own population so if we want to go through a mechanism in which we have ownership of the health service by the state directly or by controlled bodies then so be it the EU cannot mandate us nor the EU is saying that it will mandate the member states into privatising health services I completely don't buy on the basis of the principle of confer competencies this much bandit argument that t-shirt or for all that matter the application of the free movement of services rules will lead to privatisation by stealth that simply cannot happen through the EU then obviously it falls within the member states if the member states think that that is actually a very good idea then that's a choice of domestic politics the EU has no responsibility and it's simply because the EU enjoys no power into that particular area I don't know if that satisfies your concern your question so it's really helping this community or so so individual member states could make individual independent decisions and allow access to their health services or not or not they can go for marketisation or they can commit themselves to public provision and these also I would like to add in relation to the rules on public procurements that were mentioned earlier on these are also a bearing on the scope of public procurement so in this respect it's very clear the public procurement rules going beyond the two key principles of transparency and non-discrimination will not apply if services are provided in the way that we call in-house either internalise them through member state structure for instance through healthcare authorities for instance or through bodies that the healthcare authorities have significant control over so if we imagine for instance a system like the healthcare services in Scotland with healthcare authorities that control hospitals then those if the controlled hospital were to provide medical health services to the population those would not have to go out tender because that hospital is under the strategic and functional control of the state authority that commits the service and commits the resources of course thank you very much my first one is about ISDS but the second one is the points made by Mary Alexander and David Anderson are concerns that are very well made and I think it's very important that they're brought up at this stage I know one of the miscontentious points is ISDS and I'm not a lawyer but I'm aware that there is at the moment the largest ever consultation on ISDS which is just closed and had 150,000 replies and I imagine a good few of those are lawyers so I would be interesting to see what comes out of that ISDS as far as I'm aware ISDS can only be evoked if capital is expropriated and that's something that would already be against UK law I believe and my question is ISDS any different from UK contract law or any other laws for that matter who's best? David are you best at getting that response? I think the difficulty is it's the definition of expropriation if you look at the cases that we've referred to that's been given in some cases certainly a fairly broad view it's certainly the case that I agree with that we want to bid for a hospital in Glasgow there would have to be a link with the contract so for example there would already have to be some element they would have to have a contract some element of the service they would have to be able to show some loss so it's not a case of just an opportunity a loss that would actually have to be a real cost to them or real expropriation in that case so I agree that limits the potential for challenge the worry is that in the UK, particularly in health services particularly in England people tend to think even in Scotland we have the sort of monolith of public service but actually a third of the Scottish Government budget goes in purchasing goods and services out with the public sector so there's already a fair amount of private sector work even in Scotland but in health service of course we have a very clear difference between the approach in England to that of Scotland and that's my concern essentially is that Scotland will not have the ability to be able to influence that if the sort of legal challenges come against a member state and the way to deal with this is I agree again with Adriana that the treaty may not even mention the NHS doesn't have to but because it could be implied in a legal challenge that's why we want the positive list if you have the positive list then there's no doubt you are the one to exclude the NHS explicitly in the treaty which is one way of doing it another one is to say the only things that are covered by the treaty is in the positive list again that protects the NHS so we can argue about the legal potential legal challenges but my point is there's a very easy way to sort this if the UK Government is not trying to encourage the privatisation of the NHS in Scotland through the back door using t-tip then it should be have no difficulty with the positive list approach and therefore we'll all say thank you very much and we won't have any problem in relation to that particular issue so I think that's the challenge here there's an easy solution if politicians don't want to take the easy solution you have to question their motives will not do so clear David you said that the way to solve it is to exclude public services I'm concerned about the definition of public services given the context of education we have local government of allials and trusts that have been set up we have our PFI contracts for schools and hospitals that involve catering staff and those kind of complexities and outsourcing of NHS laboratory services etc so how how can I define what public services means the EU's been debating the question of services of non-economic interests but for some considerable time has never actually got to a definition in Europe that everyone's agreed on so I'm not confident that we're going to crack that one either and certainly I'm not confident that Europe's going to crack that one either so I think there is difficulty there are all sorts of grey areas I would have to say in fairness that the prospects and PFI is a subject close to my heart I've written a book on the subject I would however say that there are limited grounds I think to worry in terms of the PFI contracts be they the current ones or the old style ones and part of the reason for that is that if we wanted for example to buy out PFI if we had announced to be made somewhere else as we're speaking if we got the sort of borrowing powers that I would like then obviously one of the things I'd like to see is buying out PFI contracts and therefore you could immediately say well hang on there are American corporations who have a say in a number of PFI contracts across the UK but the point about that is that Gemme is actually right that because there is existing contract law that actually the only way of buying those out is by agreement in other words you'd have to agree with the current provider to buy that out so if you've reached an agreement you can't then do a legal challenge under t-tip because essentially you've agreed to the change of the contract so I think those sorts of challenges are less likely in these circumstances Alec When we took evidence from the Italian ambassador and we put to him about the health service his view was very much that public services are not included within t-tip and that was a view that he took I just wonder about that but I suppose when we talked last week to the MEPs David Martin for example talked about a good t-tip being really good for jobs, for skills and I noticed even what the STUC says on that and perhaps maybe you could expand a bit in terms of you say here about a commission that could have a look at this perhaps you could maybe expand a bit on that and I do wonder in terms of what particularly each organisation's position is because the union has understand that have said that we should oppose t-tip and the position should be that the UK should be taking up a position which is that we are against t-tip and I just wonder what each organisation thinks is there as David Martin MEP described it a good t-tip to be had from this or actually is it the case that we should be saying that this is not in the interest Scotland and it's not in the interest the workers across the UK Stephen Absolutely absolutely except David's point that if you lose from the current negotiations the things that we don't like and we'll flag in our submissions there could be a good t-tip to be had I think is a reasonable intellectual position my problem is I just don't feel if I have the information it would let me say without any doubt at this moment that that is the case particularly for Scotland Roman what is David's case where does he see the sectors being that are going to benefit from t-tip what does that mean for Scotland what will be the net jobs impact where will the losses be I don't see this information being available in Scotland at all I'm not aware of the Scottish Government having done any analytical work I'm not aware of Scottish Enterprise if the Scottish Government and Enterprise agencies think that there's a case to be made here then please by all means present that case to us and we'll look at it with our unjondest eye ensure economic development terms I can't accept to hide it in there somewhere there may well be a good case but it's not being presented to us nobody's making that case in Scotland at this moment in time Okay this committee's writing further to the MAP's specifically on t-tip to get an up-to-date position because we covered lots of topics last week were a session with MAP's so we're writing to them specifically on that point Liz you've got some interesting evidence on your written evidence that it was maybe on the same tack on jobs in particular yeah so there's been some criticism the UK Government has particularly there's an impact assessment that was done by the European Commission and that's the modelling from that has been criticised because the figures have been used by the UK Government on growth and jobs taken from that impact assessment but it has some assumptions in it that we don't believe relate very well to the real world assumptions for example that markets are perfectly competitive, efficient and in equilibrium in other words there's a buyer for every product or service that's available including labour and they've been criticised for being open to bias that the information that's gone in as in all models it's influenced the information that's come out and they rely on on very optimistic assumptions to do with reducing tariffs and non-tariff barriers so it relies on eliminating 100% of tariffs half of all the non-tariff barriers or at least those that could be have action taken on them to be removed across all sectors of the economy and 50% of government procurement restrictions being lifted so I don't know how that relates to what Arianna's said but it also looks at job displacements so where people are forced out of uncompetitive industries it assumes they'll find a job immediately so there are some big questions around that and there's other research that's come out since so there's a peer reviewed study that came out from Tufts University which I referenced actually in my evidence but I can send around a specific link to that but a couple of the things that came out of that is that TTIP would lead to net losses in terms of net exports after a decade compared to the baseline of no TTIP so that it would lead to net losses in terms of GDP it would lead to a loss of labour income lead to job losses and that's 600,000 across the EU and and quite significantly as well particularly perhaps from the trade union point of view is a reduction in labour share of GDP so a movement of the share of GDP from labour to capital which from a social equality point of view is something to really consider so as Stephen said as far as we know there's been no specific research done on Scotland the CBI yesterday gave evidence to the business committee down in London and they admitted that they haven't done any economic analysis across different sectors because obviously there's different impacts on different sectors in business in the UK so that hasn't been done yet either so we don't believe the jobs argument and the economic growth argument stacks up at all on TTIP and that the if you take ISDS out you've still got the so you've got questions over economic growth and jobs the ISDS which we disagree with even if that came out you've still got the issue of regulatory harmonisation so you've still got that what we think will be a downward pressure on the different standards that are there to protect public health environment and over the food safety which then has an impact on Government's ability to make those sort of progressive policies but also for example the Scottish companies that you talked about in the agricultural sector and things potentially being at a disadvantage then Stephens, do you want to come back? I've been saying when the main study that's referenced has been certainly one that the European Commission uses is the centre for economic policy research and the answer one was was referring to as well so they find that in a 27 and that would be 12 years after the implementation of TTIP in their model they believe that the US economy would have grown by 0.4% more than otherwise would have been the case and the UK the European economy by 0.5% of EU GDP explicitly does not say it would lead to more jobs cos it's a full employment model already assumes full employment it thinks although it's very tentative that wages might be somewhat higher than they might otherwise have been but it's very tentative of finding but it does find that there would be negative impacts for some workers but I think the important things to extract from that model are that even if they are correct that would imply an annual increment in GDP of about 0.03% so the point being you are never going to know the data is never going to be presented it's going to be able to prove that TTIP has had a positive impact on growth and jobs because the annual increment is so small it's going to be lost in the rest of the data and just to reiterate what I said in my opening remarks the models explicitly also don't include those areas that could be detrimental to growth and jobs. Now I mentioned patents and I mentioned the cost of drugs and I think it's very important to remember that it's not a free trade agreement it's about common regulatory structures and big pharmaceutical industries will be seeking to ensure that their patents last for them, they are stronger, longer and far more reaching and I think we know enough about the dissemination of knowledge and economics to know that the impact of that on the wider economy is going to be negative over a longer period of time and the models just don't consider issues like that. Okay, thank you very much, Alex. Did you want to come back? On that point it is important that we do pursue that further because there is this assumption being made that there's a lot of good t-tip. It's not just David Martin who says a good t-tip the UK Government, indeed the Scottish Government are saying that there is a lot of benefits to come for t-tip they're all saying we've got some concerns so we need to perhaps and perhaps those that are giving evidence we need to look further at what these so-called benefits of t-tip are. In terms if I can just pick up on this question about health services because one of the issues we tried to tease out last week and we don't pick it up is this role in Scotland given that as far as the European Union is concerned is the UK that is the state and given that we have a lot of services that are privatised health services that are privatised south of the border that are not privatised in Scotland I mean again it's like what would be the position as far as that is concerned. The position would be exactly how I depicted it the EU cannot either through internal action or external action even less so I would argue compelled the UK to change the status quo so Scotland has decided to organise the provision of health services in a certain way because that is a matter that is devolved to this parliament so you as an administration decide to as a parliament and the Scottish Government have decided to take certain steps so that provision of health care services remains in public hands and the EU cannot change that remember that it's clear in the UK that the distribution of competence this application of the principle of conferred competence cannot be amended if not through treaty amendments so again extension of EU competencies in the field of public health cannot take place unless there is an amendment to the treaty that also means that within their own competence which is within the Member States in that area the Member States decides how to best organise it so you would take as I said before action at Westminster level to take away the devolved area of competence in public health from your cells and take it back to London if they really were feeling so strong and so inclined as to have the extension of principles such as those contained in the Health and Social Care Act 2012 also to Scotland but as I said to you before unless what is happening now with the Smith commission is something that I'm imagining I don't see the process of the evolution backtracking in that way quite to the contrary seems to me that there is a general consensus that the Scottish Parliament should get more powers so I don't see Westminster quite frankly taking health care away from Holyrood and precluding Holyrood from taking certain making certain choices and maintaining health care provision into public hand and like I said TTIP cannot change that because the distribution of competence is a matter of constitutional law within the EU such as the treaty is the constitution of the EU and so unless you amend the treaty that change simply cannot occur I'd just like to do some antiquity studies in 2001 the European Court of Justice was asked to consider the question as to whether at the time the European community could accede to the European Convention on Human Rights because there was an argument saying you know human rights are a keystone of the rule of law and the protection of individuals within the EU so there was almost an assumption that because the EU had accepted those principles there was an unsaid and unexpressed competence in the treaty and the Court said no I am sorry human rights policy is not within the policies that are being conferred to the EU did the European community at the time the European community cannot at the stage in which we are in the make-up of the treaty accede to the Convention I suppose that the principle always applies and applies also in this case unless there is a change in the constitutional make-up of the treaty to confer a competence to the EU the EU cannot mandate on the Member States they should regulate the provision of healthcare I don't know if that makes sense Lady on your point about Unite's opposition to TTIP we were very clear about what the benefits of that should be and it should be that the agreement would have a positive impact on jobs and income in the UK and Ireland and not just for the benefit of business we wanted the ISDS removed from the agreement and public services to be removed from the remit of the agreement and guarantees inserted to predict public provision and the possibility to renationalise and also, as I mentioned before we wanted binding and enforceable environmental and labour standards to be a central part of the agreement so for us, for all the reasons that I outlined previously about our concerns around labour rights the negative consequences from the agreement in terms of European workers the lack of transparency and the problems around the ISDS that was what the rationale was for behind our executive decision to oppose TTIP Stephen Very quick, looking back to Alex's comments about the Scottish Government the UK Government, the EU Commission all been very strongly in favour of this implying that there has to be lying underneath a very positive case for TTIP I think that just kind of refers to the very deeply embedded economic orthodoxy around free trade being a good thing it's often said that comparative advantage is the only proposition in economics that is both once true and non-trivial and that has led over the decades to people becoming very sympathetic towards free trade and politicians living in fear of ever being described as protectionist I would argue that that leads to a situation where politicians irrigate the underlying case for agreements and nearly as closely as they should do and it should be done with a real rigor which is sadly lacking so if that is indeed the case then please again let someone present that case to us, let them present it to us with some detail about how it refers to the Scottish economy as it is in real time rather than some kind of state described in an economic model that doesn't refer to the economy on the ground and we have to also be aware of where some of the key economic impacts are seen as being for instance motor vehicles are spoken throughout the literature has been one of the areas that your trade will increase and will be benefits to both sides that can only happen if the EU frankly is going to undermine its own regulatory framework which is essentially traded off large cars for your lower emissions and now is that something that we want to see even if it leads to more jobs and growth I would argue that might not happen anyway but even if it did that would not that is something that essentially the democratic governments of the EU have decided they don't want to happen and that should not be circumvented through a free trade agreement David Just to give the UCU position in terms of a good t-tip it may well be that there is a possibility for a good t-tip but this certainly isn't it the secret negotiating positions the secrecy and the lack of public engagement and involvement in the whole process has set alarm bells ringing it's not something that people have been able to engage with the lack of clarity over a number of questions that we've raised this morning without a rewrite and a restart of the process our position is that we are opposed to the current process and we're willing to engage in what's presented henceforth but as things stand just now we're in opposition Thanks, David I'd like to ask a question to the NFU I'd have to declare that I'm a fully paid up member before we start and so I'll obviously take a certain amount of notice of what they say you're talking here about in your written submission worries about beef imports particularly and the use of anti-microbial and microbial washes for the purpose of reducing pathogens now I asked about this when I was in Brussels recently and one good example of this is chlorine disinfected chicken which they use the whole time in the US and it's a practice it's common practice in the UK to use this but t-tip would reduce the tariff on the chicken however it could not remove the ban of the practice in question because it is banned over here so there wouldn't be a worry about that being sold over here and the use and consumption of GM foods for example is regulated by the European Food Standards Agency which again that can't be tampered with so my main question to you as somebody has got an interest in livestock and representing a lot of farmers Scotch beef and Scotch lamb and Scotch salmon and Scotch whisky are all very important exports and surely to goodness it would not be beneficial that we could export these there's been a ban on Scotch beef exports since foot and mouth and that could well be lifted would that not be a benefit could we not export more lamb to the US could these not go to niche markets looking at the positive side and we would see some more growth in the industry I just really would like your opinion on that is it all negatives or can you see some positives there yes certainly for agriculture it's not all negatives but if we just deal with the food standards issue issue first the US over many years has challenged the European Union in the World Trade Organization with regards to standards we've got in place for GMs as in their unscientific whether it be for the standards for they use growth promoters in their meat products the ban in the EU is unscientific and also about the chicken washing they say that the ban in the EU is unscientific so from our point of view the US has constantly challenged challenged these bans and continues to challenge these bans our concern is that once the TTIP agreement is reached depending on what's in the final the final document you'll still probably see erosion over the course of time because one of the big gains for the US food producers is to get these products into the European Union that's where they're going to get big gains from so whether we see those sort of gains happening day one that might be open to dispute we'll have to see a final agreement but I think it's only a matter of time once this agreement gets put in place what we need to have somewhere in the final agreement is this recognition that both the European Union and the United States for both for legitimate reasons take a different approach to food safety now the US in particular want to have equivalent measures in place so allowing the different nations to take different approaches but for them to be seen as having the same impact on food safety therefore allowing free trade of goods backwards and forwards in theory that would be fine but generally speaking most of the US measures are imposed lower cost on their industry than the EU measures so again if that were to happen we'd be put a competitive disadvantage if you look at the likes of beef and lamb where potentially we've got excellent products here in Scotland we've got products that we believe would be in high demand for affluent consumers in the United States of America the rules that they've put in place following the BSE restrictions in the United Kingdom would prohibit us actually exporting to the US market so again unless we see some change there there's potential to export but the reality won't actually be realised in the next few years so that also comes back to the idea of geographical indicators where there's a different approach to the United States of America compared to Europe so Europe tends to have to look at where the product's been produced what actually goes into the tradition the history of the production of that product and therefore protects that product Scotch whisky being one of the classics here Scotch beef being the other classic or salmon as well now for the United States of America they tend to operate a different approach they tend to look at the brand as being the important thing and where the product comes from and how that product is produced now again I would imagine there'll be many US firms who will be looking at the high value Scottish products and seeing how they could copycat those products in some ways so I'm not saying the whole T-Tip deal is necessarily bad for agriculture we do think long term there could be potential to export some products to the United States of America but unless we actually have some sort of agreement in place that recognises the different approaches to food standards which is legitimate and unless we have some sort of a proper agreement in place that actually protects our products then we do have concerns that the overall impact would be negative and particularly if you go to some of the areas in Scotland whether it be Orkney, Dumfries and Galloway the northeast where agriculture is such a large part of the economy if agriculture were to be decimated or harmed by this agreement we'd actually see it feeding through to not just farm farms not just to the businesses that rely directly upon farms, hauliers, vets and the like but through the whole of these regional economies but you don't think sorry can I just the potential of the markets is obviously enormous if you can get them in there so your concern really is about the fact that we would have to drop our standards is that what your concern is? I'm not necessarily going to say we would have to drop our standards what I'm saying is we've got different standards well we've got higher standards in the United States I would say we have higher standards other people may dispute that but our standards impose extra costs on our businesses that the standards in the United States don't impose I think our standards are correct there were the consumers in the United Kingdom and in the European Union have voted for but as I sort of alluded to before there's often a difference to what people vote for and believe should be put in place compared to the purchasing decisions they actually make when they go to the supermarkets so the concern is that if we keep our high standards which I think we should do but will our products in that then we'll actually reduce the amount of product that we produce here but you wouldn't be able to I mean the cloning in fact you wouldn't be able to sell that in the UK or anywhere in Europe yeah you certainly wouldn't be able to sell it immediately in the United Kingdom but I think with the United States who've constantly argued this point at World Trade Organisation I would be surprised if they don't continue to argue under the final T-Typ agreement and if we don't see these products coming in from day one then I would suspect at some point in time we as an organisation would be back at this Parliament saying hang on we're finding that these products are coming into the EU or there's a deal of way to be put in place that will allow these products to come into the EU so our fear isn't say what will happen on day one but about the long term impacts of what the T-Typ agreement could put in place so it's about putting in protections at this stage so unlike some we're not saying we shouldn't sign up to the T-Typ agreement but there should be protections that are put in place that actually recognises the differences in policy that takes place here in the European Union thank you Richard Dixon I wonder if you can expand a wee bit and then go into some of the evidence that you produced has written evidence that would be helpful for the issue of good T-Typ so of course sometimes it is good to harmonise certain things so across Europe we've done some good work on that that's why we have some of our best environmental laws, some of our worker protection it's because we've agreed that across Europe to take a trivial example if we had standardised USB cables so there were only two sorts hundreds of millions of people would not have to buy a new cable every time Apple produced a new product and that would actually save people's energy and people's money so standardisation can be a really good thing but just to sum up some of the things you've heard around the table and in the written evidence is T-Typ possibly something good if we change it so that it could be well you've already heard that there's very light regulation between the EU and the US so that the differences aren't that great you've heard that the reality is probably particularly if T-Typ becomes a bit more restricted the economic benefits of T-Typ are absolutely tiny across the economy you've heard that there are threats to key sectors like agriculture and to key interests like chemicals legislation you've heard that ISDS is a potential nightmare in terms of locking people up in legal actions and in terms of stopping countries and the EU itself from carrying on being progressive and protecting workers more and protecting people's health more and of course at the same time you've got the public excited about this you've got politicians spending lots of time talking about this so you would have to conclude having heard all that it's absolutely not worth it we should just stop now because it's a complete waste of time particularly politicians this time so just to come back to the chemicals issue I think that's an interesting example and Jamie was talking about for instance the chlorinated chlorine cleaned chickens and saying we can't bring this in because they're banned I think that fundamentally T-Typ is going to work if there's deregulation so 80% of the gains from T-Typ are supposed to be about changing regulations so some of these things we think are good protections in Europe are going to have to go if US company is going to make money here and maybe there's a vice versa as well but that's a bit we're worried about so if the impact of T-Typ was that the chemicals regulation in the United States became as good as the European chemicals regulation then that would be great that would be a good bit of T-Typ and that would be a great gain for the world it would be a greater protection for people in the States even though the European regime isn't perfect it's still much better than the US one but that seems very unlikely to happen you've got all these corporations in the States already as has been mentioned in other fora arguing that these chemical protections in the EU are unjustified the precautionary principle isn't scientific so you can't ban these things that's the pressure we're facing so again as Scott suggests we might go into this thinking oh we've safeguarded this stuff but in five years time we'll argue about it again and in ten years time some more and the example I've given in here is about hormone disrupting chemicals 15 years or so we've made some good progress some things have been banned both here and in the United States the example I give is France has gone further so these chemicals which affect the baby in the womb which affect development of the child which can cause cancers they've been banned in baby bottles in France they are now going to ban them in any kind of food product that contains baby food and in cooking utensils certainly a grey area and possibly actually illegal in European law so France to protect their citizens particularly babies are going beyond probably what they're really allowed to do by Europe so that's an ideal thing for TTIP to create a challenge on because here is a protectionist measure which is stopping the US producing terrible things to feed babies on or nasty plastic spatulas with phthalates in so that's the kind of territory we'll get into so to come back to my point the fundamental of this is that TTIP isn't worth doing unless there's lots of deregulation and if there's lots of deregulation then all the things we're worried about are going to happen and so TTIP isn't worth doing so either way it's not worth doing OK, can close the flowers degree I degree completely with Richard and also pick up on Stephen's point to urge you to I guess be courageous and and look at and don't just accept the kind of mantra of international competitiveness and the need for economic growth and to be rigorous in your intellectual kind of looking at in the way that you look at that whole idea and the underlying driver that it is for so many decisions and particularly around TTIP is it should I mention anything about transparency yeah well I was going to go to that bit I don't know well he was wanting to commend as well but yeah just do some of the bit transparency only say that there are specific things that you could also call for in terms of transparency so some stuff yesterday has been there's commitments now to making things public but for example it's negotiating texts that have already been shared with governments so what you won't be able to see even from those is what's still under discussion so you can look at other treaty discussion and other processes under other even the WTO which is highly criticised puts out negotiating texts with words in brackets I believe of the areas that are still under negotiation so you could push further for that and for MEPs to be able to see some of the consolidated texts and the negotiating positions as well there's going to be from December onwards commissions and senior staff will have to publish all their contacts and meetings held with stakeholders but that would be good to see retrospectively as well so we can see what meetings and obviously that would include any meetings with any of us as well as industry and there's a proposal for a mandatory register of lobbyists but we would say that absolutely that proposal should be carried through and that's really important so there's some progress being made and that's good to see the European Commission responding to public concern that's where that's come from but we think there's more and I could pass you the specific suggestions if that's helpful that is very helpful is there anybody getting anything else to say on transparency I think points have been well made willy did you want to come and be your final point did thanks very much convener I just wanted to come back to the ISDS again Liz you were telling us about some of the examples from around the world of these disputes I wanted to ask you if any of them or all of them had been successful and national governance here there or everywhere had ultimately had to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds, euros or dollars in these cases and really again what is it that is going to protect us further I know Dave's paper suggested that we should remove the ISDS mechanism but does that give us the protection that we think we need or are we just creating a lawyer's paradise here for ourselves with detail so on the first half of your question about the outcomes of different investor state disputes I can give you a few little facts and figures I could also give you this information afterwards to save a bit of time now but there's at the end of 2012 there are 514 disputes we're known of and in that year actually there was more disputes filed than in that one year than ever before so of the known concluded state investor state cases 42 were decided in favour of the state so the corporations they don't always win on these cases at all 31% went in favour of the investor so in favour of business or corporation taking out the case but there's an additional and so in some cases the state had to pay compensation to the investor and in other cases it didn't where it lost but there's legal costs involved there as well and it's different to national I believe different to national legal systems where you don't necessarily get the costs if you're the winner the loser winner whichever way round it is in national courts about who gets the costs that doesn't always apply in these international arbitration cases 27% of them were settled without a verdict from those arbitration and that's also where there may be payments or concessions for an investor so that's also where you could see that that squeezing of policy space where there's been negotiations gone on outside that arbitration hearing and where perhaps a Government has agreed to relax some legislation on something just to stop that case from going through any further so it's varied it's variable and what was the second part of your question just how can we protect ourselves if the mechanism is removed are we protected or do we still have our lawyers they've taken it out of the Australia-US free trade agreement at the I think at the push of the funds we're pushing for that so that free trade agreement has gone ahead without one in it so there absolutely are precedents for them not to be in there and we can see that there's a paper by the LSE which biz commissioned about the costs and benefits of the investment protection part of the treaty and they said that the EU investment chapter is likely to provide the UK with few or no benefits and actually comes with some economic and political costs so again I can give you the link to look at that Really helpful, thank you Dave, did you want to make a point? Probably declare an interest of lawyers Paradise sounds like a very good thing but sadly trade union lawyers don't tend to get paid that much so it's less of a paradise for me I know I'm going to keep going at it I think obviously we're drawing ISDS from it is our solution and we offer that to you as the way forward but rather than agreeing to what this is about the cases, I would be less concerned about the actual cases and the costs than the regulatory chill point that Richard and I have both made to you Can I give you just one example of that a lot of the organisations around this table very recently came together as a big coalition to try and persuade you in the procurement bill we're now a procurement act from international development to environmental factors living wage and so on and tax dodging obviously was one of those that many of us are and I think we persuade you in some cases not in all but we persuade you in quite a lot of cases that this was a good thing and the Scottish procurement act has at least these matters down in principle that I think is a if you remember that if you were involved in that piece of legislation from us and from the law officers and everybody else about oh well we can't do this because the law officers say this might be challenged and that might be challenged and there's a risk here can you just imagine if the Scottish Government took a tough line on aggressive tax avoidance what position of US corporations would be under T-Tip on this point their lawyers would be flying over in their droves to challenges on that point but I think is the real risk here it's just that the Government essentially is frozen with concern about what might happen in terms of legal challenge I'm going to finish there because we're just sort of running over time Rod, did you want in? The last points have been dealt with on transparency and I think are exhausted You are a first session obviously on T-Tip, we're meeting with industry in a few weeks time and we have put requests into the UK Government, the Scottish Government and the commission so we intend to take a very very broad sweep on this but I think for informing us on some of the themes that we would take forward it's been very very helpful please always realise that the committee members and the clerks office is always open to any more information that you can help us to help us inform we take on board that we should be very very intellectual about how we decide the evidence and as I said at the open the written evidence was very very helpful and allowing me to formulate some of the questions that I wanted and certainly the committee as well so thank you for your time this morning, thank you for your evidence and hopefully this will not be the last we will see each other to discuss T-Tip, thank you very much I'm going to briefly suspend five minutes to allow for a quick comfort break welcome back to the European and External Relations Committee moving on to our next agenda which is agenda item 3, we are looking at our Brussels bulletin this morning comments, questions, clarifications just raised this question of transparency which is on page 1 it was raised by a speaker from World Development Movement it would be quite interesting to know whether there was any form of debate on whether transparency should be retrospective in any way or it's coming in on 1 December next week we can find that out we had some information yesterday Alan Smith sent round a a wee newsletter which I sent on to Katie because it gave us a bang-up-to-date situation but definitely because I think that this is an evolving one of transparency where it seems to be getting better anything else Willie I assisted to draw members' attention to the regional policy page 9 that gives us the information that 11.8 billion euros aimed at cohesion policy funding that includes youth employment our members around the committee have been quite interested in how that will develop and pan out in the future to ask that we can keep a close eye on that and how it develops particularly for parts of the west of Scotland that we know are included in this initiative in our next inquiry that we've got coming up we've agreed to work on that anyway so it will be there but we can get an update Rod Just on in terms of the post G20 the call to the states to declare intentions in relation to combat climate change preparation for the 2015 Paris climate summit I don't know whether there is a timetable set for states to actually provide that clarity on national intentions again I'd be quite interested to know You can check that out Alec It's interesting under the transatlantic trade and we've just had the session but the last bit sent the European Commission has launched an online survey for SMEs to better understand the difficulties they face in doing business with the United States and I just wonder that where we are at where our T-Tip might be useful for us to actually get a better understanding of Scottish companies involvement with the US in terms of markets and exports and that might be something that we can full up on that one we've been looking at some American business speakers and things as well that have been doing some work on this but I think round table, the next round table will have a few you'll notice a few recognisable Scottish businesses I think we've got the Scottish Salmon company we've got still we're still waiting for there's a few people that we have contacted and we're still awaiting and of course all the whisky companies they're on your list too, Jamie so will it be an easy enough thing to give us in terms of just a briefing note on what can they trade we'll have that ready for the next meeting anyway, you'll have something I just thought that sentence jumped to me as well because it almost suggested a fate of complete in that sense that they were already talking about how you can work better okay, Clare I agree we should be better understanding and the big companies are great and whisky and salmon million harvest are huge but I recently read an article about a small brewery who had managed to get into the American market and the micro brewery side so it would be good to look at this multi-medium enterprise areas fine should no better no absolutely, because there might be a time when they'll be away ahead of you when you need to know any more comments, Jamie that's made me noticing that Cecilia Maelstrom who's the EU trade commissioner did sort of say a few things about T-Tip I mean that she was obviously quite pro it there's a paragraph on that I don't know if you saw it on page 5 I just wanted to think about plastic bags which says the EU wants to phase them out completely I'm just I mean we put a charge on them there's doesn't I mean I don't think that a 5P charge is ever going to phase out plastic bags in fact in wet cloud I just rather is that there's a sort of people walking around with a lot of paper bags with the bottoms falling out and they're doing their shopping Is that the picture you've got? I mean initially in places they have paper bags but there's a very hot country I mean if you put a paper bag down on the ground and it gets wet and the shopping falls out of the bottom because there have not been some initial figures in the first month of the charge on plastic bags and it had been reduced by like 420 million because people are bringing the bigger plastic bags to put the stuff into it makes it all medicine or maybe they're made of essence carpet bags it would be quite interesting to know where we are from that very first few weeks figure I wonder if the food stand if the food stand says it will allow you to go on putting the same food again and again into plastic bags without having to wash them because presumably sooner or later someone will get food poisoning I bet you they will It's good stuff for the boys Cymru, can I just come back to the teatup issue again and our colleague Stephen Boyd I think it was from the STC he basically told us that no matter what we do we've really got to ask that any data that's presented in the way of argument supporting the initiative has to stand up to scrutiny and there was quite contrasting examples from Liz Murray about how good teatup was in one hand but how bad it was in another so I know it's not our role to do this analysis and scrutiny of the value of teatup to the European Union but whoever comes to see us should be able to cite data and support of their respective arguments so that we could maybe even have a look at that fundamental that you're able to scrutinise the data that people are presenting in support of their argument here We have invited the UK trade investment person so I'm not going to add to Spice's workload but there's probably a moving feast with further work in preparation for further meetings on teatup so that we can really ask pertinent questions I don't know whether it's already been mentioned but I notice that on the 10th of November the Agriculture and Fisheries Council the UK was represented by Rupert Morley and Richard Lockhead so that's an advance isn't it for because then that what he's actually because that's what you've been asking for the SNP isn't it What? Well he was representing anyway it does say that He wasn't allowed to speak to me He wasn't allowed to speak on the 10th of November Are you sure? Well he can't have represented it if he wasn't allowed to say anything Indeed Okay happy to bring the Brussels Bill into the attention of our other colleagues and committees Excellent Agenda item 4 is the draft budget scrutiny in private