 Good morning, and a very warm welcome to the 14th meeting of the Constitution, Europe External Affairs and Culture Committee, and our first virtual committee meeting in this session of the Parliament. We have two agenda items this morning. Our first agenda item is our inquiry into the UK internal market. This morning, we have joining us, Johnnie Hall, director of policy, National Farmer Union of Scotland, and a very good morning, Mr Hall. Thank you very much for your written submission to the committee as well. We are going to move straight to questions from the committee. If I could open with a question about the history and development of the NFU's involvement in the internal markets. I notice in your submission that you emphasise how important the option to have divergence is to the NFU to meet the needs of the individual nations and to protect particular aspects of farming, but you also mentioned that the principles of mutual recognition and non-discrimination are seen as a threat to that opportunity. It is really just to understand the history of what involvement NFU had in the development of the policies before the bill was introduced, and at what point did you start to see the opportunity to diverge in particular areas becoming a problem? That is a very broad question indeed, and I will try to be brief, but also as concise as I can be. Obviously, our interest in this goes back to the whole point at which the EU referendum took place. Obviously, once that happened in 2016, we realised that we were going to be leaving the EU. Obviously, that meant leaving the European single market and the challenges that that would bring. Obviously, that is maybe a different discussion for a different day, but leaving the EU also meant leaving that overarching single market approach that we enjoyed within the EU, whereby essentially all member states, including devolved administrations within the UK, enjoyed a certain amount of flexibility but still essentially complied with the same regulatory frameworks and the same support frameworks. I am particularly talking about the common agricultural policy, whereby a common agricultural policy over the EU essentially allowed for member states and Scotland to adapt within that certain aspects to devolved circumstances. Behind the CAP, there is then a whole raft of environmental, animal health and welfare food and other legislation that was European legislation. Essentially, all the players within Europe played to the same rules, to put it as simply as that. Effectively, we all played the same game at the very least, not necessarily always on a level playing field, but we all played the same game with the same rules around very important things. We then fast forward to the summer of 2020 and Westminster recognised the challenges of devolved approaches and diverging regulatory approaches and the potential impact that might have on the internal market and the integrity of the internal market. We would share those concerns, because we want the internal UK market to operate essentially as it has done recently and still does now, but in a sense, the consultation on the UK internal market act or bill as the time did and the act then followed pretty rapidly this time last year. Largely, and I will use the expression, drove something of a coach in horses through the whole concept and philosophy around devolved capacity in certain areas. We had always argued, and as had others, and as had been the case through the JMCC and so on, that an awful lot of these issues did not require legislation if we could have constituted effective common frameworks, which were discussed through the 2017-18-19 period whereby the devolved administrations, including the UK Government representing England, would essentially agree things by consensus rather than by having, as I say, what I might describe as the sledgehammer to crack the wall of a UK internal market act. Although that has not necessarily been borne out in reality in terms of particular issues, there is still huge potential for that to cause potential problems for the internal market. The reason why I say that, and the reason why the flag waves are for me is that, on the one hand, we certainly have a UK Government that is starting to test the boundaries of diverging from the EU. At the same time, we have the Scottish Government remaining pretty much aligned to the EU, especially on environmental regulation and other things as well. That is borne out by the continuity act, which has passed by the Scottish Parliament quite recently. That whole notion of keeping pace with Europe. I am still trying to square the triangle, if that makes sense, of Westminster, Edinburgh and Brussels, and where that then leaves the likes of Scottish agriculture and food producers operating within a single market in the UK. Maybe I can go into that further at some point. That is a snapshot of our history in this and how important it is. I hope that, in the written submission, I made it very clear that the UK internal market is really important to the interests of Scottish agriculture and Scottish food production. It is less so for England, but for the devolved administrations with smaller populations, our market is south of the border, essentially, for so many things. Therefore, it matters that we maintain that level playing field, and not only that level playing field, but we play to the same rules. If we start to see divergence in those rules, that name can create a competitive advantage or disadvantage depending on which way those rules go. We are just starting to see some testing of those boundaries, and that will not only create some political headaches, but it will create practical and potentially market distorting headaches for Scottish agriculture. Thank you very much. I am going to move to questions from the committee members, and could I invite Sarah Boyack first, please? Thank you very much, convener. I thank Mr Hall for the written paper that you have sent us in advance, which is useful. I really want to follow on from the comments that you have just made. You have said in your written submission that you see a major challenge in terms of how things are developing, but you think that common frameworks would be a much more effective alternative to managed divergence, which would enable respecting devolution and enabling the UK internal market to operate without friction or distortion. Can you say a bit about the discussions that you have had collectively across the four nations of the UK on the farming side, and what discussions you have had with the different Governments that get across that view? Yes. Our colleagues at NFU in England and Wales and our colleagues within the Ulster Farmers Union have been absolutely consistent and has won about the fact that we all agree that common frameworks would be a more preferential approach whereby things would be resolved through consensus rather than imposition, rather than the elements of the UK internal market act, particularly the mutual recognition and non-discrimination elements. We have always argued that common frameworks, if constituted correctly, would allow for dispute resolution and allow for things to be resolved in a more constructive way. Therefore, common frameworks always appear to be the more pragmatic and effective approach to safeguarding the integrity of the UK internal market, which we all want. That appeared to be very much the case in the early days in 2017-18. There was a lot of work going on behind the scenes with the Scottish Government, I know, and colleagues in Westminster and the other devolved Administrations trying to work up effective common frameworks and how they could be governed and how it could be ensured to where there was dispute resolution that could be done in a meaningful way. Essentially, I have not been entirely sited on this because it has been done by Governments and officials from those Governments and overseen by the Joint Ministerial Committee. Essentially, we have not really seen that roll out into any practical evidence of that working in operation. In 2020-21, the UK internal market act, which almost, as I said earlier, drives a coach and horses through the principles of common frameworks and almost renders them redundant. If you operate on those principles of non-discrimination and mutual recognition, it does not matter how or through what methods and means something might be produced in one part of the UK, it has to be allowed access to other parts of the UK in terms of being sold or used or whatever it might be. The common frameworks principles are absolutely where we still want to be, but that seems to have been almost lost now because of the UK internal market act and what that means in terms of the fact that something that might be produced in, let's say, a part of England that is sold in Scotland but is produced to very different standards of different cost structures that might afford English producers an advantage or some sort of environmental difference or whatever it might be. There is no comeback on that, there is no dispute resolution on that because of the UK internal market act that has to be just absorbed and taken in. That does not allow for that devolved capacity to work effectively. Have you been able to have those discussions with ministers to get that point across? It comes across very strongly in your written evidence that that approach will undermine agricultural support, environment, animal welfare standards and food. That is the key point that comes across. You say that you are nervous about potential dispute resolution. What is the reality check without common frameworks and without ministers actually bringing people together and negotiating that? The reality is that there will be very little option for dispute resolution in my opinion because that legislation is now in place, which now covers the whole of the United Kingdom. We have raised that, along with our other farming unions, on several occasions with the UK Government. We have worked reasonably closely with the Scottish Government at trying to press the case for common frameworks across all areas, whether it is organic standards, environmental standards around pesticide use, food labelling, food safety issues, animal health and welfare issues. There is a whole raft of issues that were EU law now transposed back into the UK and Scots law that should be allowed for some sort of degree of flexibility and on a devolved sense, but that is essentially almost secondary to the fact that the UK internal market act will drive a coach and horses through that idea. We continue to press the case. For example, there is a so-called grouping that DEFRA has set up around agricultural support frameworks, which is meant to bring together the devolved administrations, including key stakeholders like ourselves as well as the Scottish Government, to look at how agriculture is supported in different parts of the United Kingdom and to ensure that there is no significant divergence in the afford to competitive advantage or disadvantage. Obviously, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are all doing different things, because of the different circumstances and profiles of different agriculture, but we are all on the same pathway to recognising that agriculture is now about food, climate change, biodiversity and so on, but we need to do it in a different way, because what will suit England with its very different profile of agriculture will not suit Scotland and vice versa. There is an agricultural framework that exists, but at the moment it seems to be nothing more than a talking shop. In fact, that has not met it yet, despite us pressing for it to be up and running so that both Governments and key stakeholders can feed into that process, so that we are all aware of what is happening, so that we can work towards the same end goals in many ways, but do it in different ways. That is the whole point of devolution. That comes across very strongly that you need the common frameworks, but even at the very basic level, you need to get the meetings going on things such as the agricultural framework. That is really helpful and I think that there is clear evidence to us today. Thanks, convener. Thank you. Hi, good morning, and welcome to the committee. You mentioned the issues that you have raised around the internal market act, and I note this in your written evidence. Mr Holly said that NFE Scotland remains significantly concerned that the act could potentially override all common frameworks, as you have just talked about, relating to agricultural support, environmental and, specifically, animal welfare standards. I am interested to know, particularly on the issue of animal welfare standards and the production of meat, if you can give any examples of how you feel your concerns might manifest or what kind of situations you think might arise. I am not here today to say that something will absolutely happen as a consequence of that. I am not saying that we will end up with very differing animal health and welfare standards across the United Kingdom, but there is the potential, and we are already seeing the potential to have different sets of regulations within the United Kingdom around certain things. Now, the obvious example of that is the fact that the UK Government, through DEFRA, has already consulted on animal transport, and so has the Scottish Government also consulted on animal transport regulations. Now, the likelihood is that those sets of regulations will align pretty closely, but the issue is that there might be some differences of approach, depending on circumstance. We could end up in a situation whereby we have two sets of regulations governing what is the UK internal market. We have animal transport, which does not really respect the fact that there is a boundary between Scotland and England, because there is a need for livestock to be transported both north and south of that border. Nor might there be, if there is a UK approach to animal transport, will that adequately reflect some of the challenges and circumstances that we find ourselves in the Scottish context? We have members in Orkney and Shetland, for example, who are extremely concerned by anything that might be imposed on them that might make practical common sense in the south of England, but when it comes to the islands and the highlands of Scotland, it might be extremely limiting in terms of what it can do, in terms of journey times, etc., and the other issues that need to be resolved. It all seems a bit exact when we were already operating to a significantly high set of standards in things such as animal transport under the EU rules. Without going into any great detail and saying that this will definitely happen, the fact of the matter is that we now have the ability of different devolved administrations setting different rules, and those different rules could start to diverge, especially as I said earlier, if the UK government wants to test the boundaries of divergence from Europe, because, after all, that was one of the rationales of leaving Europe in the first place, and the Scottish Government, as it has already stated on a number of occasions, through the continuity act, wants to keep pace with Europe. Where does that leave producers, both in terms of animal welfare and other regulatory requirements? You have asked my next question, which is, where does that leave the agriculture industry? In that scenario, where the internal market act would oblige everyone to make available, I will again use the example of meat, but meat produced to different welfare standards in England would oblige that to be made available on the market in Scotland. How would that affect farmers who are endeavouring to use a different standard in Scotland, and what would the reaction of the market, particularly the supermarket, be to that situation in Scotland? There are two components here. What is right, particularly when you are talking about animal welfare? What is right in terms of welfare is one thing, but what are the cost implications on the business of adhering to those requirements? First of all, animal welfare has to be at the most exacting and correct standards. However, if we operate at a high standard in Scotland and continue to do so, let us say that this is hypothetical at the moment, this is not necessarily what is going to happen. If we see a different standard at a lower standard being set within the rest of the United Kingdom or particularly in England, that lower standard would probably mean lower costs in terms of compliance, because compliance brings additional costs in terms of adhering to those standards. That means that a producer in Berwickshire, for example, producing beef compared to somebody in the Thumberland, would have different cost structures. It would not just apply to meat production or animal livestock production, but it would apply to lots of other things as well. We would start to see different regulatory frameworks demanding different management from different producers in different parts of the UK, which then would demand different costs in terms of production. Although we would argue that the Scottish product will sell at a premium anyway because of the high standards that we have, nevertheless, the margin of that high standard could be easily eroded if we also have escalating costs in terms of maintaining those standards, or not necessarily escalating costs but higher costs than other parts of the United Kingdom. You have also pointed to the fact that this model of legislating does not have any dispute resolution mechanism in it. Can you say a bit more about what the consequences of that lack are? That is why we would obviously prefer the common frameworks approach. If common frameworks were established and constituted in the right way, so there were proper dispute resolution processes in place, when those tensions arise, there would be a process to go through to get to that point of resolution, rather than what we have now, which is the UK internal market act. As you said, because of the very nature of the provisions in the act, there is nothing to prevent something produced at a different standard or to a different set of regulations and therefore at a different cost. Being sold or used in Scotland to either the advantage or disadvantage of Scottish agriculture or, indeed, to the knowledge of the Scottish consumer. Just to continue the theme of questioning, Johnny, clearly through the continuity act, the Scottish Government's stated position is that the default is to align with new EU laws as they are introduced. Given that this could cause divergence, how concerned are you regarding the impact of the continuity act on ensuring a level playing field across the UK? As I said earlier in my introduction to your remarks following the convener's initial question, how do you square the triangle whereby you have a Westminster Government that is clearly starting to test and probe the ability to diverge away from what the EU is doing but still maintain that trade with Europe through the trade and co-operation agreement? On the other side, you have here in Scotland a Scottish Government that is clearly committed to keeping pace with, and that is the expression that it uses, regulation from Europe. Therefore, that suggests to me straight away that you are going to start to see that tension between the UK Government and the Scottish Government, and I think that we probably are. That gives me as much concern about the potential impacts of the UK Internal Market Act, but it is almost in the reverse. It is the reciprocal of that in some ways. I will give another potential example on that. I can see the situation whereby Europe might ban the use of a product called glyphosate, which is used in agriculture as a desicant, in the cereal sector but also in grassland, to burn off grass to be receded, etc. In that sense, it has some significant environmental benefits because it provides for minimum tillage when you are re-sewing grass and so on, but I will not go into the detail of that. However, Europe is clearly quite keen to move in that direction, where glyphosate is not such a big issue because it does not have the climate that we have and it does not have the use that we need for using things like glyphosate in order to ripen crops to then harvest them on time, etc. If the EU goes in that direction, Scotland then follows suit, but England chooses not to. Again, using the in the thumberland and Berwickshire example, grain produced in the thumberland that uses glyphosate to ripen it off, but not allowed in Berwickshire, that is a significant and obvious clear competitive disadvantage between people operating on both sides of the tweed or on either side of the tweed, I should say. That is again where the UK Internal Market Act would kick in and say that grain produced in the thumberland would have to have access into Scottish markets. The Scottish whisky industry uses a significant amount of grain from the thumberland and other parts of England as well. It is not all Scottish stuff going into distilling in Scotland because we cannot grow enough of it. That would come in produced at a different cost structure from the grain produced in Scotland, and therefore that would be a disadvantage. That triangle issue that I have mentioned a couple of times is yet to be tested and rolled out in practice, but I can see that being really quite damaging as Scottish agriculture and the food and drink sector gets caught in those tensions of divergence in three ways. Scotland aligns itself to Europe, but the UK tries to diverge from Europe, but then incomes the UK Internal Market Act to quash any differences there as well. Thanks, Johnnie. On the glyphosate example, that is very useful because it is perhaps the highest up on the risk register in terms of the implications of the continuity act. Just as a follow-up on common frameworks, can you hear your thoughts on what would be the consequences if the Scottish Government did not sign up to the common framework? I am not 100 per cent sure what the consequences would be given that we have now got the UK Internal Market Act. My understanding, having had conversations with officials from the Scottish Government, is that they would want to see common frameworks work just as we would. Again, common frameworks essentially respect that devolved capacity to make devolved decisions, but when those devolved decisions across the United Kingdom can cause some sort of tension or potential trade distortion or competitive advantage or disadvantage, that is when the common frameworks processes around dispute resolution need to kick in. I do not see any resistance from the Scottish Government about utilising common frameworks more effectively, and we would be in exactly the same place in that respect. The reality that we have now is that the work that was happening around common frameworks through that 2017-18-19 period has now been made redundant by the fact that we have got the UK Internal Market Act, which almost renders common frameworks useless. I thank Mr Hall for submitting your evidence. I turn to one point that you made and you have already touched on it with regard to Ms Boyack's question. You state that agricultural support arrangements are currently and must remain devolved, and you talked about the agricultural support framework across the UK that is yet to meet. I am interested to get your thoughts on the subsidy control bill that is passed through Westminster and is now in the House of Lords. That is a very valid point, because the UK Internal Market Act and now the subsidy control bill overlap and interrelate significantly when it comes to the agricultural support element. If you will bear with me for a second. Under the CAP, we had four different versions of the CAP operating in the United Kingdom, but all still operating under that common agricultural policy from Europe. That was absolutely right. We took choices here in Scotland, which were right for Scotland. For example, we have some elements of coupled support for our beef and hill sheep. We have a less favoured area support payment, which other parts of the United Kingdom do not, and so on. We are still going through a process of still operating those schemes by and large, but we are seeing that, in England in particular, the English approach is to phase out direct support payments over the 20-27 period and introduced the environmental land management scheme, which is just starting to kick off now. There will be a phasing out of direct support payments and an introduction of an agri-environment scheme to achieve outcomes that DEFRA wants to achieve in England. That is fine. If we took an ELMS-type approach in Scotland—i.e., we phased out direct support and things like less favoured area support for our more disadvantaged areas—that would be almost the death knell of Scottish agriculture. What we are doing in Scotland, in quite rightly so, is starting to look at conditional payments rather than just area-based payments. I will not go into the detail of all this. We are going to change our agricultural policy, and that is absolutely necessary. We do need to change, but we do not need to change in a way that DEFRA are doing it. To get to the point of your question, my concern is that, with the subsidy control bill coming into place, as well as the UK Internal Market Act, I am convinced that it will not be long before certain agricultural producers in England who are more aligned to the type of agriculture that we have in Scotland, i.e., people in the Thumbland, Cumbria down the Pennines in the west country, more livestock-based, a bit more like Scotland in terms of the types of agriculture. They will see the support payments and the way that Scottish Government is underpinning and deriving new outcomes from Scottish agriculture as being more advantageous to what they are being given from DEFRA. I am pretty sure that, before very long, there will be a real kickback from farmers in England to say that we cannot sustain the cuts in our support payments. Rather than just having that argument with DEFRA, they will say, but Scotland is still doing that. Scotland is still underpinning farmers and crofters to deliver certain things, and they are doing it in a way that actually works with agricultural businesses. My concern about the subsidy control bill is that it can then be used as something of a tool to say that Scottish Government has got to stop giving this type of support to farmers and crofters in Scotland because it is not the same type of support that is being received in other parts of the United Kingdom. It is affording Scottish farmers an advantage. To me, that would again say, well, all of a sudden you are taking that ability to apply devolved policy away from the Scottish Government if that were the case. Sticking on the subsidy control bill, there are already existing international safeguards in place to ensure that we do not overload payments to Scottish farmers in any way. We have something called the agreement on agriculture under the WTO, et cetera, et cetera. We are never going to have a big enough budget to overly support farmers and crofters in Scotland to the extent that they have an incredible advantage over producers in other parts of the UK. However, again, you have highlighted an issue of concern. At what point does that become an issue? The legislation will be very binary about it. It will either say that it is right or wrong, whereas common frameworks would have allowed for some sort of adjudication and some consensus to be built around what is required in different parts of the United Kingdom. Thank you very much, Mr Hall, for that very detailed response. I would also like to pick up on one of the points that you made with regard to Scottish public bodies looking to procure locally. Why do you think that the current structure of the UK internal market act may impact on that? Obviously, public procurement is again a hangover from the EU legislation in many ways, but the Scottish Parliament and the programme for government want to revisit the whole issue around a good food nation. As part of that, I would not want to pre-empt what might be in a good food nation bill and what the outcomes might be. As part of that, you would think that some of that might be about local procurement, public bodies being able, if not quite obliged, to buy locally, i.e., by Scottish produce to put into Scottish schools, Scottish health service, Scottish prisons, whatever it might be, so that we have that almost circular economy piece happening around food and so on. Again, the internal market act, I think that there is a risk that, whilst we might have that piece of legislation or that intention in Scotland to buy local, that non-discrimination element of the internal market act might say that, actually, you cannot do that. You have simply got to allow product based on price or whatever it might be to have access to or to be allowed to compete in the markets for public procurement, rather than being exclusive about it. Again, we think that we need to put in place measures that allow, not only allow but almost compel public bodies in Scotland to buy Scottish produce. Great. Thank you very much for your answers, Mr Hull, and thank you, convener. Thank you. Can I invite Mr Ruskell, please? Yes, thanks, convener, and good to see you again, Mr Hull. I wanted just to drill down into a couple of issues. You are mentioning about the animal transport issue earlier on. I suppose that it has to be provocative here. I could say that the NFUS position on that is to argue for weaker live animal transport regulations compared to what DEFRA is proposing, notwithstanding the geographical challenges that you outlined earlier on. I suppose that the question here is about how, in that situation, you might actually use the internal market act to effectively allow continued progress or to even challenge regulations that you see as undermining the interests of your members. I am slightly taken aback by the suggestion that we would seek legislation that would be lower than the DEFRA proposals. I do not believe that that is the case at all. We want to be able to operate to the highest standards because our customers ultimately respect the standards to which we produce food here in Scotland. On the issues that would separate or differentiate between the proposals from DEFRA and the proposals from the Scottish Government, you touched on it yourself in that one of the main objectives of the DEFRA proposals is to certainly around animal exports, and that is one thing. However, what we are talking about is not necessarily animal exports, but it is about animals travelling within the UK. You also touched on the fact that our geography, especially from the islands, means that we have to have more scope for longer journey times given the lack of processing capacity and other things within Scotland. Whether you are talking about beef cattle, sheep, pigs or poultry, you necessarily have to spend longer times in transit to get either to destinations for store animals, i.e. for further breeding or whatever it might be, or to go to be processed. Therefore, it is important that we do not get sucked into legislation that might be suited to shorter journeys in the south-east of England or indeed export issues from the south-east England to the continent when those journey times are obviously greater and more significant when even moving animals within Scotland. That is where we need to be pretty careful about those things. If your starting point is about high standards and your starting point is about high welfare standards for animals, does it really matter which stretch of water the animals are being transported and on which roads it is about the length of journey time? I suppose that my point is that I understand the geographic case. You pointed yourself to the need to increase supply chain development, mobile avatars and local branding for the animals. There are other ways to crack this and I understand the argument that your member has put forward, but I suppose that in the context of that, that is an area where there is a challenge and a different perspective coming from the NFUS. How might you use the internal market act and perhaps the common frameworks as well to challenge those rules, if that is something that you did want to challenge on? I think that it is not just about journey times. It is the ways in which animals are transported, not necessarily the journey time. It is about headroom, temperature, spacing and stop which times and all that, but that is another issue. We are not seeking to erode any of those issues. Let us not measure everything in journey times. The way in which we would want to identify with DEFRA more than anything else is about having at least a uniform standard across the United Kingdom that is practical and effective but retains a very high animal health and welfare standard while animals are in transit. In that sense, again, it goes back to the comments that I have made a number of times, that we need to be able to operate to a single set of regulation across the United Kingdom, across the internal market of the UK. Otherwise, we do start to see differences in standards and differences in standards start to impose different sorts of costs. I suspect that if we ended up with very limited capacity in terms of journey time on certain trips from, say, Shetland, Orkney and Islay, let alone other parts of mainland Scotland, then it would be pretty much the death knell of livestock in those areas. The consequence of that would be hugely impactful on both economically and socially in those areas. The question is about—you described the triangle, because there is alignment with the EU, alignment with the UK and the Scottish regulations as well. I suppose that it is being provocative here again, but is there not an advantage to you in a way that you can argue for alignment in some areas and then argue for divergence in other areas? It enables you to pick and choose. The point about glyphosate, again, is that you make a particular argument for that. I do not want to get into the details of whether the pros and cons of that are an option. However, in a way, you are able to move around the different regulatory frameworks and position your cells and your members in terms of saying that we have high standards and alignment, but we do not agree with that. Are there some advantages to that? Are you still trying to get used to the landscape now that you are in where it is quite fluid and the common framework is not reworking properly yet? The whole point is that—I have said it a few times—the UK Internal Market Act 2020 drives a coach in horses through that ability to align in some ways and not be aligned in others. That removes that ability to do things in a differentiated and devolved way. Of course, although we might align ourselves with Europe on some things or align ourselves with the UK or other parts of the UK or other things, as soon as you have that UK Internal Market Act in place, that renders it all irrelevant. Scotland might align itself with Europe on Glyphosate. Let us say that the rest of the UK does not, but the UK Internal Market Act then says that it does not matter. Scottish distillers will still have to be obliged to take grain or to use grain that is being used with Glyphosate and that puts Scottish agricultural producers at a disadvantage. My final question is, as a member organisation, trade body, you have engaged a lot with Europe over the years. What engagement looks like now? Are there lessons from other regions across Europe? I am thinking about the Nordic regions about how they effectively align their markets. I suppose that there you have complications. You have Norway that is outside the EU and Sweden that is in. There will be issues there around food, trade of livestock and other products. Are there any sort of examples from your international experience about how alignment market regulation can work between countries that are sitting in very different constitutional arrangements than we are sitting in post Brexit UK? To touch on your first point, we still have a keen interest in what is happening in Europe and how we align ourselves to Europe. We still have an office in Brussels that we share with the other farming unions in the UK called the British Agricultural Bureau. We still have full-time staff there because clearly we still need to engage with Europe, not only in terms of how regulation and policy develop within Europe and what the implications might be of that, but equally in terms of the outcome, if you like, of the trade and co-operation agreement, which is tariff-free access to the European markets for us. It is a quota-free access, but it is far from friction-free, so it is about how we resolve some of the ongoing issues around trade and co-operation agreement and things like the movement of people, and that is back to things like the Home Office and so on. There is a whole raft of things that are still very much in that Brexit hangover, if I can call it that. That still needs to settle down and we still need to understand how trade flows will work effectively going forward. We have asymmetric trade with Europe at the moment, so anything can come in to the UK pretty much friction-free without check from Europe, but our products going to Europe are still having to go through very cumbersome checks and all sorts of things like that, so we still need to work all those things through. It is going to be an interesting few years, to be honest, before it really settles down as to what the operating environment really is for UK and Scottish agriculture with the rest of Europe. Whether we settle into that pattern of being a bit like Norway, but we are not the same as Norway because Norway is part of a different alignment to Europe, we have got this very bespoke agreement with Europe. There is a lot to play out, in many ways. Thank you, convener. Good morning, Mr Holt. Good to see you. A lot of my points have been covered already by other questions. I will just ask you generally about common frameworks. You said a number of times that you view the internal market actors having driven a coach and horses through them. Do you think that there is any future for common frameworks? It strikes me that, whilst they are still in their infancy and there are not many that are operational, there is still a possibility for them to work. The Scottish Parliament has scrutinised several of them already. Do you see that there is a future for them, notwithstanding your comments? Yes, I do. I seriously believe that that is where the farming unions across the United Kingdom as well as the devolved administration still have an awful lot of work to do collectively to say where can we recognise the degrees of flexibility required in different ways for different agriculture and food systems within the UK internal market? Where can we almost find common cause about finding common solutions that work effectively? Where can we share information as much as anything else? I still see a real value in having common frameworks whereby the policy discussion about what type of regulatory environment we should be operating in, what support environment we should be operating in, is still very important. We can all be mindful and respectful of what is happening in other parts of the United Kingdom. I will go back to the whole issue of agricultural support. It is absolutely vital that the Scottish Government is able to continue to support Scottish farmers and crofters in a way that is most appropriate for Scottish circumstances to deliver the outcomes that we want around food production, climate, biodiversity and so on. That is going to be very different from how other parts of the United Kingdom will approach that, but sharing some of that is also really important. It is almost like mutual respect as to why those things happen. Ultimately, if we got that right in the first place, any real potential issues that might be thrown up by the operation of the UK internal market act might become relatively insignificant. Thank you for that. As we all acknowledge, the UK internal market act has not seen its practical effect yet, if at all. Can I specifically concentrate on agricultural support, convener? Can I also, at this point, refer to my register of interest in crofting and farming? The Scottish Government's stated intention, as you have said already, is to keep pace with EU law. Can you foresee a situation where, specifically in terms of agricultural support, Scottish Government's policy is more aligned with the common agricultural policy in EU subsidy law, whereas another nation of the UK—for example, Wales or Northern Ireland—has a different subsidy system? Can you foresee any issues in that regard in terms of the internal market act? Yes, I can. I can see lots of potentials. Let's just emphasise the point that they are potentials. I'm not suggesting that they are particularly risked at this moment in time. What I do see is that the Scottish Government is taking a very much pragmatic approach in terms of leaving the common agricultural policy. Essentially, we've got a period of stability whereby we've retained many elements of the common agricultural policy, but we're now developing a future policy through a new agriculture bill that will come to the Scottish Parliament in 2023, and so on, which will implement the Scottish Government's proposal around 50 per cent of support payments being conditional on meeting outcomes around biodiversity and climate and so on, and we're 100 per cent behind that. That's a very different pace of change and a very much managed change that we would welcome. Other parts of the United Kingdom are doing their own thing as well. Your point, Donald, about alignment with the EU, is that the EU is also going through a process of agricultural policy reform right now, so on that seven-year cycle that the EU operates, it's just completing another round of cap reforms. My view is that if we just picked up and pasted into Scotland what the EU is currently doing in terms of agricultural policy, I think that that would be extremely detrimental to Scotland, because I think that it would stretch agricultural businesses to breaking point in many senses. It would not be reflective of what we actually need in Scotland in terms of underpinning active farming and crofting to then deliver the outcomes that we want. It wouldn't particularly suit Scotland's circumstances, and not least in the west coast of Scotland when we've got much more extensive agricultural systems on large holdings, etc. It's one of those situations whereby that would be a point where I would say that actually keeping pace with Europe could be extremely detrimental if we just cut and pasted what was happening in Europe and put that into agricultural policy in Scotland. It's one of those where I would say to the Scottish Government, yes, we hear what you're saying in terms of keeping alignment and keeping pace with Europe, but on that particular one, you need to be doing something that's far more bespoke to Scotland's needs, and you need to be sticking to a track that you've already set out to achieve, because if we simply duplicated the new common agricultural policy and imposed that on Scotland, I could see that being very detrimental to Scottish interests. I'm not just talking Scottish agricultural interests, I'm talking about Scotland's interests. Thank you for that very full answer. My final question is just about the subsidy control bill, which Jenny Minter was asking you about. I understand that it's going through the UK Parliament at the moment. Are there any particular provisions that you're concerned about in terms of threatening the ability of any devolved nation to design its own support system? I'm not fully conversant with the legislation. Essentially, NFU Scotland, along with the other farming unions, argued very strongly in the first place that agricultural support should not be part of the subsidy control bill anyway, because there are enough existing controls in not overloading payments in one way or another through things such as the WTO agreement on agriculture and so on. However, a bit like the UK Internal Market Act, it now has the potential to say that we have an element of coupled support in Scotland for our beef and hill sheep producers, particularly those hill sheep producers on the poorest quality of land. Now, if the subsidy control bill allowed for the essentially coupled support to be removed, we would lose that ability. We would lose that option, if you like, in Scotland to retain that element of support going forward. Therefore, again, a bit like the UK Internal Market Act, it's the potential that this might create to undermine Scotland's ability to do what's right for Scotland by creating a one-size-fits-all-if-you-like approach. That's my concern about what you can support and what you can't support. Now, we're the first to say that we need to move away from area-based payments and we need to move to payments that are based on delivering outcomes. However, at the same time, as you know from your constituency and your part of the world, if we simply removed direct support overnight, it would be the last one out to turn the lights off, and it remains vital to the social economic fabric of many parts of Scotland that we continue to support farmers and crofters to a degree in the way that we do now, but to start to shift that to delivering outcomes rather than simply based on area payments. If I could ask another follow-up question on glycophyte and what discussion we've had so far. It was given as an example of where the keeping pace powers would be of concern to you, but the keeping pace powers have been committed to by the Welsh Government as well. The nature of the Irish protocol is that anything from Europe would be implemented in Northern Ireland, so is it not more likely that the divergence at the moment would be not between Scotland and the rest of the UK but between England and the other three evolved nations? That is in the context of the shared work that you were talking about in your office in Brussels with your counterparts in the other countries. I agree with that. England has by far the biggest agricultural base in the United Kingdom, but it also has the biggest market. As I said earlier, our market is essentially England. By and large, it is certainly our biggest destination, and I think that I put some figures in my written submission that the internal UK market is far more important to Scotland than to Wales and to Northern Ireland than it is to England, because the internal market is England, if that makes sense. Although we could sort of say that we should align ourselves with Europe and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland doing very similar things, it is important what England does, both in terms of agricultural support and other regulatory changes. They are a major market, but they are also the biggest producers of agricultural commodities and products within the United Kingdom. In terms of their export, would they not be able to export to Europe if they use class of fate? Potentially, it all depends on where that would fit within the trade and co-operation agreement, which at the moment is allowing continuous trade. However, if England and Europe would diverge significantly, that might test the boundaries of that trade and co-operation agreement. However, as the UK Government on behalf of England has been saying a lot, it is that it is seeking export opportunities beyond Europe. In 2021, we have seen an Australia free trade agreement being agreed, and we have seen a New Zealand free trade agreement being agreed. In many ways, England continued to focus on developing markets beyond Europe for all sorts of other reasons other than agricultural, and we are quite happy to accept imports from other agricultural economies. The benefits of having a trade agreement with Australia and New Zealand are not about farming or food, but about financial services, tech, digital and all sorts of other things. There are risk factors around some of those trade agreements that are well documented, certainly from our perspective. I do not think that the UK Government at this moment in time will be too concerned about the loss of markets, whether it is Europe or otherwise, for agricultural and food products. I am looking in the chat to see if any of my committee members have an additional question. There is not one there at the moment, so I am assuming that we have all exhausted our thoughts on this this morning. Mr Hall, thank you very much for your submission and your attendance at the committee this morning. I will suspend for five minutes or so and return to committee at 10. On that note, I will suspend the meeting. Hello and a very warm welcome back to your second agenda item this morning on the committee's inquiry into the Scottish Government's international work. I am delighted to welcome to the committee this morning Martin Johnson, EU director of the Brussels office of the Scottish Government, Dr Alexandra Stein, head of the Berlin office of the Scottish Government and John Webster, head of the London office of the Scottish Government. Thank you all for providing submissions prior to today's session. I am going to invite Mr Johnson to make a brief opening statement. Thank you, convener. Good morning, committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to give evidence today and to contribute to this inquiry. I can say we very much welcome the chance to speak with you today. It is the first time that any of us have spoken to a Holyrood committee and, as I said, we are very happy to do so. The written note that we provided to you earlier in the week ahead of the session sets out some factual information about the Government's international network, our offices, the kind of work that we do, the areas of focus that we have. I hope that that was useful and we are very happy to build on that through the session. Today, there were just three things that I wanted to emphasise at this point. The clerks have warned me to be brief, so I will heed that. First, I want to say that the Scottish Government's overseas network of offices and colleagues at home doing international facing work is a highly committed, talented group of officials working incredibly hard to promote Scotland and its Scottish interests, including showing real resilience over the last couple of years and the challenges. I think that we are fortunate to have the team of people that we do representing Scotland across the network. I think that, second, I would emphasise that, while the UK's exit from the EU and the subsequent end of the Brexit transition period clearly creates a new context and new challenges, both for the EU office and for our European engagement more generally, I think that Scottish ministers are absolutely committed to internationalism, to Scotland continuing to work with friends and partners in Europe and beyond. The programme for government, which was published in September, reaffirmed that commitment, while COP26 in Glasgow last month gave us a further sense of momentum and purpose, particularly on climate issues. I mentioned at the beginning our desire to support your inquiry. I also emphasised the real value that we see in it. Others who have given evidence have mentioned the importance of a greater focus on EU and international issues and the links to Scotland. Your work, including the inquiry, can really help with that. I know that you are also considering how the committee might focus on those issues in the future and what further work you might do. I think that we would welcome that and we would be happy to touch on those issues through the session today. I will pause there, thank you. Thank you very much for those introductory remarks. I will move to questions from the committee shortly. I remind members that they have a particular order that they want witnesses to respond to if they could say that when they ask their question. If I could open, your written submission mentions that the international officers are grounded in Scotland's national performance framework. I would like you to elaborate on that, particularly with another aspect of our committee, on how that ties in with the Scottish Government's cultural priorities. If I go to Mr Johnson first, please. In the note, we drew attention in particular within the NPF to two of the outcomes. The globally competitive entrepreneurial inclusive sustainable economy and the being open connected and making a positive contribution internationally. Obviously, those are quite high-level but then we translate them into more detail through things like the business planning work, the five objectives for the international network and then the specifics for each office. On the cultural linkage, I think that this is an area that we are thinking a lot about at the moment. You will be aware that the programme for government has a commitment for a cultural diplomacy strategy, so me and colleagues are involved in thinking about the content of that. I think that what I would say is that the cultural activities that we do, whether they are in Brussels or elsewhere, is a range of celebrating national festivals or promoting Scottish music, literature and arts. Those are things that have a real purpose. Those are things that open conversations and make connections, promote Scotland in the widest sense but also lead to strong diplomatic outcomes. Scotland has a well-recognised international set of brands. I think that that came through at COP again last month. I know that there are questions about how we present a kind of modern dynamic, innovative framing of that. The inherent strength of Scotland's recognition abroad is something that is really valuable, really important. If we have a burn supper or if we have a St Andrew's event or if we promote the Scottish language or the Gaelic language, we are all part of our programme. Those have a real diplomatic purpose. Those are about building relationships that can then deliver in other spaces as well as the cultural lens in themselves. I think that the cultural diplomacy strategy is the kind of territory that it will be in how we make that as strategic and focused and impactful as possible. However, I think that the inherent strength of what we have to offer and the recognition of it is something that we should be very proud of and think about how we get the most from, but something that is really valuable to us. Dr Spine? Yes, thank you very much. I think that I would adapt for Berlin and Germany. I would echo what Martin has just said and maybe just give you a couple of examples from our side, from the Germany approach. In Germany, our work with cultural diplomacy are two very, very clear approaches. The first is that it is part of our soft diplomacy work. Therefore, we use, for example, the events such as St Andrew's nights or the concerts that we hold to invite in political and economic contacts that we have made over the past while also to reaffirm relationships and deepen relationships. In our latest burn supper, for example, SDI had two tables for their invited guests. That has helped very much on the trade and investment side, linking, for example, to the MOU with Hamburg on that. The culture for its own sake has taken an approach of, for example, with our concert series on indigenous languages of reflecting the Scottish Government's year of themes. Next year is going to be year stories, so we will be reflecting that as well. In our first year, we were fortunate to have the European Championships between Glasgow and Berlin, and that was very much of the focus of our cultural activities. We are also using that to promote intercity partnerships and partnerships that last a longer time. For example, looking back at burns, for example, the last one that we had in person because of Covid, we took the theme of burns in nature to link into COP, which was due to be held that year. We tried to often take an angle or a theme to what we were doing. There is also one more thing that I would say, and that is that we are also unfortunate that we just had to postpone our St Andrew's day event, but we will be taking that forward next year. We are going to use the St Andrew's Day event with an invited band also to invite the music trade within Germany to the concert. We are working together to showcase Scotland on that, and the idea there is to work with showcase Scotland to help Scottish bands to make it into the German market and to find agents who are going to be invited to that as well. We use culture in a vast array of ways, if you like. If I could make three points about how we engage with and use culture internationally. First, it is important to talk about the enabling quality of culture. Second, the importance of up-front promotion of artists and our creative sector, almost viewing it as another part of our trade play, and its ability to start conversations. If I could give a few examples of that, both from my time in Ireland and my three months that I have been the head of Scotland in London, I think back pre-pandemic to a project that the Scottish Government office in Ireland under my leadership developed with a leading theatre group in a city Dublin that brought together school kids from in a city Glasgow with school kids from in a city Dublin to co-create works of poetry that talked about their problems, their issues, what it felt like to be a young person in place. Through that starting conversations and links at the secondary education level, another example would be a framework that that office in Dublin is working on with the Museum of Literature Ireland that is bringing together Scotland and Ireland to celebrate our literary heritage, in particular through our UNESCO cities of literature. What it is going to do is it is going to provide a platform for Scottish artists, writers and performers to travel to Dublin and put on works, lecture, talk about their work and collaborate with artists using the Museum of Literature Ireland as a platform in Dublin. That ability to start conversations has to run through everything that we do. Going back to the first one, enabling quality, what it does is it opens doors. It tells a story about who we are, what kind of country Scotland is and it engages a broad diversity of audience. Culture people do not just talk to culture people, business people like culture as well, and it brings different people into a room to start those conversations. I thank the witnesses for the evidence that we have had this morning. It has been really useful. I would like to follow up the issue that we have been discussing for the past few weeks in our inquiry. We have had a lot of evidence in recent weeks about how we enable scrutiny of the keeping pace legislation alongside how we retain links across the EU. There has been quite a focus and evidence that we have had from witnesses about both inter-government and inter-parliamentarian contacts, which was a very good session that we had last week. A key issue that has come out is that to track what is happening, we need to keep an eye over about 1,000 pieces of legislation a year. I want to get a bit of reflection and start with you, Mr Johnson, about what has changed and how you operate and how you intend to communicate what is happening in Europe, so that our businesses, our civic community and our parliamentarians and the Government can see what legislation is coming down the tracks at a European level and inform a discussion about where we want to keep pace and where we do not want to keep pace and to have an informed discussion about the implications of potential EU legislation. As I say, Mr Johnson, you will assist us in that process of keeping pace, information and transparency and knowledge about that process. Great, thank you. There is quite a lot there. I know that you have a separate process running in terms of receiving the draft statement and providing a report back. I know that ministers are considering the detail of that and will come back in the new year. I think that just to try and work through that, starting with what has changed, the reality is that we have left the EU and the transition period has now also ended, so we are outside the system. We are not automatically plugged in in the way that we were previously. Other witnesses have talked about how that has certain implications, we are not in certain rooms, we are not in processes and structures, we do not have direct access to the information that we had before and we are not able to influence the development of legislation in the way that a member state would. That is a significant change. For me and the team here, that creates new challenges around how you build networks, how you get good information, how you plug into the places that you need to plug into and can we still exert influence? That last one is very difficult, but we should continue to look for opportunities. What has changed in summary is that we are on the outside and we need to do things a bit differently, but we have ways of continuing to be really effective. Just to say a bit on how my team works with colleagues back at Edinburgh, I think that the Brussels office role on alignment is to feed back into the Scottish Government, probably in two main things. One is helping to ensure that there is a real good sense of the strategic big picture. A lot of what my team does is about reporting on latest developments. We have a heads of state council meeting happening right now. We had the fit for 55 follow-up package of announcements earlier this week, some really interesting and relevant stuff for Scotland. The team is providing information on that big picture through various channels. Secondly, what we are doing here is engaging in specific areas to support colleagues. If they need to know more about the fit for 55 climate and environment package, we can help conversations to be set up, we can help clarifications of information, we can help those channels to run, and if there are areas where there is legislation coming down the track that we might want to have a conversation about, just to pick one example, the EU is thinking a lot about hate crime legislation at the moment. That is an area that the Scottish Parliament has looked at in recent times. That is an example of something that we might be able to go and have a conversation and say, this is our experience, this may be of use. That is about how the office here feeds into the overall system that is being built up to manage the process of taking forward ministers' commitments and ambitions on alignment. On your question about conveying what is happening to a wider group of stakeholders, including private sector and other actors, that is a really good question. We are still in the relatively early stages of working through that. Your committee has a role in stimulating discussion on that and a challenge function. There is some really good work going on in the team in DEXA and Edinburgh to take forward this area, but we need to develop this and think about how we do it. On the committee's role, you mentioned the sheer volume of EU legislation. It can be up in the thousands once you take into account all the different instruments. My feeling would be that we are not in a world where we are going to be tracking every single item, many of which would not be relevant to Scotland. For the committee, it is the strategic overview and strategic questions on what is the big picture direction of travel and questions such as the ones that you have asked about how information is, on this, conveyed more widely. That is the valid question as opposed to wanting to track every single item that would be really difficult to do and not necessarily a good use of time and resource. Those are just some observations. I hope that that is helpful. That is very helpful. How do you work out what is the most significant? There might be business interests who think that something is important but it has not come through an initial track, so that was one of the things that we were asking the cabinet secretary to look at. I was thinking about your role in it as people who have got those contacts and have developed contacts over the years. You are in the Berlin office. How does it feel from your perspective? We had a German MEP involved in Europe and it was very interesting to get his perspective on some of that last week. David McAllister, who is the chair of the EU foreign affairs committee, asked what extent do we track stuff in different offices and to what extent does it come through the Brussels office? What is your particular role and the role of offices like yourself across the EU? Obviously, things have changed partly because we are on the outside and our interlocutors know that we are on the outside of the EU, but I think that it has changed for us less than it has been for the Brussels office. When the UK or Scotland is engaging with Germany as a member state of the EU, everything goes through the Brussels office and goes through the EU. Germany has always been very clear about its loyalties as a member state of the EU. That will always take priority in Germany over the bilateral relationship. Having said that, we in any case seek to engage on matters of substance and matters where we have common bilateral interests, whether that is around climate change or renewable energy or higher education. Those conversations have very much carried on. We are still engaging on that and, in some cases, we are finding slightly different ways through it, but everything is about finding the positive way forward. Although Brexit is now being concluded, the door is very much open for us. We find it very easy to have all the conversations and to start the partnerships, and the willingness to engage and to find new ways of doing things is certainly there. One of the issues that came up last week was about the need for better relationships in those UK offices that are based in different parts of the EU. I do not know if that is a question for who would be best to answer that. Mr Webster or Mr Johnson about how we make better use of existing links, given that changes have taken place, are very significant. I am happy to go first. I am sure that Martin will have a sense of that as well. I would concur with what my colleagues Alexandra and Martin have said. One of the significant changes post-exit from the EU is that we have to peddle harder to make those links meaningful, but that does not mean that it is impossible. You have to find other ways to do it, sometimes laterally, but it is possible. Alexandra has said that the doors remain open. In the course of what I do in London, I engage on a day-to-day basis and every day with overseas embassies through the normal course of the diplomatic circuit. A priority for me is to engage with EU embassies to maintain those links. One of the important aspects of an effective diplomatic network or international network is that you co-ordinate both in terms of your inputs and your outputs. Understanding what information you are looking for and is important and making sure that your reporting goes to the right people across that network so that we are all informed and we can all be speaking with one voice and working to an overall strategy in terms of what we are looking for is important. On how we use existing links, I think that what you were asking is how we interact with UK partners on those platforms that we share with the UK. I am sure that we will get into that later in the conversation, but the most relevant experience that I have on that is my four and some years of working on the British Embassy platform in Dublin as the head of the Scottish Government office. What I can say is that the relationships on that platform were excellent. There was a real sense from the UK ambassador and his team of the complementarity of what we both do. There was a real sense that the Scottish Government being on the platform allowed a more complete and holistic picture and story to be told about what Scotland offers in Ireland and the doors that that opens. I would say that there is work to be done about how we share information on the discussions that we have with Government in countries. Some of that is sensitive, some of that the UK Government will be reluctant to share a sensitive diplomatic report, and we have to respect that. However, those personal relationships on the British Embassy platforms and the quality of those relationships are a means through which we will improve our sense of that picture. I think that that is very useful. Mr Johnson, I am just thinking about how you make that effective in sharing access to information that would be useful for stakeholders in Scotland but in other parts of the UK as well. I was just going to build on John Johnson's point on interaction with UK colleagues. I think that I would just echo and build a little on what John Johnson said. In Brussels we are unusual, we have our own premises. It is essentially around the corner from the UK mission. We have strong links with UK mission colleagues. We do work collaboratively on a number of areas. To give you examples of topics recently, the preparation for COP and Glasgow and the delivery of that. I think that there was a lot of constructive dialogue around that. I think that the Covid situation over the last 18 months has been quite a number of areas where we have worked together to promote Scottish interests but in a way that added value. If you think of something like the digital Covid certificates and how they interact with a few R codes in England and Scotland, there is a really complicated issue that some of my team has been very involved with. I am thinking back to last year when the Scottish National Investment Bank needed state aid clearance in order to be established. Again, that was an area where there was a lot of positive working. I think that complementarity in those kinds of areas is there. It is important that we are able to act in order to promote Scottish ministerial interests. There will be areas where we will have our own dialogue and our own connections. Of course, that is an important part of what we do. Generally, we would be transparent about that and share information in a way that is helpful. We are always having Scottish interests and our minister's interests in mind, but there is a lot of opportunity to do things collaboratively in ways that build and get extra value. On the question of how that relates back to stakeholders back in Scotland, do you mind just coming back on that question? Yes, it is just a final thought in terms of how we communicate how we do that with stakeholders in Scotland. Obviously, you have mentioned Covid being a challenge, but on another level, it has made everybody digitally connected. Are there opportunities that you can see going forward to that to be more effective? I think so. It is one of the ironies of the pandemic. I think that a big feature of what we do in Brussels is running events, so we have put that online in the last 18 months. That allows you to do it at times when you bring together, perhaps more easily than would otherwise be the case, interesting groups of senior stakeholders on different topics. That has been something that we need to take some learning from into the future and it may be that some of the events will continue to be online going forward, because we are able to bring together senior EU figures, people from Scotland, potentially others beyond Europe, into really interesting discussions. We, from our office here, have a number of regular channels of communication. We do a regular note back into SGH each week. Are Scotland's Europa colleagues in Brussels providing regular briefings and information to their members? We use webcasts and other sessions to update people at particular set-piece moments, whether it is things like the Fit for 55 package or the State of the Union speech by the commissioner or the commission work programme. We will use a mix of online and written briefings to do that. We have probably ramped that up a bit over the past 18 months, just because those are the channels that have been available. Those are effective, and there is quite a wide audience for some of those sessions. I just wanted to ask Dr Stein about interaction with the UK Government diplomatic effort in Germany, just because the other two witnesses have spoken about it. I wanted to give you the opportunity to make any comments on that, please. I am more than happy to do that. There is a clear programme of sharing information. There is a rhythm, if you like, of information sharing meetings, whether they are with the regular embassy calls or whether they are in particular areas such as public health or climate or energy, where we think that Scotland has particular interests in the embassy. We also collaborate on certain events, such as the spring reception. We will make our contributions to that. The last one that was able to be held in person was, again, before COP and where the Italian ambassador was invited. We made a presentation to him, for example, of the COP tartan, so we make our contributions there. We also hold—so far, we have held our burn suppers jointly with the ambassador. The ambassador and I have jointly hosted those events. There are also other areas where, for example, we have helped to provide speakers. Earlier this year, the embassy was organising an information workshop on the under two coalition, and we felt that it was more inappropriate, given that Scotland had taken over the European Co-Chairmanship of the coalition, that we should be part of the panel. We were represented on that panel as partners and made presentations, followed up with individual states in Germany, who expressed interest in joining that coalition. I suppose that, in other areas, it is about promoting understanding of devolved issues, and where people may not be aware, for example, if we are engaged in youth exchange or language learning, where Germany or the embassy is engaging with the DFE, Scotland also has an interest because education policy has devolved, for example. A lot of information sharing is seeking to contribute. The question is for John Webster. As everyone knows, there are different models of Scotland's representation around the world from the SDI officers to co-locations that he has described with embassies and UK embassies. However, Scotland House is a distinctive model operating on its own premises and on its own terms. I wonder if you can say a bit more about some of the things that are distinctive about Scotland House, and particularly the efforts that have certainly been made pre-pandemic to bring businesses into the building and have a kind of open door. Of course, Mr Allan. That is a great question. I have experience of working on a Scottish Government office on a shared platform with a British Embassy and Scotland House London. Broadly, in terms of behaviour and methodology, we are talking about the same thing. However, the distinction that you have highlighted is perhaps the clearest one. The Scotland House London model is interesting. I would say that it is unique. I have never in my 35-year career and diplomacy seen an innovative model like it. In fact, in London, just in the last couple of months, I have had visits from a couple of London-based embassies that are looking at that model as one that they might like to follow in their international network or, indeed, as they reshape their presence in London. I am due to have a visit from the Spanish Ambassador early in the new year for exactly the same purpose. You talked about inviting businesses onto the platform. Scotland House London is split into two distinct functions on the same platform. It has an intergovernmental partnership through which the Scottish Government works with contributory partners, the Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Visit Scotland. We hope to add to that partnership model with other agencies in Scotland in the new year. We have a business hub that offers membership services to Scottish businesses, but not just Scottish businesses, Scottish universities and innovation centres are members of Scotland House London. They can subscribe through a membership model and follow that subscription. They effectively get a very top-class service office. They get a networking space, a boardroom facility and an event space. They get the opportunity to interact with Government and agencies and get their support for what they are doing on our platform. It also gives us the opportunity to run events with members that create a community of practice, which enables us to tell a more holistic story about who we are and what kind of country Scotland is today. It enables us to attract a more diverse set of audiences who, when we are doing this as Government alone, may not be as attracted to the platform. It is an interesting model. It is in its infancy. Scotland House London only had maybe one and a half years of full operation before the pandemic struck, during which time the model had to be moth-balled for public health reasons, very good and important. We reopened in September and ran up until last week when we had to pause again for public health reasons as Omicron started to rise rapidly. I hope that we will reopen full services in the new year as soon as we can. It is an exciting model and it offers huge potential for Scottish business, Scottish economy and one of its most important markets. It is also an interesting potential for creating new and interesting collaborations across the range of activities that we seek to pursue under the national performance framework. Thank you. I have a question for Dr Stein and Mr Johnson. You both talked about cultural diplomacy and soft power. You have rightly been careful not to draw too fine a distinction or too complete a distinction between art for art's sake, as it were, and culture with diplomacy in mind. I think that it is right not to draw that distinction too sharply. In terms of the work that is being done to promote Scotland's culture overseas, I wonder if you could say a bit more about what the aims of that are. Specifically, you mentioned literature. I am just curious to know what the aims were in mind if there were cultural aims specifically. I am happy to come in on that. I think that we want to promote Scottish culture as Scottish culture. For example, whenever we hold a burn supper or St Andrew's night event, we will bring in a Scottish band for the music. Pre-Covid times, we will also host a cailie, for example. That is very much about inviting people in, showcasing Scottish culture and letting people really experience and enjoy it. One of the comments that came after our first St Andrew's night event, and that was from a journalist, was that it was the best event in the diplomatic calendar. We had a brand new to Berlin, and we really had an impact very quickly with that. Everything that is around it, so the other thing that we aim to do, for example, is to bring the band in, but we also bring the best of Scottish food and drink across as well. One of your other contributors earlier said that there was a comment about the perception of Scottish food and drink, so we aim to bring the best of Scottish whisky, gin or fish produce. We aim to showcase that as well, and we have got uses of excellent chefs locally. The other thing that we did last time, because we were also thinking about sustainability, was that we had a Scotland meets Brandenburg. We brought in the best of Scottish produce that we could, but we also said that, for everything else, we will make sure that we source locally-grown produce. That way, we brought together Scotland with the immediate state surrounding Berlin and Brandenburg, so that was a deliberate policy through that. The other thing is, on literature, for example, in 2019, we partnered with the Literature Festival in Rhylam-Files, which is now our key cultural and higher education partner within Germany. We brought over six Scottish poets for a week, a translation workshop for a week, together with six German poets. Out of that came a book that has now been published and has also been showcased on national radio as well. We aim to get a wide reach. Through that project, for example, people could read the poetry in the original Scots, in the original Gallic, in the original English and in the German, all within the same volume. It is very much about trying to bring that to new German audiences who may not have come across that before and just opened that door to Scotland. We are trying to do that throughout Germany. For example, in Hamburg, we also partnered with the British Council for a poetry event last year as well. Again, the same purpose, but it is about showcasing Scottish culture within Germany. Thank you. Finally, Mr Johnson, you have described how you have to operate in the Brussels office in a post-Brexit landscape. Last week, as was alluded to in committee, we were speaking to David McAllister about the European Parliament. For very understandable and sound reasons, he was keen to indicate that relationships between the European Parliament and our Parliament would have to be informal rather than formal. However, I take it that you are still operating in both informal and formal spheres. That is exactly right. You have heard evidence about the Friends of Scotland MEPs group. In terms of a structure that we have set up since EU exit almost a couple of years ago, that group was set up and that is a very effective mechanism for us to engage with what is quite a wide group of MEPs from all political backgrounds, generally who have an interest in Scotland. That allows us to create a dialogue and a way for ministers to engage away for us to have connectivity into things like the development of the policy agenda, which links back into alignment. That group is as public as many of the Friends groups with the Parliament are. The UK has a Friends group, but it also allows informal discussion and dialogue to happen. It allows us to hone in on specific policy areas and get access to whether it is directly to Friends of Scotland MEP members or other members of the Parliament that they can connect us with. That is a key focus of the work in Brussels as it relates into the Parliament. I know that David McAllister was touching on some wider issues about the relationship between us as he touched on the Scottish Parliament and the need to have formal links with national parliaments. He also touched on the question of the parliamentary partnership assembly, which is part of the trade and co-operation agreement architecture. The EU has now constituted its membership of its side of that agreement. The UK side is still to be confirmed. There is a question there about the role of the Scottish Parliament in feeding into that structure. That is a formal structure that is of interest and is significant. If there are links that can be built from Scotland into that structure, that is a formal mechanism. In terms of TCA governance, it is really important. I would hope that there would be a good and appropriate Scottish voice in that structure on the UK side. I am now at that time on a Thursday morning where I have to say to everyone that we are pushing up against time, so that people could be succinct in their questions and answers and only answer if you really feel that you have got something to add to what has been said, unfortunately, is the nature of FMQs on a Thursday for us. I will keep it to one question to meet the time requirements. I will start with Mr Johnson, if that is okay, but the same question to the entire panel. I was just wondering how success is measured in your office, what metrics you use and whether you feel that they are appropriate. I will just say a bit and colleagues can maybe add some detail. The starting point for the international network is five outcomes. Reputation, businesses trading internationally, more effectively, research and innovation capability promoted in partnerships and funding secured, investment into Scotland and then the final one is Scotland's interest in the EU and beyond are protected and enhanced. As you will see, those are inherently quite a high level, but that is the starting point not just for the Brussels office but for the other overseas offices. Those are then converted into business plans in each of the offices, and those business plans over the past two or three years have increasingly been developed as joint SDIs, Scottish Government products or Scotland's Europa, Scottish Government and the Brussels context. Those then generate more specific objectives and aims. At the end of each reporting year, each of the offices produces an evaluation report that is fed back in centrally to the colleagues in the directorate for external affairs and the international board that sits above. Just building on that specifically, what are the kind of things that are measurable? Clearly, economic and other forms of diplomacy by their nature are quite difficult to measure. Some of the things that they deliver are inherently medium or longer term and things like reputation and enhancement of reputation. Going back to what Alexander was saying about cultural events, it is quite hard to measure. The kind of things that we try to measure—this is an evolving area where we are improving it as we go—is the volume of senior ministerial engagements, the number of events that we promote, the kind of participation either directly in those events or in terms of the audience, the social media footprint and how that grows and also the nature of it. On the trading and economic front, we can point out specifically other investments or outcomes. That is more, if you like, in an SDI space, that kind of hard economic measurement, but that is something that we should be alive to as a network. What I would say is that this is an evolving area. I think that there have been good steps made on it in the past two or three years in the time that I have been here. However, it is a legitimate area for you and colleagues to look at and potentially contribute thoughts on how you do it. It is a very difficult area. Colleagues will say a bit more in the detail, but it is something that we are working hard to try to improve on and develop. We have made some good strides. I think that we will move to Germany next. I am keen to hear the thoughts of Dr Stein. I would echo what Martin has said in regard to the overall approach. The same approach goes for all of us. We both do our business plan together and we also do our monitoring and evaluation together as well, so they come into a joint report. We also work very closely with the SDI in the country on all of that. Because some of the things that are difficult are challenging to measure in their own right, we will often look for proxies. For example, hydrogen is a big topic for us in Germany at the moment, so we would be looking to count, for example, the number of events that we have spoken at, the number of ministerial speeches, the number of speeches that I have given in Germany, for example, or which partners we brought in from Scotland to showcase them to the wider audience, and the outreach of some of the events. For example, we spoke last year at the German National Assembly on Hydrogen. There were 3,500 attendees at that. We also did a mission hydrogen workshop with the energy minister speaking, and then we hosted a workshop. There were 10,000 registrations at that, and we think about 8,000 people attended. We try to measure that sort of thing, and then we also look at media coverage, coverage of interviews that we have given, for example. We look at social media as well, how people are responding. We also look at the follow-up where people write into us after events. Often after giving a speech on a platform, people will follow up and ask for contact, and then we will follow that contact through, and that will often lead to business contacts as well. There is a combination between hard numbers, proxies and the narrative as well, where we try to follow something through. Thank you, Dr Stein. Now to London, and I feel like I'm on the Eurovision Song Contest, and Mr Webster came for your thoughts. I hope that you're not going to say no point, Mr Gull. Listen, if I can, I'll speak also from the perspective of Dublin. My colleagues have said it all. Actually, I've got an easy get here. I'll make a couple of points. That is to reinforce the integrated nature of the business planning model that we now use, certainly in Ireland and in Scotland House London. We have one plan that includes the objectives of partners on Scotland House London, and it was a joint plan between the Scottish Government and SDI. That leads to a shared action plan for how we pursue those objectives and a shared evaluation report at the end of the year. The second point that I'll make is that we also use survey tools, as well as the quantitative element of how many people you are bringing into your office or having meetings with or having at receptions. We would, for example, in Ireland survey people who came to our events, ask them questions about the impression that they left with of Scotland, the quality of speakers or the experience, and, from that, gain a sense of what impression we were making on our key target stakeholders and audiences. We're doing a very similar thing just about to launch a survey of members of Scotland House London, which we'll do two things. Retrospectively, it will ask them for their impressions of the quality of service that they receive and the links and the outputs that come from joining Scotland House London, but we'll also pull them on what they are looking for in this slightly changed reality that we are emerging into as we come out of the pandemic, so that we can properly assess need and tweak or recalibrate our offer to businesses on Scotland House London. The third point that I'll make is that looking back and thinking about this in the context of both FCO and DFID, where I have extensive experience, our business planning process stands up to scrutiny. It's rigorous and it really does read across quite favourably to those that are operated in embassies by the FCO and DFID's overseas network. Always room to improve, my colleagues. I've talked about the difficulty of developing quantitative measures for what are effectively long-term qualitative processes, for example, influence, but there are ways that you can improve. I look forward to engaging my colleagues and making sure that we do that year on year. It's important. Thank you, convener, and thank you, panel. This has been really informative almost an hour, I think, of conversation. I was really interested in what you were saying, Mr Webster, about the perception of Scotland and how you are actually recording that. Perhaps you could expand a bit more on that, but I'm also interested to hear about the future plans that the Scottish Government has for expansion of the network of Scotland's offices within Europe, so Copenhagen and also Warsaw, and if any of you can comment on the wider network of offices across the world that Scotland has. I mean really interesting questions. I'm sure that there could be a separate parliamentary evidence session on that question of international perceptions and branding. I know that Murray Pettup talked a bit about this in his evidence session with you. How we did it in Ireland was to use surveys in a very targeted, sharply targeted way to ask people about impressions of, in a very general sense, where we had thematically specific events, to ask what people had learned and to use that evidence to feed the narrative in our end-of-year evaluation reports. What we also did in Ireland was to carefully and closely look at press and media about the kind of coverage that Scotland was getting in the Irish media, and to use that again as a very loose proxy, I think, for impressions. It is, I think, an evolving science. I think that there is a lot of work out there on international impressions. I think that Scotland probably has room to grow and improve on that, and I think that this network has a role to play in that. In terms of network expansion, I mean I'm sure that my colleagues will say more about this, but in the year to come in 2022 and I think into 2023, where there are plans to open up an office in Copenhagen, and then one in Warsaw, unless you're about the timeline for Warsaw, I think that the office in Copenhagen is a really exciting development. It's a fantastic job for a diplomat. The Nordic group of countries are a group with which we have much to collaborate on. I personally hosted a dinner a couple of months ago with the group of Nordic and Baltic ambassadors, and what struck me in that was not only the warmth, but the degree to which substance figured in that conversation, for example, Norway, is really clear on the degree to which co-operation around our coastal economies is really important to them, and the scope there is to grow that co-operation and collaboration, and of course, across that piece, the degree to which we can continue to exchange knowledge and technical expertise as we grow our renewable sector. That is about developing friendship and collaboration, but it's also about real, hard co-operation for economic benefit and mutual economic benefit. I'll leave it at that and let my colleagues say a few words. If I can just quickly come in, I mean, thank you for that. Similarly, I had a meeting with some designers, young Scots designers, and it was this whole thing about co-operation and collaboration and whole idea that perhaps we're a southern Nordic state as opposed to a northern European state, so I reflect positively on what you've just said, so thank you very much. I think that Mr Johnson is going to come in with regards to the expansion. I will do, thank you. Just to add a little bit to what John Johnson said on expansion, on Copenhagen, the plan is to open the office next year. The background to that, I think, is just a sense that it's a really good base, not just for Denmark, but for wider Nordic interests. There are lots of connections with Nordic countries and lots of shared challenges. I think that also the trading connections are really significant, the volume of trade and the potential there. We also have an existing SDI presence, so there's something, and this goes back to cost efficiency, there's something about building on that. For all those reasons, that one's, as per the programme for government, the next one that's coming. On Warsaw, the commitment is to open an office in Warsaw before the end of the parliamentary session, so that's slightly further away time-wise. The rationale for that really is about the educational, trade, cultural and other links that Scotland has with Poland. There's also a regional dimension, I think that this is an opportunity not just to engage with Poland but neighbouring countries. What I would say specifically on Poland is that Poland is a very significant player within the EU, as a population of almost £40 million. It's the fifth largest member state, and it's a significant connection to be making and links to build. There is a logic to that. On your other question about the wider network, I was reminding myself of the SDI network. You'll be aware that it's bigger than the Scottish Government. It's something like 32 offices, but there are six in the Americas, 10 in Asia and Pacific, two in the Middle East and then a whole set in Europe, many of which are co-location with the Government offices. What you've got there is quite a global network. For us as officials over the last year or two, there's been a lot of work to build the connections that we have with the leaders of those offices. We have something called the International Leaders Forum, where we meet up, albeit virtually recently. We've been building those connections and talking with colleagues in places like China in a way that we haven't done in years gone by. There are some really interesting opportunities developing. Clearly, there's a strategic question for ministers about the future of the Scottish Government network. What they want that footprint to look like. It was interesting looking at the different manifestos on that going back to the election time. That is an interesting strategic question as we go forward. For me, the interaction with that SDI network is at the heart of that, because there's already that footprint there. When you put the two things together and make them work effectively, you've got quite an impactful proposition there. I hope that that's helpful, but I have a few thoughts on that. Very helpful. Mr Johnson, thank you. Convener, will I hand back to you? Thank you very much, Ms Minto. I could invite Mr Ruskell, please. Thank you, convener. It's a really interesting session. I was struck by what you were saying, Mr Johnson, about fit for 55 in the use of energy and climate package. I think that Dr Astin you were also talking about the work on hydrogen. I'm just interested to unpack that a little bit more as to what you see those. It is such a big strategic priority, obviously, and it will dominate, I imagine, a lot of the work with the Copenhagen office. However, what do you see as the main work strands that are coming out of that? I suppose that the question is, do you see Scotland at the moment as being aligned with that EU agenda, or are there perhaps differences in approach? You may start with Mr Johnson on that one, please. Thank you. It's a really timely question, as well. I mentioned at the beginning that the bulk of the fit for 55 package of legislative proposals were published back in the summer. However, a couple of days ago, on Tuesday, there was a second package that the commission put out. To give you some examples of why it is important, I think that the package this week, for example, there was a lot in there on hydrogen definitions for different types of hydrogen, proposals for rules around how hydrogen networks will operate in the EU for the transportation of hydrogen, and then there were additional proposals on things like the energy performance of buildings. If you look at the whole package, including the proposals that came out in the summer, you have areas such as renewable energy, energy efficiency, emissions trading, vehicle standards. Those are all things that have real resonance and relevance to Scotland. The bulk of them are in devolved areas. If you go back to something like hydrogen, and I am sure that Alexandra will build on that, for us, understanding what is happening in a regulatory space in the EU is just really significant. As we look at things like the hydrogen action plan that was published last month, a big part of that strategy is generating enough renewable hydrogen that Scotland can be an exporter of that. The EU is a really significant potential market, certainly neighbouring the closest, physically closest member states in particular. That question of the EU importing renewable hydrogen is something that the commission president, Vonda Lane, spoke specifically about two weeks ago when she launched the global gateway strategy. You have an economic driver there, you have an environmental and sustainability driver and then you have the question of alignment. Scotland is very aligned across those areas. Partly that is a function of having had the same legislation because we were a member state and bound by EU rules until very recently. The ministerial ambition is to stay aligned across those areas. If you look at things like single-use plastics and the policy and the plans, that would be a really good example of something where what we are doing in Scotland is very much aligned with EU plans. Across the piece, you have a really interesting significant package. It is the centrepiece of the commission's work programme, along with digital, and not just in terms of policy outcomes and high standards and high protections, on economic issues such as growing the hydrogen sector and potentially exporting. Lots of stuff there. I will pause there. I know the time is getting on, but I just had a further question that was in relation to the COP presidency. You touched earlier on a lot of preparatory work that you were involved with, but we have still got some time left in that COP presidency until next year when it hands over. I am interested in what that workstream looks like at the moment. I am looking for someone to self-nominate to come in on that one. I can come in on that. The first thing to say is that that is a really good question. You are quite right that the UK presidency runs until I think it is around the summer before handing on ahead of COP 27, which is going to be in Egypt. The main focus is driving forward the momentum of COP, trying to drive up ambition and trying to make sure that when nationally determined contribution plans are updated at COP 27, the ambition level is lifted. There is a role on the one hand for Scotland in supporting that drive, but what also came through at COP was some very distinct areas of Scottish interest in leadership, such as the statement on women's leadership on climate issues, the question of loss and damage, the question of the dialogue with the global south, as well as the promotion of Scotland's very progressive and extensive framework of legislation and ambitions. There are two tracks supporting the thrust of what the presidency is trying to achieve in the run-up to COP 27. Alongside that, there is a distinct and strongly value-adding platform of things that Scotland has pushed very successfully around COP, the things that I have mentioned. I hope that that is helpful. That gives a sense of what I would see as two tracks. I see that Dr Stein would like to come in as well. I am happy to come in. Sorry, thank you very much. I have just offered additional questions on the question of COP. It is an example of where so many of our priorities are interrelated, so we will be taking forward the work on COP through our engagement around hydrogen, for example, or biodiversity, because those are core themes that will underline all our work going forward. By taking that forward, we also contribute to the COP programme as well. We are already in the process of planning follow-up engagement around the various themes of COP, which takes me back to how you are asking about hydrogen in Germany. That has been a key priority for us for about 18 months. Naturally, the routes really lie in the German presidency as well, so back in summer 2020, Germany published its hydrogen action strategy followed by the EU a month later. Quite clearly, Germany was positioning the EU, and it said that we are going to lead the hydrogen agenda for Europe, and we are going to co-ordinate Europe's hydrogen agenda. It also stated, for example, that Germany wants to be the global leader in hydrogen technologies. However, at the same time, it has requirements for massive industrial scale amounts of green hydrogen. If you link that back to our hydrogen strategy, which was published last December in the action plan, we are positioning Scotland in Germany as being one of Germany's key import countries. We are using the fact, for example, that Scotland has 25 per cent of the wind resources in Europe. We are also building on the fact that Scotland has a 10-15 year of learning by doing in the areas of green hydrogen. Where is Germany saying that it wants to import 90 to 110 terawatt-hours of green hydrogen a year? Scotland's most ambitious analysis says that we might be able to export 94 terawatt-hours of green hydrogen a year. We are saying that we are looking to South Africa, Australia and Chile. Scotland is just over the waters. We are a stable provider, and we want to be part of the portfolio of import countries. We are looking to get on to national platforms. We are engaging with key trade associations across Germany. We are speaking to organisations such as the Chamber of Commerce in Germany. We are engaging with the media. We are building MOUs between the deep wind cluster in Scotland and the offshore wind cluster in Germany. We are also building MOUs with key states within Germany all around the topic of hydrogen. We are really looking forward to taking that forward as a key priority. The Hamburg MOU, for example, was signed just three or four weeks ago, is actually about how we build import-export technologies together. Part of it is about how Germany and Scotland work together on their common interests to develop the hydrogen economy more quickly. In Scotland, we said that that could be worth as much as £25 billion per year by 20, 45 and 300,000 jobs. It is a key opportunity that we have to pursue, but we will only realise that if we have a good export market. It is bringing everything together. I have lots of time to do another hour on that, but I do not have time to do that. I am sure that I have a lot of questions, but I will only ask one. I just want to get to your sense. As you look at the entire international office presence across the world, whether you think that we are in the right places is the question. Having listened to the justification for the new offices in Copenhagen and Warsaw, I do not want to refight all battles. Brexit has happened, we have left the EU, and we are not standing all of that. We seem to be opening further offices in the EU. I wonder whether you think that is right, whether we are not in Australia or New Zealand, we are not in Africa or South America. It is just a very general question as to whether you think that we are correctly positioned. Can I go to Mr Webster first of all? Are we correctly positioned? During my experience working on trade teams and having recently worked on Ireland, I have yet to see much compelling evidence that suggests to me that countries do not trade most effectively and in the highest volume in their immediate neighbourhood. From a trade perspective, in or out of the EU, there is still a real national interest in having the kind of presence in our near-neighbourhood that can support that set of trading relationships. On wider international, should we be in Australia or New Zealand? I am sure that there would be very compelling reasons that we could develop historical relationships to begin with. I am sure that my ministers would love that we had the capability and the resources to do so. From a personal perspective, based on my own experience, when it comes to the deployment of limited resources, looking to our near-neighbourhood makes a lot of sense from an economic and a trading perspective. Thank answers, please, if possible. Thank you very much. I can probably answer primarily only for Germany, because that is where I am. Germany is the largest economy in Europe. It is Scotland's second most important trading and investment nation. It is also our top partner for research collaboration and a high priority country for visitors and tourism. On those grounds, I would say that Germany is definitely the right country to be. Mr Johnson, I just had a couple of thoughts. There is a question about whether you are looking through a trade and economic development lens or a diplomatic influencing lens, and the answer may be different depending on which lens it is. I mentioned earlier the SDI network, which is extensive globally and beyond Europe. It comes back to that join-up question and getting some of the synergies. It is a legitimate question for ministers to reflect on. It is also a dynamic question. It will evolve over time. We have things such as the global affairs framework that is being developed for publication next year. We had the trade vision that was published earlier this year. Those are areas that ministers are actively reflecting on and those publications shed light on. For me, I would echo some of what John Johnson said about economic connections, but it is clearly something that is dynamic, and we will keep quite rightly coming back to it as we go forward. Thank you very much to my committee members. This morning, it is obvious that a number of areas that might be further discussion would be helpful. I will, from my own point of view, understand the scope of the number of memorandums that are in place. Memorandums have understanding that they are being mentioned both at the country and at the city level. We might write to you for some further information. I will ask my committee members to reflect on the questions that we did not quite get to today. As Mr Johnson said, it is the first time that any committee has looked at those issues, and I am sure that it will not be the last. It has been a fantastic evidence session, and I thank you all for your attendance this morning. That is the final meeting of 2021. I would like to take the opportunity to put on record my thanks to our clerks, spies and the other members of the Parliament team for their support to the committee since we came back for this session of the Parliament. I wish you all a very safe and hopefully happy festive period. Thank you very much. I will close the meeting.