 Good morning and a very warm welcome to the third meeting of the Constitution Europe external affairs and culture committee in 2022. This morning, we have received apologies from Mr Ruskell. Our first agenda item is that the committee will take evidence and hear from the Government on the previous evidence heard during the committee's inquiry on the UK internal market. We welcome to committee this morning Angus Robertson, Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture in the Scottish Government, from Donald Cameron, Deputy Director, Constitution and UK Relations, Scottish Government and UNPage, head of UK frameworks, Scottish Government. I welcome you all to the meeting and, Cabinet Secretary, I invite you to make an opening statement. This morning, I think that it is my fifth session with the committee of this Parliament since we last met. I have also given evidence on common frameworks and the internal market act to the House of Lords common framework scrutiny committee and I have been in regular discussions with my counterparts in the UK Government and with other devolved Governments as well. Any inquiry into the internal market regime imposed by the UK internal market act must proceed and must be seen in the wider context of the devolution settlement, which, in 1997, people in Scotland voted overwhelmingly to re-establish a Scottish Parliament. With our own Parliament, we have seen things such as free personal care, university tuition fees have been abolished and no one is now charged for prescriptions. Those initiatives and many more have improved people's lives in Scotland immeasurably, but now what we are confronted with is an effort by the UK Government to put the gains of devolution at risk by taking control, once again, of key devolved powers and doing that without consent, without the permission of you, the elected members of the Scottish Parliament and indeed the Scottish Government. Devolution has, in some quarters, always been seen as a problem to be fixed in some parts of UK politics, where the UK is mistakenly conceived of as being a unitary state rather than a voluntary political union of nations. That view has become increasingly obvious since the EU referendum and can be seen most clearly of all in the issue that we are deliberating over today, the Internal Market Act. The Scottish Government's opposition to the act is clear, it is well known and understood. We have argued from the outset that it represents a fundamental change to the devolution settlement that people voted for in 1997. It is a change that was achieved by stealth, that was chipping away at the powers and responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament. The majority of the Scottish Parliament agrees with that and has voted overwhelmingly to refuse consent to the act. As did colleagues in Cardiff, while in Northern Ireland the Assembly passed a motion rejecting the bill, no devolved legislature has consented to the act and yet, in spite of the overwhelming rejection, the Sewell convention was once again ignored and the act has been imposed on us. Those concerns were continued to be dismissed by UK ministers as scaremongering, and instead we have been told that somehow this act represents a power surge that were to be believed following EU exit. Convener, it is just over a year since the act has passed into law and we now have a growing body of evidence that vindicates our position, vindicates the concern of the overwhelming majority of members of the Scottish Parliament. Witnesses to the inquiry have laid bare the negative impact of the act, if I may, because I have had a look at the evidence that you have been able to garner so far. There are certain contributions that stand out. One goes as follows, and this is a direct quotation. The internal market act could create risks for the integrity of the existing devolution settlement and, in particular, for the integrity of the regulatory prerogatives that the Scottish authorities enjoy in accordance with the Scotland Act 2016 in the area of public health and, especially, alcohol control policy. That is a view of Professor Nicola McEwen of the University of Edinburgh. Further, the internal market act views devolution and the potential for divergence as an obstacle and a potential irritant to the economic integration of the UK, which is prioritised and privileged through the market access principles of the act. The act undermines devolution and will limit the ability to the Scottish Parliament and Government to improve farmed animal welfare standards. That contribution from one kind, Kirsty Jenkins, in a written submission to the committee. I could go on. You have had a lot of evidence that has underlined the concerns that we have, but it is not just in the Scottish Parliament and not just in the devolved institutions that these concerns have been amplified. Only a few weeks ago, Lord Hope spoke on BBC Scotland marking the publication of a House of Lords report, and he said as follows, "...the problem has been, while it was always understood from the beginning that Westminster would not make laws for Scotland which cut across the devolution system without the consent of the devolved administrations, they did not respect that, particularly with Brexit, and that created a great deal of mistrust and, indeed, hostility." In responding to a question about whether the internal market act strengthens or undermines devolution, Lord Hope said, "...well, I think the Scottish Government are right about that. Lord Hope is a cross-venture in the House of Lords, a very independent and well-versed member of the House of Lords who agrees with the position of the Scottish Government on that, agrees with the majority view in the Scottish Parliament on it, and while Lord Hope and I may not see eye to eye on the best constitutional future for the UK, it is difficult to argue with the clearly expressed views that he gave only last week." Convened, the reality is that the act means that devolved powers will now be exercised in a system designed and controlled by UK ministers. Much was heard from UK ministers during the passage of the bill about how the proposals simply replicate the rules that provide for regulatory coherence in the EU single market. That is not the case. The UK Internal Market Act does not provide any of the exemptions and protections for local autonomy that are enjoyed by members of the EU single market nor do its provisions mirror the internal market rules that pertain in other devolved or federal states. Delegated powers in the act enable areas currently controlled by devolved parliaments to be brought within the scope of the market access principles by UK ministers, and those powers mean that UK ministers could change the scope of the act unilaterally. Indeed, the UK Government is expected to seek the consent of devolved governments to changes to the services exclusions regime as we speak. The fact of consent may sound reassuring, however, any such assurance would be false. Although there is a duty in the act requiring UK ministers to consent of devolved governments before such changes are made, the UK Government can proceed after just one month, regardless of whether that consent has been given. In conclusion, convener, the act has also made other significant changes that are worth noting. It allows for the first time UK ministers to decide how money in Scotland should be spent on wholly devolved policy areas, banning culture, sport, education, economic development and infrastructure, money that should be for the Scottish Parliament, for you, the members of the Parliament and the Government, to make your own choices about, in line with the priorities of the people who have elected you, elected us, or, as the First Minister of Wales pithily observed, the act steals money and powers from Wales. Again, it is difficult to disagree with his assessment. Convener, the act represents a fundamental erosion of the devolution settlement and the departure from the principles and practices of devolution experienced over two decades. No doubt it will come on to questions about what can be done to mitigate or to work with the grain of the act now that it is unfortunately a reality, but my response will be plain. The act cannot be reformed or properly mitigated. It is an internal market regime that has been imposed on its constituent members without their consent. It is inherently unstable, it is unsustainable and the only way to address the act's harms is for it to be repealed. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. We will now move to questions. Perhaps I could open questions with a question about a submission from the Law Society, which refers to a spice briefing on common frameworks, which addresses the question of what new governance arrangements will be needed to make common frameworks work. The paper states that, when more decisions are taken through intergovernmental forums, accountability and parliamentary scrutiny can suffer. Consequently, that increases, and I quote again, the importance of ensuring that intergovernmental bodies are transparent and accountable. I will ask what your view is on this, cabinet secretary, and how do we ensure that the common frameworks process is transparent and accountable to the Scottish Parliament and its committees? Well, it is likely that you will touch on a range of issues in relation to frameworks, because it impacts in significant ways and should do in relation to the internal market act. Just to update the committee on where we are at the present time, because we are in a moving and evolving situation, we are now moving forward to formal scrutiny of frameworks in all four legislatures across the UK. Officials have been sharing cleared provisional frameworks with parliamentary officials prior to publication. We have seen some initial scrutiny of frameworks that were in the spring of last year, and some frameworks have come forward for scrutiny in recent weeks. I know that, for example, my colleague the health secretary was giving evidence on frameworks in his policy area last week. There are a number of factors that have impacted on the development of common frameworks, not least of those being the impact of the pandemic, and officials have been called away to other tasks. However, the biggest single impact has been on the UK Government's decision to introduce the internal market act, which raised fundamental questions over the purpose and viability of the common frameworks. It has taken considerable time to work through the act's impact and to develop mitigations. Stakeholders in the frameworks process, and that includes the committee, as it involves everybody else who has a locus in it. There was a multi-phase process frameworks for its development, and there was extensive stakeholder engagement. It is encouraging to see the level of stakeholder interests in common frameworks from early witnesses to the inquiry. The clear consensus of frameworks offer a much better model for co-operation on managing policy divergence than the internal market act. The views of stakeholders on the efficacy of the frameworks will be central and will be important to us as Government, and it will be important for you as committee in taking evidence on how things work. You have your on-going scrutiny, and as I said in my opening statement, I think that it is a fourth or fifth time. I have been with you, and I am happy to come back. I am happy to update you, as are my officials and my colleagues who were introduced at the beginning, who do a lot of the technical work on that. We are happy to keep you apprised of how things are working or are not working, because we are at the stage of seeing whether the UK Government, in effect, is going to recognise the workings of the framework, which, in effect, should allow for the divergence of policy across the UK. Either they are going to allow that to work or they are not. There are examples that I can go into. I do not want to prejudge any questions that you might have, but there are some very current issues where we will be able to see where the UK Government is minded on allowing us to get on with what we have actually been elected to get on with. Thank you very much. I am going to move to questions from committee members, and I will invite Ms Mintle first to be followed by our deputy convener Donald Cameron. Thank you, convener, and thank you, cabinet secretary, for joining us again. I would like to touch on a couple of things that you just raised in your introduction there. In yesterday's contribution to the Scottish Parliament Committee's debate on the scrutiny of Scotland's budget, the cabinet secretary for finance and the economy noted the importance of being able to tailor our response to Scotland's needs and Scotland's priorities. You mentioned in your introduction about the less generous local regulatory autonomy that the UK internal market bill gives us compared to the EU internal market bill. As you noted, the UK Government has started spending in devolved areas with no recourse to the Scottish Parliament. You touched on education. I was thinking specifically of the adult numeracy fund, despite education being fully devolved. Could you expand a bit more on your thoughts, the Scottish Government's thoughts, on this change? That is one of the most problematic areas of the whole issue. UK ministers are now in a position to decide how public money—money that you, I and our constituents have paid in taxation—should be spent in Scotland. The UK ministers have not been elected for that purpose, but they are now going to make decisions on the basis of their priorities that they were not elected to do in Scotland. The heart is a democratic deficit and a democratic problem with all of that. I mentioned in my opening remarks the cuts across a whole range of devolved subjects, such as culture, sport, education, economic development and infrastructure, and it bypasses your colleagues. That is profoundly wrong. UK ministers have not wasted any time in using their new powers in areas where you should be in charge and not them. The spending is uncoordinated. It is not co-ordinated properly with the Scottish Government and it is not subject to your appropriate scrutiny. Over £152 million of funding from the Community Renewal Fund and the initial rounds of the levelling up and community ownership funds have now been awarded to projects in Scotland. It almost goes without saying that funding for worthwhile projects is a welcome thing. Who would gain say that? That is not what is at issue. It is about how we manage resources and priorities and what are the democratic mechanisms for doing so. To give you two very concrete examples, the Multiply programme is an area that involves a £560 million, which is a not small numeracy programme. Multiply, the fund, will be top sliced from the UK shared prosperity fund and delivered by the UK Department of Work and Pensions across the whole of the UK. That is despite devolution being wholly involved. No engagement took place with the Scottish Government prior to the announcement and it means that there is likely to be duplication, waste, with the Scottish Government's adult learning strategy, which is to be published in the spring. That is one example. The UK Government has shared some thinking around the role of the Scottish Government in the governance and operations of the shared prosperity fund as subordinate partners. It is not equal, it is not co-decision. I say again that it is a devolved area, so it is the Parliament and the Scottish Government that should be responsible. Nevertheless, preceding three options have been proposed in Whitehall. None of them is yet cleared with Government ministers. Each of them has an ever-decreasing role for the Scottish Government. All of the options state that the UK Government ministers will have the final say. A ministerial board has been described with the role of ministers from devolved Governments in an advisory capacity only. The Scottish Government has seen the initial paper on the indicative priorities of the UK shared prosperity fund. It raises significant questions about the strategic nature of potential projects. It only highlights our concerns about distant decision making, which is unelected for those issues, and making those decisions. That is not just the view of the Scottish Government or, indeed, the majority of members of the Scottish Parliament. Recently, the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, the umbrella organisation for the country's voluntary organisations, highlighted the view of their members that funding priorities should be set at a devolved level, tackling inequalities, enhancing human rights, promoting wellbeing. They say that by linking outcomes with Scotland's national performance framework and other relevant policy frameworks. The SCVO has raised concerns over the management of the shared prosperity fund being managed centrally by the UK Government. It echoes the concerns that the Government and members of the Scottish Parliament have had since the beginning of the process. Things are beginning to happen, and what we are seeing is indeed what was foretold. I thank you for that. It leads me on to quoting something that Professor Nicola McLean talked about as well about the fact that UKEMA could have a longer-term chilling effect on legal and policy reform. That was reflected in evidence that we received from Alcohol Focus Scotland, specifically about whether there would still be the ability to bring in legislation like minimum unit pricing of alcohol. Given that health was one of the areas that countries in Europe could use the appropriate legislation to support the needs of their country, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on that area and the chilling effect that UKEMA could have. No doubt it could theoretically have a chilling effect. The good news for you and colleagues who think that it is important for the Scottish Parliament to deliver what the people have voted for is that the Government is not willing to entertain a chilling effect even if it feels chilly at times. We are going to try to deliver what we have been elected to do. Let me give you some practical examples. Sometimes, I think that this issue can sound a little bit theoretical. What has that got to do with me? You have already mentioned one in terms of minimum unit pricing. I can give you a very current example of an issue that is subject to the difficulties of the situation that we are talking about this morning. That relates to single-use plastics. We are all trying our best to do better by the environment so that we can live in a more sustainable way. Our economy operates in a way that is less damaging and by our actions we are more considerate for the next generation who will inherit things. Somebody says that they may seem small, but they will make a difference in the wider changing approach to sustainability issues. The specific issue for us where that kicks in relates to single-use plastics. We all know that, because we have all used them in different circumstances, polystyrene drinks cups, polystyrene food containers, single-use plastics stirrers, plastic cutleries, straws, balloon sticks, plastic plates—all of those things that are used. They are just discarded and are causing environmental degradation. That is not sustainable. That is why we have been pursuing new rules to end their use. I should say that legislation was laid in the Scottish Parliament to do that. It is being decided, it is supposed to be happening. However, we may not be able to enforce the ban in Scotland as the UK Internal Market Act effectively exempts any items that are produced or imported via another part of the UK. We can make a democratic decision saying that we are elected to do those things and that we need to change the way that we live and be more environmentally sustainable. However, the legislation that we are discussing now drives a culture of horses through our ability to do so. Just because other UK nations are moving more slowly than Scotland to ban those products, I very much hope that they follow Scotland's lead in that. What is good for us is going to be good for people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but it is their democratic right in our neighbouring nations to work at their own speed. What is not right is them telling us that we cannot legislate in areas that we have competence for and using the act to stop that. We are working with the UK Government to use the common frameworks procedure to make sure that we can deliver what we have been seeking to deliver. However, it is a very concrete example of that, and there are others. Another one on the horizon relates to horticultural peat and the banning of the sale of peat for gardening products. That is because the impact of degrading the part of our environment is not something that we want to continue with. However, if one was to continue with the provisions of the internal market act, it could effectively mean that the controls in Scotland can be overwritten. That is unsustainable. We can move on. There are issues around food standards and the risk of health measures such as minimum unit pricing on alcohol and so on, and there are others that will be coming down the track. You asked about the chilling effect. We refuse to be artificially chilled if I can put it that way, but the risk exists. If there were a less committed Government in Scotland to protecting our ability to make our decisions, you could easily imagine that people would be sitting in private rooms going, oh, we better not proceed with that thing in our manifesto because of the internal market act. That has no way to govern a country. However, the minute any of that comes along, I would very much want to be working with you and the committee to shine light on this so that you can understand the impact that it is having. Of course, we have to test everything that we do against the risk of not having cover through the frameworks, which would mean that things would be open to legal challenge. That is a big problem. Of course, there is a solution to that, which is that, in the first instance, one could get rid of the act. My preferred option would be that we, Scotland, is a sovereign country that makes sovereign decisions about its own market, and I would prefer for us to be in the biggest single market in Europe. That would move us into a much better place with a system that we knew and was tried and tested when the UK was still part of the European Union. Thank you for that. I have other questions, but I will stop there. Thank you, Ms Minto. I am a little bit conscious of time, so if we could ask the same questions and answer, cabinet secretary, go forward, that would be very helpful. I invite our deputy convener to be followed by Alasdair Allan. Donald, I think that that is you, so we are not here. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the cabinet secretary and his officials. I am just picking up on that last point. Much of the evidence that the committee has heard has been of the hypothetical nature of what might happen in the future, and many potential challenges have been identified, but we are still very much in the realms of what could happen. I was keen to ask you about existing Scottish Government policy commitments, which are being impacted and interested in your example of single-use plastics. Have you had any communication from the UK Government that the market access principles are definitely going to cut across that policy commitment? Heads up to my officials on the call that I am about to pass the ball to them on the latest technical stage of where things have got to. I think that I shared with the committee in a previous evidence session that I had been involved in a very productive and very positive range of discussions with Chloe Smith, who was then a cabinet office minister, to try and get the framework to process out of the mud where it had managed to get stuck. The reason for that is that, unless we made progress on understanding what the frameworks were actually there to do, they were going to fail. We worked quite hard on that and, in good faith, managed to get things to a place where, through assurances that were given by the UK Government mirroring ones that they had previously given them to the Spatch Boxing House of Lords, that we could proceed with the frameworks, which, as you know, allow us in certain circumstances to protect the position of devolved decision making, having said that only with the say-so of UK Government ministers. We are in the process of that procedure at the present time, and that is why it is going to be helpful for my colleagues on the call to explain where we have got to, what we know is working as it should have, and how it may work—and we hope that it does—but why it may not. I suppose that, at the heart of that, what I would leave you with the thought about is that we may be really fortunate, in some instances, to find that we have a sympathetic minister—I do not know, in Defra, for example—or in another UK ministry. He goes, okay, we see why the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament are wanting to do this. I am the minister with the responsibility in the UK Government. I am going to be gracious enough to allow the people who are elected to do these things to get on and do them, but equally, we may find that there are others who are less empathetic, sympathetic or understanding. I think that, at the heart of that, should concern all of us as Democrats and elected parliamentarians, is that we have offloaded—well, we have not voluntarily been done to us—the power has been taken from you, somebody else is sitting in judgment, and that is currently where it is on the Secretary of State's desk. I will hand over to Donald Cameron and Ewan Page if they can jump in and give you the latest on where we are with that. Thanks very much, Cabinet Secretary. To answer the deputy convener's question and to follow on from the Cabinet Secretary's remarks, it is important to go back to the way in which the bill was first of all introduced and the very truncated time available for consultation and for scrutiny. I think that colleagues will remember or will recall the very truncated period. I think that some of the issues that we would normally have expected to have emerged as a result of that process are emerging now. There is an extent to which we are in a process of discovery about the impact of the market access principles in particular, but I will perhaps make a couple of further comments about what we are doing within the Scottish Government. First of all, we are tracking impacts across the range of the Scottish Government's responsibilities. As we develop policies and think about legislation, we are making an assessment about the likely impact of the act. The cabinet secretary mentioned a number of examples where we have a assessment of the will-get impact. However, to further points, first of all, there is agreement with the UK Government that, in the example that the cabinet secretary gave about single-use plastics, the market access principles would definitely bite on the Scottish Government legislation. For that reason, there is a discussion through the resources and waste common framework of the need for an exclusion to be granted by the relevant UK Secretary of State. There is no doubt that the market access principles would bite on the single-use plastics legislation, and then, more broadly, there is a recognition that, for all policy issues that are covered by a common framework, the market access principles are thought likely to bite. That is quite a broad-based set of impacts. I do not know if Mr Page wants to comment as well. No, that is him. Thank you for those answers. It is a question of what is happening in as a reality. We will have views on the act and the wider internal market. Even if market access principles are impacting on devolved policy decisions, how that plays out in practice and whether they can be resolved, which brings me on to my second question, which is about inter-governmental relations. About 10 days ago, the three-tier approach was published. Given that the Scottish Government signed up to that, do you see that as a viable method of working through any challenges or disputes that might arise either on the common framework or on the UK internal market act? We go into that very much with good intentions and hoping to make things work. Of course, it is set to replace existing arrangements, which are theoretically supposed to bring people together and theoretically allow them to work through difficulties. If I were to highlight the concern that I have, you can tinker with formal ways of working, but if, at the heart of it, one is not interested in making that work, it does not matter what set-up is in place. My example is quite a good one, where, because I had a UK Government interlocutor who I think was really interested in trying to make something work, we made it work, because it was self-evidently in the interests of the UK Government and the Scottish Government s interests to make progress. This is the frameworks, this is the process that I was describing before with Chloe Smith, and that delivered results. Unfortunately, as we know from previous arrangements, it did not take that very long from the establishment of the previous system, that Prime Ministers did not really turn up to the top-level meetings, that UK Government and Secretary of State would devolve responsibilities to their junior ministers to turn up in their stead. They were not in a position to make decisions on the department s responsibility that rested with the Secretary of State, who was too important or too unavailable to take part in things. I am just highlighting that we have a long experience, unfortunately, of the UK Government not thinking that this is a... I mean, I cannot come up with any other reason to explain why they would not turn up or why they would not be sending along the right people or there have been other meetings that colleagues have been turned up to and being told that they do not have speaking rights. All of that has been indicative of, unfortunately, of intergovernmental relations with the UK in recent months and years. It is not good, and it could be a lot better. If people want to operate on the basis of faith, it should do. We will make the best of the new arrangements that have been put into place, and hopefully that will mean that the needs, interests, concerns and expectations of the devolved administrations and legislatures are listened to and respected. I would just highlight again that there is a world of difference between saying that we have been consulted with and that, in contrast, we have worked through issues from inception to decision on a collegial basis. Those are two very different things. I hope that decision makers in Whitehall have said, yes, we need to do things better, here is a new way of doing it, let's take a run at it, I hope that they do, because, in many respects, we will find that there is no reason to find things difficult and to make progress, so long as there is respect for the devolution settlement. Can I ask finally in terms of intergovernmental relations? It strikes me that, although there are political differences at the top in political relationships, some of which work and some of which do not, on an official level—we are in the process of agreeing common frameworks—relations are quite good and effective. If you look at both the past and the new system, there are grounds for optimism that the more technical nature of a lot of this can be resolved. Do you agree with that? I hope so. Yes, it is true that officials—I have been involved all the way through on being updated on what is the latest meeting being like on a technical level and where have we got to. What one often hears is that people have not had political sign-off to go beyond certain stages. Even if there is a good will at a technical level, often one has not been able to proceed. That is observation 1. Observation 2. There are certain UK Government departments that have an inherently better understanding of the devolved nature of governance in the UK than others. It is also important to differentiate that there is not a single approach by the UK Civil Service and Whitehall in the Civil Service in Scotland on that. Let me concentrate on the positive, because I am a glass half full kind of person. We have a new structure. Let us try and make it work. Let us see how the concrete examples are proceeded with. Let us give things fair wind. That is not an issue that is being exaggerated by anybody, as you will know from the evidence that you have received across the board. That is not a concern just of Government or of the majority in the Scottish Parliament or of the voluntary sector or of representative bodies. Those concerns are collected across the piece. We are dealing with something that is quite serious, but I want to rest on my glass half full approach, which is that I want to try to make some of that stuff work. I have the benefit, if you want to call it that, having been in Westminster for quite a long time, that many of the interlocutors that I might have are people that I know. That also counts for something in trying to act in good faith and moving things forward. However, at some point, one is going to have to have sign-off for proposals for legislation that the Government and the Parliament has enacted, and UK Government ministers are either going to allow what has been democratically decided to go ahead or block it. On that positive note, I will hand back to the convener. I am going to invite Dr Allan to be followed by Mr Golden. Thank you, convener, and good morning, cabinet secretary. You are certainly a regular customer committee, and we look forward to UK ministers, hopefully being similarly cooperative in the future. My question was really about how the UK internal market act relates to other measures, and you touched on that in your introduction. I am interested in what the cumulative effect is on policy, particularly as it relates to all three devolved administrations. You mentioned unhappiness in that quarter. I know that there has been coverage about unhappiness on the part of the Welsh Government about the impact all this has on policy in areas such as education. I just want to give you a wee bit about what contact or what you have heard from other devolved administrations about what you feel is the cumulative effect of the UK internal market act plus other measures. That we are at an early stage of the law, the act biting, and at an early stage of the application of frameworks in certain areas. There are some known knowns, and you are right. Welsh colleagues have had much to say on proposals in relation to spending in certain parts of Wales. There is a feeling that decisions have been made to spend money in certain parts of the country where people have a preponderance to vote for the Conservative Party for politically motivated spending, which is no way to govern. Incidentally, in a week in which we have been hearing that there have been threats from within the UK Government to members of Parliament that spending projects would not go ahead if they did not vote for the Government in one way or another. Another example is not how one should govern anywhere, and that should give us all cause for concern. At the moment, the extent to which there is a guiding hand for UK Government spending in devolved areas is not yet obvious. Money has begun to be spent, and they have begun to spend in areas where they have next-in-no experience about devolved policy delivery in Scotland. The example that I gave on education is an insight to that. In some other areas, there is a recognition that there should be some sort of Scottish Government advisory input, but not co-decision. I think that there is a bit of me that thinks that they know that they have a presentational problem, but this sort of spreading largesse approach to how decisions are made and how things are spent is just no way to do things, but the cumulative effect of that is something that we are only going to be seeing as more projects are funded, as more spending areas are identified and the extent to which there is co-ordination. We in the devolved administrations speak with one another, and one thing that I would highlight to you, and you do not need me to point that out in any great detail, you will know that already, is that, while I am speaking to you as the cabinet secretary with responsibility for constitution and the sort of global sense of how we understand the application of constitutional instruments, that is going to impact directly on individual portfolios in Government and Scotland. As I mentioned before, this is something that was talked about in one evidence session by one of my cabinet secretary colleagues, and that is equally true for all of the other policy areas as well. It is not just about the theoretical global level. I know that you were asking whether there is a cumulative effect that we can point to at the moment. The cumulative approach so far is that it does not involve the Scottish Government, and it just goes ahead and does what it thinks it wants to do without any recourse to the people who are democratic elected to do it, i.e. you. I would be delighted to see an evidence session with the UK Government minister sitting where I am answering questions from you and your colleagues to hear how they explain the lack of democratic oversight. I look forward to tuning in to that evidence session. On the back of that, we have a situation where, as far as I understand it, the UK Government is presenting funds such as shared prosperity are levelling up as a new money. You mentioned the impact that it will have on individual portfolios. Can you say a bit more about the impact that it will have on, if you like, Barnett consequentials and the decision to expand an English shared prosperity fund across the UK? What are the implications of that for the block grant? I would definitely point to the cabinet secretary for finance and the economy, Kate Forbes, who would be able to give you a much better granular understanding of how that is reflected in the budgetary process in Scotland. We have had a problem for a while now of having a lack of clarity about consequentials. That has been the case in my area, for example, in culture. We have been asking for a long time now about £40 million worth of UK Government consequential funds for culture that has not been fully received. One has very opaque answers, and one is told that there may be clarification in a later stage in the budgetary process. That is not great in spending departments. Constitutional affairs and culture is by no means one of the biggest spending departments in the Scottish Government. There are others for whom that is problematic. Over the whole, I know that this is an issue for Kate Forbes as a cabinet secretary with the responsibility for budgetary issues. When one is very difficult to understand whether there are consequentials for certain kinds of funding and not for others, there is a suspicion that people are right to have that this is a mechanism to avoid consequential spending. Again, that drives a coach and horses through the devolution supplement, and we should all be concerned about it. It is just that it is not good governance, quite apart from anything else. We can talk about the democratic legitimacy of the process, which is thin-grew, but, in terms of good governance, if we are not co-ordinating, and by way, in the royal sense, the UK Government is not working in the normal custom and practice that it is expected to do and to the standards that it should be held to, then it does not make governance any easier. That is not good. At the end of the day, we are all here to do a job that is to deliver for the people. If intergovernment processes on a financial and all the other levels that we have been talking about are not operating properly, that has to have an impact on service delivery and how the country is run, and that is not a good thing. You have hinted, cabinet secretary, some of the UK Government's motivations behind all that. In a state that operates without a written constitution but operates on precedent and expediency, where in your view is that all going? Are we moving into a period where the UK Government is looking upon the Sule convention and the convention that powers of the Scottish Parliament are not offered without the Scottish Parliament's consent? Are we moving into a period where the UK Government is looking upon the Sule convention as constitutional history? Let's just start on the basis of the views of the Prime Minister, who thinks that devolution is, and to quote, a disaster. Everything that we have heard in relation to his views on the subject gives you the insight that he is not a supporter, he is not a fan. He would much prefer decisions to be made by him and his Government and put paraphrasing, putting devolved administrations in a box to be managed, and managed more effectively. I think that there is a real reason to believe that because they have overwritten things like the Sule convention and are happy to ignore devolved administrations in any host of ways. Having gone away with it, we are right to be concerned that that is continuing and is going to be amplified. I see absolutely no sign, notwithstanding new arrangements that the deputy convener Donald Cameron was raising. If that is the great white hope for better governance in the UK, then I am yet to be convinced. Let me say that. To remind members that the finance committee is leading on scrutiny of the shared prosperity fund, and I wouldn't want to be stepping on their toes and questioning going forward. Cabinet Secretary, the Scottish Government's stated position is to align with EU law. How do you monitor that cabinet secretaries and ministers are adhering to this? For example, the delay to the deposit return scheme could see divergence from the EU circular economy package? Well, Mr Golden, nice to see you and nice to see you with your clock in the wall. I was joking with you earlier about whether this was an attempt for me to speak longer or shorter. I am not sure which it is, but anyway, nice to see you with your clock in situ. I think that this is an area where, when I gave evidence in a previous evidence session, I think that it was the third that I was at where I was discussing, this is evolving a new area of governance and finding our ways of managing the issue. At that committee session, I said that I was very keen for us to work out a sustainable way going forward, to be able to share with you different issues that are proceeding through the pipeline of policy that the Government has to deal with, so that you can satisfy yourself because of your scrutiny requirements about how things are being dealt with. I think that that is something that my colleagues have been in touch with parliamentary officials to try and find a route forward. On specific issues at the moment, given the example that you have, I think that that is where ministerial colleagues who are dealing with their individual subject areas are best placed to say, here is how we have considered it, here are the options that we had, here is why we have elided on this way of doing it and whether it is in mirroring the content of European legislation or the spirit, here is how we have decided that it is the best way to go forward. It is almost like on different legislation, both the Westminster and Scotland where one sort of highlights if there are any issues that relate to human rights or previously when we were members of the European Union, how that relates to standing European Union policy. I think that that is going to be the best way for you and colleagues who have an interest in this to follow it, rather than me who is not and I am following the convener's pointer at just a moment ago in terms of the financial oversight of things, is where subject ministers are dealing with specific subject issues or legislative processes that they are the best people to give the updates in a sort of evidential sense, but secondary to that and not directly connected is the as yet still to be finally progressed method that we can between the constitution directorate and yourselves as a committee have a system in place that satisfies your scrutiny concerns. I do not know if you and Paige, one of my big brain colleagues who has been working in those areas, wants to jump in. To come back on Mr Golden's original point, the Scottish Government policy is to align with the EU law where it is in Scotland's interests. It is a discretionary power, as the cabinet secretary has indicated. It will be to look at policy decisions in the round before coming to a conclusion on what is the best routes. On the deposit return scheme, officials working on that policy have determined that the act does pose a threat to the ability to legislate in this area, but as Donald Cameron has indicated earlier, because we are in a position of post-hoc, post-implementation analysis of the policy consequences of the act, which is a consequence of the lack of adequate pre-legislative scrutiny, we need time to work through the full policy implications. I am conscious that the clock on the walls is ticking away, convener, so thank you, cabinet secretary, and thank you officials. I will move back to you, convener. I am going to move finally to Ms Boyack, and I could ask members of the committee if they have any more questions to put in our chat. I would like to ask a couple of questions off the cabinet secretary this morning. I think that the answers have been very interesting to colleagues' questions. In the light of the experiences with the UK Internal Market Act, I was wondering if the cabinet secretary could outline his priorities for inter-governmental work. There is clearly an issue across portfolios here, and you have talked about the transparency that we have asked about in previous discussions that we have had with yourself on the common frameworks. If you had a short term, not to fix everything, what would be the priorities of expecting a different approach, both in terms of the UK Government ministers, but also in terms of civil service relations on those issues, so that the problems that you have identified are able to be aired and acted upon? That is a very good question, Ms Boyack. The formal position is that there are structures now that should enable discussion to take place and that that must lead to adequate conclusions. As I have shared with you, I think that that is not enough because we are dealing with human relations and with different human priorities and in politics. You are talking about different administrations that take different views of things. I think that there is a fundamental cultural problem in the Whitehall Government departments, and I am meaning the political top-down in relation to relations with devolved administrations. You asked very specifically about me. What is it that I can do in relation to that? The truth is that I am quite limited in terms of what I can do. I know that if I am involved because of my particular area of responsibility, which is going to be quite technical, that was the reason why I was having those interchanges with Chloe Smith in the Cabinet Office, which deals with the constitution, and dealing with me as a constitution secretary for the Scottish Government. As opposed to colleagues—I do not know the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs or for education—who might have to jump on a call to discuss something. May, among other things, have the feeling that that feels very much like a decision that has already been taken? I am taking part in a meeting in which, because one is in it and one is able to feel what are the interchanges like, do they sound substantive or do they sound proforma, that one is simply going through the motions to satisfy a tick-box agenda of what we have consulted with Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland, which is a world away from saying that we need to join up our thinking at an early stage, identify if there are any impacts with the devolved administrations, if there are, things that need to be taken on board, take them on board seriously. I think that, in some respects, it depends on who you are dealing with. I think that there are some people who you can deal with very well and do not want to embarrass them by saying that they have been very collegial in working with us. It goes without saying that civil service will work to the brief that they have been given and to the general direction that they get from their Secretary of State. On what I can do beyond that, because there is a sort of co-ordinating role, I should say, inter-governmental relations falls within the orbit of the Deputy First Minister, is making sure that we have consistency from all Scottish Government ministers and civil servants at meetings. We spend so much time, do not we, on teams' calls and Zoom calls. Things seem a oneness of being in endless meetings about things. If we are trying to make this new system work, I think that we almost need to signpost the fact that there is a new system and that we have to make it work, then it is over to other people. I have no doubt that we have excellent… I think that this is the thing that grees me somewhat with it. For grown-ups, we should be able to work beyond fundamental political differences in the constitutional future of the UK and Scotland when talking about technical and policy areas. I managed to do that with Welsh Labour colleagues. I managed to do it with colleagues from Northern Ireland, regardless of what political side of the defence they are on the constitution, but I am just mystified why it is often so challenging when dealing with UK Government interlocutors, but then that is because they feel that they are in charge and that it is for us to do what they say. That is not the case when it is in areas of devolved responsibility and that is the area of difficulty that we find ourselves in here. The short answer to your question, Ms Boyack, is that what I can do is limited. One thing that I can do is make sure that we across Government in Scotland have an institutional memory across the departments and along all the interactions so that we know that we can quantify the nature of the interrelationship. That is something that I look forward to reviewing because I am regularly saying to colleagues that when I hear examples of meetings that colleagues cannot speak at, meetings where one just says noted, meetings where one is arriving to have substantive discussions about things and there are none, I am making sure that we have an institutional memory of that so that people know that that is not just some sort of let's blame big bag white hall and because we are pro Scottish independence we are bound to say that aren't we sort of analysis. It is not where it is at all. I mean on just a practical level it has not been working well. We have a new system in place, hopefully it will work well, but we require institutional memory and to remind colleagues in white hall that things need to be a lot better. Institutional memory, cross departmental working. You have already just said that John Swinney is Deputy First Minister. He is in charge of intergovernmental relations. Kate Forbes is in charge of telling us if there are implications for UK consequentials. It suggests that there is a need for that cross Scottish government working as well as that UK government working. If I gave the impression that there wasn't, that's not the case. Is that available to us so that we could see that analysis? I think that one of the things we would be keen to see is how it does kick across different governmental areas because I was going to ask you about support for Scottish producers in terms of the Northern Ireland protocol and the impact of the UK internal market. Having listened to your previous answer, I'm guessing that you're going to say that that's a different minister will respond. In terms of the institutional structures, are there recommendations in the House of Lords committee report that came out last week on the constitution that would be useful for our committee to look at? Because there's an issue about structure, there's an issue about individual ministers, which has always been an issue, and then there's an issue about the processes so that you, as a minister or your colleagues, have those structures, as we've talked about before, in terms of common frameworks, so that that can be monitored and we can get the parliamentary accountability to those issues as well. There's quite a lot in those questions, Ms Boyack. First, on the House of Lords report, notwithstanding their conclusion on the constitutional arrangements going forward, I think that there's a lot in it. It's not for me to say which bits you should or shouldn't be looking at. As is often the case with House of Lords committees, they're often very detailed and there are some very intelligent people involved in the process. I think that they're always worth going through even things that you might not agree with. On the co-ordination point, as I would hope you would expect, we do talk to one another across Government. We do, in general terms, about intergovernmental relations, but we also do specifically in different policy areas so that there have been deep-dive discussions around intergovernmental workings as they impact on different departments. That's where I was making the point that this is not, quote, simply for the constitution secretary or not simply for the deputy First Minister to take a view on or have an oversight on. It is really important that everybody across Government is seized and across Parliament is seized of learning the lessons. In terms of having some insight to analysis, I mean I don't have a report in front of me that lists up numbers of meetings and has some sort of traffic light system gauging the mood music at meetings. It's not in that sort of format, but I am keen that we are retaining a form of institutional memory so that when, for example, Government ministers go to next meetings, it is on the basis of remembering what happened at the previous meetings if things had not worked well, if things had not proceeded with. To that extent, one is not just turning up at yet another meeting without seeing as part of a continuing institutional interrelationship. I am very clear that we are going into these meetings and we are trying to find solutions to things. We are trying to work respectfully with colleagues from other parts of the UK. I will go back to my glass half full. We are right at the start of a new way of working. I hear briefings that the Prime Minister might deign to turn up even to meet with First Ministers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We will be interested to see whether it is secretaries of state who turn up for meetings with cabinet secretaries who are their opposite number or whether they choose to send junior ministers in their stead. I think that notes will be kept of that. I think that it will be very clear to see how, on a formal level, the relationship is being taken seriously, a Whitehall or not, and then you will hold us to account on the substance of what happens at these meetings and evidence sessions like that. That is quite important in terms of accountability. We have talked about that in terms of a red traffic light system for common frameworks. I think that what would be useful to us would be cross-governmental feedback, because there are issues—you have had questions from colleagues about the monitoring of the internal market act and its impact and devolved issues in relation to agriculture and environmental standards in recent ones. You have the impact and burn at consequentials, so there is something about that being properly processed. That would be something that the committee would be interested in, because we have a cross-government overview in the way that you do, and I think that we are keen to monitor that. I was smiling when you used your thin, cruel comment about the UK consequentials. That is a brilliant analogy of how our little Government colleagues sometimes feel in terms of the Scottish Government, so there is something about inter-governmental awareness that is at all levels of government. We are very keen to get some feedback on that as a cross-government analysis. I think that that would be useful to our committee's work. I am not seeing any other questions from committee members. Obviously, as a parliamentary committee, our role is to scrutinise the policies and making of the Scottish Government in our operation, but are we moving to a situation where executive decision making, both at the Scottish Government level and particularly at the UK Parliament level, means that that scrutiny and opportunity to scrutinise policy decisions could be lost going forward? I hope not, as a parliamentarian, as much as a Government minister. I have repeatedly said to this committee that, A, I am happy to come back as often as you want me to come back. I think that I qualify for a frequent flyer pass now. I am having passed five visits and I am happy to come back. I would hope that UK Government ministers would be happy to give evidence, as I have to House of Lords committees, in great detail at great length, because I think that scrutiny and shining a light on all of those things is essential to making sure that they work well. It keeps people like me on my toes, it keeps civil servants knowing that questions are likely to be asked. All of these are good things, and we shouldn't be scared of them. We might not always have the answers, but if we don't have them, we probably should get them. My position is that the strong committee system of the House of the Scottish Parliament was set up specifically to make governance in Scotland work in a better and different way. I am committed to making that work. I move forward in that colloquial sense. The suggestions that you make along the way and the questions that you ask along the way really have an impact with me and those who have advised me, and that is exactly the way that it should happen. Thank you Cabinet Secretary. I am not seeing any other questions. We will be seeing you again next week, I'm afraid. It will be a sixth time in front of us. Thank you once again for you and your officials, Mr Cameron, Mr Page, for the attendance this morning. Before I close, I spoke on behalf of the committee in the committee budget debate yesterday in the Parliament. In delivering my speech, I am committed to thank the members of the committee, my deputy convener, Donald Cameron and, indeed, our clerks for their support over the budget scrutiny process. I do so now, and that is on the record. On that note, I will close this meeting of the Parliament.