Salmond to meet Paisley in move to revive 'Council of the Nations' groups

ALEX Salmond will try to enlist the support of the Rev Ian Paisley, Northern Ireland's First Minister, to re-establish a high-powered committee of Britain's political leaders, chaired by the Prime Minister.

Mr Salmond will meet Mr Paisley in Belfast later this month when he travels to Northern Ireland in his first official visit as the First Minister.

Mr Salmond is keen to bring back the plenary joint ministerial committee which was set up in 1999 by the UK government to resolve disputes between the devolved administrations and Westminster.

This committee, dubbed the Council of the Nations, was an extremely powerful body, chaired by the Prime Minister and including the Deputy Prime Minister, the first ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and other senior ministers from the devolved administrations.

But it has not sat since 2002 and, like three of the four subject committees set up to coordinate activity around the UK, it has fallen into abeyance.

The only joint ministerial sub-committee still intact is the European committee, which met in London yesterday.

Mr Salmond wants to bring back the four other committees, the main joint ministerial committee and the poverty, health and knowledge economy sub-committees.

A spokesman for the First Minister said Mr Salmond would raise the issue with Mr Paisley later this month in the hope of securing agreement to re-establish the committees.

He is hoping that, if he can get the support of Mr Paisley and Rhodri Morgan in Wales, he can put enough pressure on Gordon Brown to agree to the proposal as Prime Minister.

The spokesman said: "There is broad interest in forums for communication, co-operation and discussion across the devolved administrations."

It is clearly part of Mr Salmond's political strategy to be seen as an equal of the Prime Minister and taking part in the Council of the Nations would be a step in that direction.

He would try to use it to lever more power from Westminster to Scotland and to argue his case in the disputes with Westminster which are bound to occur over the next four years.

It is not known yet how Mr Brown will view this proposal, but Lord Foulkes, now a Labour MSP, writing in The Scotsman today, calls for the re-establishment of all the committees.

He said: "The joint ministerial committees which operated for a while at the start of devolution should be revived immediately "to ensure smooth liaison between Whitehall and the devolved administrations".

Yesterday, Linda Fabiani, the new Europe minister in the Executive, held formal talks with Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, and other UK ministers in the joint ministerial sub-committee on Europe.

She said afterwards: "Scotland deserves a strong voice in Europe and I reassured the Foreign Secretary that we will work constructively with UK ministers to achieve this."

CASTING THE NET WIDER

RICHARD Lochhead, the rural affairs minister, last night heralded a "new era" in relations between Westminster and Holyrood

as he prepared for his formal meeting with Ben Bradshaw, the UK fisheries minister in London today.

The meeting has been organised to set the UK agenda on fishing ahead of the European agriculture and fisheries council meeting next week.

But Mr Lochhead will use it to push for Scotland to take charge of all the UK's fisheries negotiations with the EU - two-thirds of Britain's fishing industry is based north of the Border.

Mr Lochhead said: "The new Scottish government has a positive policy agenda in various aspects of fisheries policy, including better representation for Scotland in the European Union."