 Fy o ddweud i gyd y ddwylo'r Cynllun ym Mhwylwyr, i lefel Ffais i EU ac IE. Felly mae'r cymwydiant ar unrhyw yw i'w meddwl. Felly mae'r cymwydiant ar Eistedd, Adamson, MSP, ac Mark Ruskell MSP, fe wnaeth oedden nhw'n gyd ac yn ddwylo'r cymwydiant. Felly mae'r cymwydiant ar Eistedd a'u cymwydiant, Jim Fairlie, MSP i gyd, ac rwy'n gyd i gyd y clywethaf, ac mae'r cymwydiant i gyd, ac mae hynny yw rydyn ni i gyd yn gallu'r cymwydiant. review of the EU-UK trade and co-operation agreement, and this is the first session of our review and inquiry. We are taking evidence this morning in a round-table format from the Scottish advisory forum on Europe, which I think I'll call safe, if that's okay. Can I offer a very warm welcome on behalf of the committee to Irene Oldfather, chair of SAFE, Rachel Llanone, policy and public affairs officer from SCVO, Agnes Tormey, chair of the Scottish Women's Convention, Dr Adam Marks, international policy executive from the Law Society of Scotland, Alasdair Simn, director of University Scotland, Tom Salas, director of global partnerships, Scotch-Whiskie Association, Lloyd Austin, convener of the governance group from the Scottish Environment Link, Robert Smith, head of international policy at the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry. Can I start by inviting Irene to make a brief opening statement about the work of SAFE, the organisation itself and also the work in relation to the review of the TCA in particular, and your role within the UK domestic advisory group. Thank you so much, Deputy convener, for inviting us here today. It's a pleasure to be working with the committee on this, and it's always a pleasure for me to come back and see former colleagues, friends and Parliament, particularly in the Robert Burns room, which I had the privilege of nominating Robert Burns as the nominee for this room. Coming from Ayrshire, that's always a special thing. Thank you for that. I thought I would do three things with my opening remarks, and I've been asked to keep them very brief, so I'll try to do it all in about seven minutes. I thought I'd tell you a little bit about why we set SAFE up, and I know you've got an excellent briefing from Spice and from Ian there, but I'm just anecdotally to tell you a little bit about why we set SAFE up, about what we've been doing since we were set up, and then say a few words about the context in terms of the TCA review, if that's okay, convener. SAFE was really set up in response to the setting up of the UK DAG, and when the UK DAG was set up, it was on the basis of expressions of interest, and the first iteration of stakeholders included myself from SCVO, I think, Tom from the Scottish Whiskey Association, Scottish Federation of Fishermen, and so it's quite a limited group, and there was a second iteration that included SCDI, but when I thought about it, and I guess when we collectively thought about it, we thought, you know, this is a limited number of stakeholders to deal with an awful lot of issues in a very wide spectrum, and how could we put together some kind of inclusive forum that would give those who had applied to the DAG but weren't able to become stakeholders, or those who had an interest in the TCA, indeed communities and civil society, how could we find a role for them to input and to give a voice into the DAG work? So, there were a lot of bilateral discussions that took place, not least of all with them. For example, Anton Muscatelli, who had chaired the First Minister Standing Council in Europe, just to sense check that there was a gap, and there was a general feeling, I think, across academia, the third sector in business, that we were in kind of a fragmented place, and that I suppose post-Brexit and post-Covid, that we hadn't managed to get together in any kind of inclusive forum. So, safe was set up, and I guess our membership at the minute sits around somewhere between 35 and 40. It is very much a social partners approach that is open to trade unions, to the third sector, to business, actually to individuals, and we have that whole range of representation across those stakeholders. Our membership actually is also increasing, and we've recently recruited, enable, which, as members will know, very powerful organisation, speaking on behalf of people with disabilities in Scotland, health in mind and a number of other individuals with an interest, the trade union sector and so on, and the TCA. In terms of what we've done, we agreed our terms of reference, and that was a big first step. As I've said essentially, that was a sort of cross-sectoral social partners approach. We're independent, we're impartial, we're non-political, and we also prepared an information report for the DAG, and that went to the DAG in September, and that was really a collection of views of our stakeholders in relation to the TCA, and some early thinking around what we felt the DAG should be considering and looking at. We held an all nations conference in conjunction with one of the subgroups of the DAG, and I know that that's referred to in your SPICE briefing that we have five subgroups of the DAG. One of the subgroups is the group on nations and regions, and I convene that with sub-conveners in Wales, Northern Ireland and England. We held an all nations conference, as I say, in Edinburgh in November, and we have a conference report from that, and I'm happy to share that with the committee if it might be of interest. Clearly from that, there was a lot of complementarity around issues that we felt were important going forward, and we had the chair of the DAG at that, speaking about mutual areas of co-operation. We hosted a visit by the president of the EESC, Oliver Rupka, in November. We signed a memorandum of understanding with the EESC, highlighting particular areas of mutual interest around things such as young people, green energy and citizen wellbeing. We have put it into the work of the nations and regions sub-committee, and the report around that will go to the DAG probably towards the end of February and will form part of a DAG general report, including the work of all of the five sub-committees of the DAG. We have had input there. Our start lines, conversations, co-operation and partnership. We have very close co-operation. I thought that it was worthwhile mentioning this to you with the EU delegation to the UK and London. To that end, we have participated in a number of joint events. They held a youth engagement and youth mobility event in London last October. I, as chair of SAFE, chaired three sessions at that, where we had young people from all across the UK, including a strong cohort from Scotland, talking about what their ambitions are going forward around youth engagement and how they want to participate and be involved. We were also involved in a citizens rights conference at the EU delegation set up in December. I feel that there might be an opportunity here to have more of those events where Scotland can participate and Scottish stakeholders can be involved. So far, it has been youth mobility and citizens rights. I would quite like to see one myself, particularly on trade and SMEs, but that is up for discussion. Moving to the TCA itself, I suppose that what we bring to the table today is that wide range of participants and stakeholders, but also very much a citizen and community perspective to the work. As you will know, that frictionless trade is important to the economy. It is important in terms of growth and jobs, but it is also important to communities and to people that collectively we represent. At the end of the day, it is about supplying availability of medicines in our pharmacies. It is about the cost of food in our supermarkets. It is about the availability of fresh produce. It is about the safety of goods in our shops. If we look at inequalities in our communities and we look at some of the start figures around that, we find that in areas of inequality and highest deprivation, one in three food outlets is a fast food outlet, whereas in our best areas in Scotland, it is one in five. There are some stark statistics that support the importance of frictionless trade for consumers and communities themselves. Finally, what would a revised TCA look like? I think that this is quite a difficult question to answer. The answer that we might give today could be different from the answer that we would have a year from now. I had a read again at article 776 last night. If you look at the TCA review clause, it says that the parties shall jointly review the implementation of the supplementary agreements and any related matters there to five years after entry into force of the agreement. I mean, in a way, you could drive a coach and horses through that if you wanted to, although which review not revise, you know, what does this mean to matters beyond implementation. And I think it's very, very hard to predict that. There's no doubt in my mind that at this point in time, the European Commission would like to take a very narrow view, a very strict interpretation, because they certainly believe that what we have is a very good agreement. They are very happy with it. I don't get any strong sense of any desire to expand or revise, but that could change. That's about how the EU and the UK both look to the future. Obviously, this is a year of uncertainty, possible UK election, EU elections and US elections, and all of that could change the climate in which a revised TCA would take place. I think that we are trying to take the broadest possible look, aware that in a year things could be different, so what are the kind of key areas that we would want to flag it up outwith a very strict implementation of some of the articles of the TCA. We have a variety of views across the membership, and I think that that's a good thing. I'll stop at that, convener. Thank you very much. Thank you, Irene, for that. It's very helpful. On that last point, it's something that we are very cognisant of in the fact that there are elections, as you said, both in the EU and the UK, obviously. Further, there have been quite strong indications from the EU's perspective, as you said, that they want a very short and rather technical review. I think that it would be quite interesting to garner views across this roundtable on that in particular. We have two hours' schedule for this item, but I do want to ensure that everyone around the table can contribute. I encourage everyone to keep answers succinct and questions succinct as well, and please don't feel that you have to address every question. You also, from a technical point of view, don't have to press any buttons that will all be done for you by our broadcast colleagues. We've structured the session into three parts. There will obviously be crossover. The first part is how trade and goods and services between the EU and the UK is currently working. Then we'd like to cover where there are challenges and how could these be resolved. Finally, what opportunities are there for further developing the UK-EU relationship? I think that we're trying to spend around about half an hour to 35 minutes on each of those. Can I start with the first part, which is around trade in goods and services, a kind of temperature check, if you like? Can I ask Mr Salas this question? Could you tell us broadly what has been the SWA's experience of the TCA to date? If others want to come in in their respective fields, we'll go like that. Sure. Thank you and thank you very much for having me this morning. If you look at our export stats to EU, it's a relatively positive story. For 2022, our EU exports were up 8% compared to 2019, which I think is a better reference point given that's before the transition period. Of course, we had a big Covid impact on our export figures. That suggests that exports have held up well in the EU. We have seen faster growth in the Asia-Pacific region, but that's expected and APAC has overtaken the EU as our biggest region for exports. In terms of the TCA, we obviously wanted it to deliver as seamless trade as possible with the EU. We also had some other considerations about ensuring the regulatory framework was secure, which was relevant in terms of EU legislation coming on to the UK statute book, which is really important. Considerations about GI protection, Squishwisk is obviously a geographic indication, so that was important too. But in general, those things were delivered through the TCA. We also had a particular interest in terms of the rollover of EU free trade agreements to UK, and that was actually really important because in contrast to the EU, we would have been in line for some tariffs and some non-EU markets had not been done successfully. So we've avoided some considerable tariffs through those continued agreements, in particular with Korea being the most important, given the scale of our exports to that market and the fact that 20 per cent tariff would have come in had there not been a continuity agreement. So all of these things have been good for the sector. After the transition period ended, there were definitely some issues around customs clearance. We still do encounter some issues there, and we've bordered delays and we've request for different documentation, which we can get into in detail later in the session. We've just been trying to work through those as best we can, working with the embassy network in different EU markets, and with Scottish Government and STI support as well to help with those issues. With our industry, it's a very collaborative industry, so we've really been taking a pragmatic approach and just trying to crack on and deal with issues as they've come up, but some markets have been more problematic than others. I think particularly in southern Europe, Spain, Italy, Portugal, we've had more issues have come up compared to some other markets where it's been very straightforward. A bit of a mixed picture there. In general, we obviously want to make sure that goods can clear customs quickly and efficiently. It's good for lots of reasons, and we do still encounter some issues with that, but the number of issues that have been reported has come down as the months have gone by, which is a good sign. As I go back to the export statistics, they do show a positive picture, whereas I think that some other sectors may have had some more challenging issues. Does anyone else want to come in on their own sector and how their experience of the TCA has been to date? Please, just volunteer. I suppose a decent contrast to goods. The TCA, from our perspective, is very much a goods-focused agreement, but having said that it does have some useful parts for services, in particular there is a legal services chapter, which allows us to practice international law across the EU in individual member states, and that has been used. I think from the point of view of our members, there's two sides to what we're looking at. There's solicitors who are based in Europe, who live there and reside there, and then there is the fly-in, fly-out aspect of legal services, which is very useful because it not only generates for legal services, but it also tends to go alongside a lot of other works, so whether they're trading good or trading other services such as banking or arbitration, there will be some sort of legal aspect to that, contracts often, for instance. From our side, I think there have been challenges with how the TCA has worked, but I think it is now starting to settle in and people are starting to see the wood from the trees. I think there's still some confusion, perhaps, and lack of understanding about what is possible everywhere across each member state, and in particular in business mobility, because each member state has its own individual criteria for visas, et cetera. It has thrown up challenges of knowing what can and can't be done. There have been specific issues to do with Luxembourg, Greece, some bits and bobs in Belgium, for instance, as well, which have started to again come through. I'm happy to go into more detail of some of those later if people are interested, but I think again it's a process of moving through. I think fitting in to what Irene was saying about the TCA review process, a lot of these, we've started work on them before the review process. I have started my point from looking at the TCA that it will be a simple technical review for now, but having said that, a lot of the simple technical things we're already working on, so there's an element of what then is new in the review and we'll have to see where that develops as elections throw out. From our side, I think broadly speaking, it's issues to do with nationality requirements. Do you still get legal privilege? It's all well and good saying you can practice law, but if you don't have privilege then, in meaningful terms, you can't. That sort of detail, I think, as it shakes through. I'm happy to talk about any of those in more detail if members are interested. Robert. Good morning, everybody. By way of quick background, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry represents innovative pharmaceutical companies operating in the UK. Whilst our members are UK companies, we also represent multinationals that have a presence in the UK of manufacturing or of researching. The majority of exports from our sector go to the EU, and medicinal and pharmaceutical products are our third largest export. As I say, many of our companies will have a presence, many of not all will have a presence in the UK as well as the EU. We are intrinsically linked when we look at the pharmaceutical industry, it is on a regional basis. That is how companies structure themselves in order to continue to provide the medicines that people need. The TCA gives us a solid basis for trade with the EU. It includes specific medicines annex with commitments to co-operate, for example, in areas of regulation, which is really critical for our industry. We are highly regulated, and so many of the challenges that our companies face when they trade is not just with goods and customs. It is also about the regulatory environment that they are having to engage with in export markets. We also see really good provisions in the TCA when it comes to co-operation on areas of, for example, intellectual property, on health security, and the customs and rules of origin provisions in there do facilitate movement of goods. The EU and the UK are also both signatories to the WTO of Pharmaceutical Agreement, which allows for tariff-free movement of finished pharmaceutical medicines. That is not really a challenge for our companies. As we move on to the next section, we can talk about some areas of opportunity, certainly where we can further reduce trade frictions, it is worth recognising that both the UK and the EU throughout the entire process have recognised the importance of medicines as a priority good, particularly in Northern Ireland, which may be outside of the scope of today's conversation. However, it is really positive to see that there is an appreciation that we are a really complex industry and that we do need some special considerations. There is a working group under the TCA, specifically for medicinal products. That recognises the importance of our sector. We urge both sides to use that as a platform to engage. For us to continue to engage through the Domestic Advisory Group with the UK Government, identifying areas of further opportunity to reduce trade barriers and frictions in the goods that we trade. The Scottish Environment Link is obviously mostly concerned about environmental issues and environmental regulations that lead to action on climate change and biodiversity crisis, etc. From that perspective, they are all international issues, and they are issues that are best addressed cooperatively. To some extent, therefore, we are more concerned about the co-operation part of the trading co-operation agreement, but I will come back to that more later perhaps. In particular, one aspect of it is where it talks about the level playing field and fair competition and that impact on trade. In that regard, we are quite interested in whether there is divergence in terms of environmental regulation and whether that divergence is as a result of a race to the top between jurisdictions, which is what we would support, or a race to the bottom and trying to undercut each other's jurisdiction, which would be counterproductive from an environmental point of view. Perhaps I will come back to divergence in environmental issues a bit later, but I just wanted to flag up one particular trading part that has an importance in relation to action on climate change, and that is the electricity trading arrangements that are. The TCA set a deadline for what is called alternative day ahead trading arrangements to have been designed and implemented by April 2022. That was missed, and so we would very much like to see the UK and the EU agree that alternative trading arrangement as soon as possible. The TCA also committed both sides to give serious consideration to linking the UK and the EU to enable British and EU market participants access to that kind of larger liquid market, which, in our view, would enable more cost-effective delivery of the changes to the electricity market that is needed to meet net zero. If that was agreed, it would also remove the need for the carbon border adjustment mechanism, which is an issue in itself, but if you dealt with the trading arrangements for electricity, you would not need that at all. That is the one trading thing that has a very much knock-on impact into environmental issues, but if you allow me, I will come back to divergence more later. I just want to bring Jim in at this point. That might be a stupid question, because I am new to the subject today. What are the implications of missing the deadline of the electricity trading co-operation? That is up to the two parties—the EU and the UK—as to whether or not they take each other, whether they go to arbitration or anything like that. I do not know. It gets referred to by the joint committees and issues like that, but the best way of addressing it is to do the deal that the TCA suggested that it wanted to do. We have consulted with the Scottish Arms Convention, and we have consulted with women across Scotland. Some of the issues that are raised under the trade and goods services are like supply chains that can sometimes just break. We have medicines in short supply, for example. We believe that those are things that, with a bit of goodwill and hard work, we can fix for our families and communities in Scotland. However, big concerns are around jobs and food and those types of issues. The women in the NFU, the National Farmers Union, are telling us that they are really concerned about the animal welfare, and they are going back to previous topics about things like pesticides. We are seeing the EU withdrawing again, backing off from their commitment to not use those pesticides. Those are women who are concerned about that, but young women in particular are concerned about their opportunities for the future. There were projects such as Erasmus, the Erasmus Plus, which we promised. Young women have seen a future in Europe that they still believe can happen with the will of the Scottish Government that we can build bridges. I will give you some examples of the opportunities that we have seen. We run a number of conferences over the year on a range of topics. Most of them have a keynote speaker from the Scottish Government. We are on a STEM conference on how women are regarded and how we get more women into the actual jobs. We have made a link with Denmark. It came in online with women from Denmark. We are not funded to do that work. However, we can advocate for women in that situation, but we also introduce them so that organisations in Scotland—women's organisations—can move forward with organisations in Denmark around STEM subjects. Young women are looking at working with education organisations in Spain and Portugal to get young women into that, but that is not our role. That is why it is all about ad hoc. It would be really good if we could start to formalise some of these things at a different level. Violence against women is a big topic. This particular Scottish Government's record is very good on the work that we have done for violence against women. In France, they have come up with some fantastic initiatives, and we have been working with them. Although it is at a distance and informal, it is something that we are doing. Again, we can put organisations in touch with the organisations in France. We see that there are a lot of opportunities, and although we still have huge regrets about the decision to leave the EU, there are still some challenges that we believe we can overcome, and a lot of opportunities that Government and the organisations in civil society can become involved in and build new bridges. However, we have to get away from the ad hoc informal approaches, and I think that that is what women are telling us. I will give it more detail if you want, but I know that you do not like to make a talk for too long. I don't know if any of our guests would like to come in. Arun, you have just a couple of very brief comments. One is around the probably unintended consequences, but perhaps not. I am not really sure, but it is about the interoperability of customs administration charges for citizens. For example, if you send a small gift to someone anywhere in the EU, there is usually a customs charge for picking that gift up from the post office. We have heard from various stakeholders across Scotland and England about relationships being severed because of customs charges, because they can be up to 35 euros in what could be, for example, a birthday gift, a pair of tartan socks, a scarf or something like that. People do not know what is in the gift, but they are being asked 35 euros to pick the gift up. There is an interoperability question, too, because it is not consistent in every member state, so we are operating a lot of different systems here. It is a barrier in terms of citizens and part of what we want to do today is to bring citizens into this conversation. As you know, Scottish NFU could not be here today because it is their annual conference, and I am sure that, over the course of your deliberations, you will hear a lot about sanitary and phytosanitary measures, in particular seed potatoes, and I suppose to add alongside that. We have heard from some of the big companies, but for small SMEs who do not have a lot of manpower around understanding the complexity of customs and administration, there are issues around how we can simplify some of those procedures. It is something that the DAG has raised, and to be fair, there have been educational seminars held with small and medium-sized enterprises to allow them to ask questions and to get help and support, but I think that it is something that we need to keep a close eye on going forward. Certainly for us in Scotland, the seed potato issue where we have had seed potatoes that are disease-free for 50-plus years, unlike other countries, and in actual fact we are caught up in some of this around the regulations, so I think that there are a few issues that others, if they were here, might bring to the table, so I am just raising on their behalf. Maybe a bit of a political question, but, obviously, SAFE identified a number of areas where you would like to see progress, so either programmes to join or new provisions and regulations being made. In some cases, that has been more successful than others in terms of horizon, but then outstanding programmes that you still want to participate in. Do you think that where there has been movement, it has been because of the effective consultation with civic society, or is it pure politics? That is a very good question. Sitting where I am, I feel that civil society is leading the debate in a lot of those areas, to be honest. I have said that for quite some time now. Certainly on the horizon, we lobbied very hard on that. One of our members of SAFE is the chief scientist for Scotland Anna Dominiciek. She is an emiratious professor at Glasgow as well, and has led horizon programmes in the past when we were members of the European Union. One of the asks that we had around horizon was not just that we would participate as a third country, but it was really at the behest of Anna, who has led a lot of those programmes in the past, that we could actually lead on some of the programmes. There was quite a strong lobby around that and a successful one. Whether that was politics or civil society, I would like to think that civil society and some of our experts are something that would be very important to our universities in Scotland, and Alasdair might want to comment on that. What I hope is that that opens a door to other things, and I do not know who will come on and speak about it later, but certainly in the sessions that I led in London, and when I was with Scottish young people, there is a very strong desire to open the door in other areas around things like school exchanges. I mean, there are some bilateral programmes going on at the minute between the UK and France, but I think that it gets to a tipping point where, if you have enough bilateral, you should actually have a framework around this. I would really like to see that. That is part of what is safe. It is about conversations, co-operation and partnership. I suppose that I am veering into opportunities here, convener, but I do think that there are opportunities around that. I hope that Horizon and the work that civil society did around that programme is very successful in the sense that we can actually lead Horizon projects as well as just participate in them, which is very important for our innovators and scientists in Scotland. I hope that that opens the door to other possible opportunities. Erasmus is a very clear and pressing one, but it is not just about further and higher education. Recent discussions that we have had with business are keen to see young people. They do not want that to be just a bit further and higher education. They want to see young people in apprenticeships. They want to see young people in exchanges. There are opportunities around that. I feel that there is a strong desire. I mentioned that we have an MOU with the European Economic and Social Committee. They are very interested in doing that, and they have an opinion at this point in time on young people. It is going to the plenary in April and the committee at the beginning of April. I think that there is a strong desire on the European Union side of that to take this forward. I hope that that provides a template for almost misforbes for doing other things. I cannot speak from the political perspective, but from a civil society perspective we are keen to keep opening that door. That is heartening, because it means that there is the potential for change. Your participation matters. I do not know if anyone else wants to speak to it, but whether others have equal levels of optimism and hope that their participation too might result in change. I bring in Alasdair, who has not yet spoken, because we have touched on both the Rasmussen horizon. I really responded to Keith Forbes' point on what spots the combination between the pressure of civil society and politics is. That is interesting. I will reflect briefly on horizon and Erasmus in that context. I think that what was extremely powerful in eventually getting us over the line with the full horizon association was that there was a conjunction of voices from Scotland, the wider UK and the EU. It is all saying to the UK Government and to the European authorities, please, please, please, can we get this association agreement over a line? We had very strong support from the European University Association, the League of European Research Universities and so on. That collective voice from both sides of the UK and from civil society and academic leadership in Europe was very powerful. Eventually, you were subject to agreeing the cost of associating that made it possible. Actually, we were quite lucky that the Minister of State for Science at the time in the UK Government was also a huge enthusiast for horizon association and worked very hard to get that over the line. It does not always work, though. On Erasmus, again, there had been very strong voices from Scotland, the wider UK and from European civil society partners that it would be a great thing if we could keep the UK fully in Erasmus. It would just help to build the living bridge between Europe and the UK of people who have been abroad, who have understood each other's cultures and circumstances. I was really disappointed not to get that, but ultimately that was probably driven by price. Basically, when the UK Government looked at what it would cost to be in Erasmus+, it stepped back. Our hope would be that, as we renew our relationship with the EU, that associating to Erasmus+, or whatever its successor, is a high priority. I speak for the university sector, it has been great for student mobility, it has been great for staff mobility and collaboration, but it has got a wider value to civil society that we recognise. It is interesting that there is a mixture between civil society peer pressure from both sides of the UK and Europe politics and money. The summit that we had in November with the EU representative was a strong recognition from them that the relationship had improved, and so now is the time to open new conversations. Thanks to Irene, we have safe in Scotland, but we are actually ahead of other nations with that forum. We are starting to organise ourselves as a civil society, which is not happening in other nations, and I think that they would like to have the same. I think that it is important to know that one, because that type of co-operation and collaboration is what we need going forward. Robert, do you want to come in on this? Very briefly, on the horizon point, it is worth recognising as well that that was a commitment by both sides within the trade and co-operation agreement. What we saw was a lag between the commitment, once the deal was signed, and implementation of some of those things. That is a really critical lens to see some of this through. Sometimes the challenge isn't about renewing or getting to new agreements on areas of co-operation, it is also about implementing what has been agreed. When you talk about optimism, I think that what we can reflect is that Horizon Europe and the UK Association followed closely behind the Windsor framework for Northern Ireland and certainly for the pharmaceutical industry. What that provided was long-term certainty for our companies, so I think that we are seeing things moving in the right direction, again with the recognition that for some of these issues, as we get further away from the negotiation of the TCM look more into implementation, there are shared areas of opportunity, Horizon being one of the most obvious and high-profile. I would like to bring in some other colleagues, Keith. Thank you very much. It has been quite heartening, but also surprising to hear the extent to which people are fairly sanguine about these things and are working through solutions, which is good to know. We have some big players around the table, and the reason it is surprising is because it is quite discordant. This week, I was contacted by a small firm in Contire. A few businesses have been decimated because they cannot export the cooked fish products that they have. The difference between some of the big players who know how to get around Government and make sure that they prosecute their interests quite legitimately, and the vast majority of businesses in Scotland, which are small and medium enterprises, is quite a stark one. I do not know whether that is because I mentioned it when she spoke about SMEs. Is that an area that you have listened to, that you have some feedback on, because that seems to be quite a different experience? It is best that I think that most MSPs will have heard about it. You read it in the media, which does not necessarily mean that it is true, but you read that there are major issues in terms of small businesses and the way they have been impacted and how they can try and work their way through things like the TCA, which for small businesses can be a huge challenge. I absolutely agree with you, Keith. I think that one of the interesting pieces of research around this is from British Chambers of Commerce. Scottish Chambers of Commerce are members of safe, and I know that you will be hearing from them later on, but British Chambers of Commerce produced a report in December, which showed that about half of businesses had felt that they did not feel things had improved in the last year and that, for SMEs, the complexity around this was quite a challenge. That is why I mentioned it. I was looking through my notes for that report. I would draw your attention to it, convener, because there was a very important survey done, and it showed that almost two thirds of exporters to the EU say that trade with the EU is more difficult than it was a year ago. That was done in July 2023, so it related to 2022-23. Perhaps there has been more confidence since July 2023, but this is certainly a very good report. It is worth the committee spending some time reviewing, but it has all the statistics that you are thinking of, that we hear about, particularly from small businesses that do not have the sort of powerful research departments and opportunities to engage with them—DG trade and so on—and it is important that they have a voice in this, too. I agree from my perspective that we have 93 member companies that include a lot of small distillers in our membership. It is fair to say that when challenges have come up around border processes or request for certification, SMEs might not have the in-house capacity to run out certificates or to get them externally produced. The cost of an external certificate can run in hundreds of pounds, so that is a problem. There have definitely been some issues around sending samples as well, which is particularly important for small businesses, particularly new distillers and new entrants to the industry when they are trying to get their product out there to potential customers. Cross-border e-commerce is another one that refers to the point that Irene made earlier about small packages. Anything needing to be sent in a small quantity can run into issues. Over time, I think that the number of issues has gone down, but it is still a challenge. We have seen a lot of our companies adjusting their distribution, their route to market to try and get around those challenges. However, I do agree that when you are talking about border processes and problems at the border, it is SMEs that particularly can struggle. Does anyone else want to comment on this particular issue that Keith raised before I go to Alexander? Thank you very much for your frankness and non-nysness so far this morning. You have all talked about the frustrations that your sectors, your industry and your organisations have suffered in this process. However, the optimism that is there is also quite encouraging to see, because your willingness to adapt, to co-operate and to understand will be the success of all of that. However, it is what asks that you need now that we are so far down the road. Things may be more optimistic and improving, but what do we need next to happen to ensure that your industries, sectors and organisations have the capability of moving forward in the uncertainties that you have already identified? As I said, each and every one of you has the knowledge, the wealth, the experience, the understanding of what needs to be acquired. However, is there an issue from politics that needs to deal with next? Is there a next stage that you need to see us and organisations do to impart that and to give you that optimism and the prospect of going forward? I am happy to start. There are opportunities that our industry has identified. We recognise that the terms of the TCA was providing a foundation to provide opportunities to build. One of the key ones is an operational ask, which we hope will move forward in the next couple of months. It is the medicinal products working group that I mentioned. Frankly, having a platform for both sides to exchange information is really valuable. There are about three specific working groups for big sectors, the other is automotive and organic chemicals. That recognises the importance of those sectors to both sides. That has yet to formally meet the medicinal products working group. We think that, in moving in the right direction, we should be meeting in the next couple of months, but we would urge the UK Government and the Scottish Government, if they can support, to use that platform to properly have conversations about areas of opportunity and to engage with the sectors and the businesses that are trading and know what the sort of challenges are on the ground. That is number one in terms of operational. The second for us is, I mentioned regulation being a really important part for our sector. We have a medicinal products annex in the TCA, which does give us lots of areas of cooperation and recognition. One of the big ones that we do not have is recognition of batch testing of medicines. Very briefly, to explain, when a batch of medicines is produced and comes off the production line, you have to test it to make sure that it is safe and effective. Those certificates are then used to give confidence when you are exporting it to other countries. Often what you will do is batch test the product when it is manufactured, say, in the UK. When you export it to another country, it will be tested again. What we have seen is that in economies where they have really strong, highly developed regulatory regimes, there are such things as mutual recognition agreements, which is where both sides recognise that the tests that one does will not have to be done again, that they trust that the other side is good enough. The UK has these sorts of agreements with the US, with Switzerland, with Australia. We do not have that with the EU, so you are in a situation where, if you are manufacturing a product in the UK and you batch test it, you move it across the border. It has to be batch tested again before it can be placed on the market. That adds friction into the system, it adds costs to businesses, it adds costs to regulators, because regulators have to, in some cases, verify or keep an eye on some of this activity. There are some really practical things where, even outside of the TCA, these sorts of agreements can be struck. Both the UK and the EU recognise, as I have talked about a lot, the importance of medicines and supply. We hope that through things like this, but in a municipal products working group, both sides can sit down and have a frank and technical conversation about what they need to get to in order to agree agreements such as this. In terms of one big, broad message, what do we need? I think that the overall thing I try to remember is that trade deals do not end when they are signed. Certainly, from the point of view of services, implementation is always going to be where the actual value is gained. I think that there is always the excitement of chasing the next deal rather than just dealing with what we have already signed and whether this is true for whether it is the deals we have got with Australia and New Zealand as much as the TCA. I think that there is some good work being done on that. In terms of implementation of the TCA, we have had some very good co-operative work between the UK Government, the Scottish Government, ourselves, the other bars and law societies around the UK on issues that we have faced in Luxembourg, which has now moved to the extent that the Luxembourg Parliament has passed a bill to fix some of the issues surrounding nationality requirements of solicitors in Luxembourg, which has been very helpful. We are still moving towards positive outcomes perhaps in Greece and some of the issues that we have had are more minor but they are in Belgium. In terms of specific asks for the TCA and looking forwards in that, there are two big ones that fit into the review process, which would be quite good. Article 145 has some specific obligations on transparency. In fact, it is just understanding what people can do, what are the visa requirements, how long can you go for, how much does it cost, what documentations do you need, simple things. Can it be filed electronically? Do you need to go to a consulate? Having a central repository of that information would be very useful on both sides. I think that there is a willingness to tackle that. Even before we get to a formal review, there have been moves on both the UK side and the commission side to start trying to pull that information. Inevitably, again, recognising that the deal has been relatively recently signed and big picture stuff, that will take some time to shake through, but I think that it is a constructive process. The other one I would ask specifically is under article 126, which is about short-term business visitors. You can actually on that occupation list add legal services, which would obviously be useful for legal services in general. I think that it would also be useful for other things, because it means that you can take your lawyer with you effectively, as opposed to having to move from place to place and worry about it. Again, that sort of argument that solicitors and legal services are the lubricant to a lot of other business, it just makes life easier if you can fly across borders and do that. Thank you. I want to bring in Lloyd and then Alasdair. Thank you. My answer to your question is going to be, I would quite like an answer to the question that Jim Fairlie asked me earlier. What does civil society do if? I want to explain why I would like to know the answer to that question. In the TTA in chapter 7, which is the environment and climate chapter, it talks about non-regression and maintaining levels of protection for the environment, etc. What we have is that we are beginning to see divergence between the EU and the UK. The Institute for European Environment Policy published a very good report just this month on divergence in environmental regulation, at particularly divergence in ambition. There are a number of examples in there, and I would certainly recommend the committee look at that for issues from the environment point of view. One of the key areas relates to chemicals and whether or not the UK reach, which is really a GB reach because of Northern Ireland being under the protocol type arrangements, the number of chemicals that the EU has added to watch lists, ones that need to be assessed for risk, etc. Since we left, the EU has been quite significant whereas the UK has added nothing. There is increasing divergence. What that does do is, from a trade point of view, it potentially leads to unfair competition. From an environmental point of view, which is where I am coming from, it obviously leads to risk to the environment and so on. It leads to the race to the bottom rather than a race to the top, which is what we would like to see. The question really, in terms of what happens next, is what can one do about it, as Jim Fairlie asked earlier, from a civil society point of view. We are very pleased that there are environmental NGOs on both the UK DAG and the EU DAG. The EU DAG is the representative on the EU one and the Green Alliance is the representative on the UK one. That is very welcome. It is early days. We can raise issues there, but the question that we do not really understand is what happens to the issue that we raised. What is the responsibility on the UK and the EU to do anything about the issues that civil society representatives raise? What opportunities are there for civil society to say to the UK or the EU that you are not sticking to what you promised in the TCA? If you promised, as Chapter 7 does, to maintain levels of environment protection and one of the parties does not, what can civil society do about it? Equally, the issue that we raised earlier about electricity trading, there was a deadline for agreement and not was reached. What can we do about it? Looking at those implementation issues, as Adam said earlier, is a big one for going forward and for the review process. In response to Alexander Stewart's questions about opportunities for deepening the relationship as we go forward, not all of them are specific around the re-negotiations with TCA. Some of them also require the evolution of UK policy. I would put mobility of talent at the top and make sure that we have good arrangements for people to be able to move across borders, particularly university staff, researchers, teachers and students. I think that that is just the lifeblood of academia as people being able to collaborate, being able to move freely, exchange ideas. On the EU side, there is more freedom for people to spend more time in the EU when they are doing these collaborative projects or when they are studying a visa regime that makes that as easy as possible for the mobility of talent for collaboration with European partners. Obviously, in the other direction, making it as easy as possible for the EU talent to come here, making sure that we are not with things such as health surcharge visa costs and restrictions on entitlement to bring dependents. We are already setting up barriers that, for instance, making it quite difficult for someone as an early career researcher, a postdoctoral researcher, to choose to come to the UK. Erasmus, we have talked about already, I think that it would be great if we could find a way back into that as we renegotiate the relationship with our European partners. I think that recognition of qualifications, obviously, both sides have touched on this already. There are some things in place that are helpful, but just getting to a stage where there is a general co-recognition of qualifications between the EU and the UK would be fantastic, so that, for instance, if you qualify as an engineer or as an architect at a Scottish university, you are recognised as an engineer or an architect throughout the EU. Do you want to bring in Neil and then Jim on this particular point? I think that it is very regrettable that we are no longer part of the Erasmus Plus programme. You have talked about the benefits this morning, and others have asked from that, and it is well made. You said earlier that the UK Government was looking at the cost that was prohibitive. How much are the costs involved in that in terms of weighing up the costs and benefits of the policies? I apologise, I might be just jumping the gun slightly on this, but if there is not a prospect of joining Erasmus Plus in full, is there anything that would stop short of that that we could potentially do that would improve the situation right now for universities and students, both in Scotland, the UK and the EU? I do not know. I do not think that there is a publicly available figure for what it would have cost for us to buy into Erasmus Plus as a UK, but it was hundreds of millions if not billions. It was a large amount of money that a UK Government felt itself to be facing a degree of financial crisis and did not feel that it could invest at that stage. One would hope that, as part of renegotiating at TCA, we are looking towards an affordable mechanism for us to be in Erasmus Plus, or whatever successes there are, as fully as possible would be really good. Obviously, we have, at both the UK and Scottish level, tried to introduce mitigations. The Turing scheme is not perfect. There is a lot of administrative difficulties. It only supports mobility one way, but, nonetheless, across Scotland's universities and colleges and anyone else who can participate in it in the last year's approach of data, over 3,500 people were using it. That is not uncomfortable to the numbers of students who were going out from Scotland under Erasmus, but it is clunky. The administration is not great, and it does not open as many opportunities as Erasmus Plus did. We now have the pilot of a Scottish-European exchange programme from the Scottish Government. That was inspired by seeing what was being done on Wales under a TIE scheme to try and promote two-way student mobility in particular, use mobility more generally. At the moment, that is really so small. It is hard to reach a judgment. I think that it is very much proof of concept. The Scottish Government will need to evaluate that and decide whether it is worth developing further, where there is good value for money, in relation to other things that, frankly, having faced funding cuts that universities are prioritising. There are mitigations being developed, but we would all, in an ideal world, want to be as fully participating in Erasmus Plus and its successors as possible. I am glad that you mentioned the new pilot programme and the TIE scheme. I think that the Royal Society of Edinburgh has said that the Scottish Government scheme is on a much smaller scale than the TIE scheme. James, do you want to come up with something? That is just a very brief point. You were talking about the barriers for European citizens to come here and outline some of them. Is there the same level of or high bar of participation for UK folk going into Europe, if there is the other way about? I think that it is a bit different. I think that the problem in Europe, for instance, is the limit on the number of days that you can stay there visa-free. I just think that I have just become more frictionful. I do not think that it is really a question of cost. I think that we have put quite a lot of cost barriers in the way of mobility of talent. For the EU, it is more that we now have a much more restricted entitlement to spend time in EU countries on a visa-free basis. It is just another bit of friction in the mobility of talent. I am picking up a couple of Mr Stewart's points. I suppose that following on from Llywodrae Marks, there is something about governance. The specialist committees are part of the engine room of how we look at this. I think that it is really important that audit, monitor and review role. Some of this, it feels to me, could be dealt with in the specialist committees. I get the sense that they are not working as well as they could be and that it is very variable. I think that one committee did not meet last year. One committee met twice and the others met on an ad-hoc basis. For me, there should be a kind of stricter governance around this. I think that all of us around the table are on the ambulance board and we have to get very strict risk registers and all of us here have agendas and the agendas are published so many days in advance, the minutes follow through the meeting, they are published online, they are transparent. I would like to see some consistency brought to the specialist committees because to go back to the article 776 and how you interpret that, not everything has to be a revision of the TCA. Some of the things that we are talking about just now could be by mutual agreement. The specialist committees could play a role in that, but it seems to me that there is not a coherent governance around it. That is just as an outsider to this. I feel that some kind of more rigorous application of a governance structure around what is the engine room of this sitting alongside the DAG and the PPA could give more rigor to how we resolve some of the issues without necessarily having to revise the TCA. Of course, it takes two to tango that it is about the UK and the EU wanting to resolve some of those issues. We did speak about seed potatoes. The UK Government has refused to dynamically align to the EU SPS and the EU is unwilling to grant a delegation. Everybody is a bit at loggerheads. If we had more conflict resolution opportunities around the governance structures, perhaps we could reach resolution on some of those issues. That is quite a subjective perspective, I have to say, convener, but it just seems to me looking in on this that there could be more. I think that Tom is agreeing there. He might have further insight. I think that that is a good point. I think that all of us have collectively raised a lot of issues now through the DAG process. Some of those have found their way on to specialised committee agendas. I think that now we are at the time where it is good for there to be rigorous follow-up and just check to what extent these issues are really being addressed. I think for us this year is an opportunity for us to get clarity, particularly regarding some of the border issues that I have referred to before. Can we get consistent application in certain markets? It is much easier for companies if they know what the requirements are, even if there is a bit of a burden in doing so, then the product actually landing at a port in the EU and then being held there while people run around trying to find a document that that is being asked for, which we were not expecting. As I said, those issues have gone down, but they have not completely gone away. That is where I think there is an opportunity to use the specialised committees to raise these issues and follow up with the relevant markets and see if we could get some improvements. I would fully support that. There are obviously other means as well. You have got the WTO committees, which provide an opportunity for the Government to raise issues regarding the EU policy. I think that there is an interesting point about future EU policy. There are way well raising concerns about the situation at the moment, but there is also a lot of really important stuff coming down the line in Brussels as well. How is the Government going to raise concerns about those as well? I really support the point around the specialised committees, and maybe there should also be other dialogues on a regulator-to-regulator basis. I think you referred to a few working groups that exist for some sectors, but not for others. Maybe there is more to do in that area as well. The convener, Claire Adamson, and I both are observer members on the PPA, which, as you will know, meets twice a year in the UK and the EU. The role of the specialised committees is very much on the agenda there and the issues about how they are operating are very live. I was wanting to come in on the comments made by Neil Bibby about the Erasmus. There is no doubt from the work that we have done that young people in Scotland want to be part of developing what a future Scotland looks like, what kind of Scotland they want to live in. It is an added benefit for them to be involved in those types of projects. It helps them to develop the skills that they need for the future, how to work collaboratively, how to learn other languages and how to interact. They bring the skills back to our country and develop them there. However, it is not all just about business, and I think that sometimes we cannot arrive off that particular ball. Scotland, the revival in Scottish music and the culture that we are sending out to the world, but embracing other nations, culture and music and arts has to play a fundamental part in any civilised society, so that is where the benefits of those organisations and programmes can help us. I would argue that the benefit would outweigh the cost anyway for us to have a nice, better future Scotland. One of the remits of this committee is culture in our title. It is something that we cover as a committee, particularly Scottish culture in Europe, but also European culture coming to Scotland, so it is very pertinent. I agree with that. I did an exchange course as a student who was out with the EU, but you gained a huge amount from it. Just talking about that and some of the points that Mr Salas has made about the WTO being a way to influence the EU indirectly, and he read the comments about Korea and the Asian Pacific region. The other side of the ball, of course, is the absence of trade agreements with countries around the world from the UK now, and one or two that have been signed, which people say New Zealand and so on, are pretty disastrous. What has been the impact of the absence of those, because previously it would have been under the EU, the absence of those trade agreements? Is there any impact from that on exports trade, otherwise? From my perspective, from the Scottish Risk Industries perspective, a lot of important continuity agreements were signed, and there was a degree of involvement of the UK and EU with third countries to make sure that that happened. That was very welcome for us, because that prevented tariffs from coming in where they weren't there because of the EU free trade agreements. Lots of examples in the Americas region. I mentioned South Africa earlier, South Africa, so we really welcome that. In terms of the UK's independent trade policy agenda, it's hugely important for us. We're a big export industry, as you would expect. We're eagerly awaiting something on India. We understand that negotiations are at very advanced stages, so we've got our fingers crossed on that one as the absolute priority. 150% import tariff, obviously impacting our Scottish whisky going into the Indian market, and we only have about a 2% share of the total Indian market. The opportunity there is huge, as well as the rest of the FTA agenda, so we fully support the efforts to get trade agreements over the line. We appreciate that it is not an easy exercise, but we certainly do all we can to give the Government our support and technical input on the negotiations. Can I bring in Rachel, please? It was just to go back to the first question on the ask, and I think that the key is around clarity and transparency and understanding what the implication is on all of us. We all have a job, as a job to do with our members informing them of what's happening, but we need that information, and at the moment it's just very difficult to understand the impact that it could have on people, because we're all consumers, producers, we're all citizens, and we all have the rights to have that information. It leads to this bigger question. If you look at the EU settlement scheme, for example, it wasn't perfect. You had some information. I mean, I had to do it as a personal experience. I was one of the lucky one who had no issues with it, but you still have people today who needed support, who are being found, being in a very difficult situation because they didn't have the application done, and you need support from organisations, usually from the voluntary sector, such as Citizen Rights Project. Those organisations need to be funded to do that job, and there's a broader question here around the sustainability of the voluntary sector in providing support when needed, because that comes on top of everything else, like cost of living, fundraising issues and volunteer shortages. So I think that it's part of a bigger picture if we need to keep that in mind as well. I was just going to say, I suppose, following on from Rachel's points there too, that the Nations and Regions conference that we had when we were looking at funding, I mean the shared prosperity fund, I think it would be fair to say hasn't fulfilled expectations, and we're about to finalise our report on the Nations and Regions sub-committee, and I'm aware that, for example, in relation to Wales, there's a kind of touring plus, plus, plus, you might say, and we're going to be using that as a case study, and I'm aware that using the word touring, I think, is a little bit off-putting, because this is much more advanced than touring, and I do hope that there's scope for something, whether it's between a touring plus, plus, plus, and anorazmus plus or something like that, and I think we have to also look at what economists now will consider in terms of the social return on investment. So I think it's not just about the spend, but it's about the social return that you get for that, and I mean I know in the third sector we've analysed some of our work in relation to that kind of approach around social return and investment. It's very surprising, just the added value that culture, education and the third sector can bring if you look at it through that slightly different lens. So I wanted to mention that, and the case study that we'll be flagging up around touring plus, plus, or I think it's called TAI in the Welsh case study, and also to flag up the shared prosperity funders, I think requiring a bit of adjustment. It hasn't met the expectations, and I know that, for example, in Wales, a third sector organisations have literally closed because of the changes to funding, and that's not necessarily a good thing. Robert? Mr Brown's question is about trade, and I think similar to Tom outlining, what we see is that the UK rolled over lots of existing agreements that we had when we were a member of the EU, and those largely kept the terms of trade with those partners the same. What the UK is now doing is starting proper negotiations with a view to have a new deal with some of those partners. Once that's rung to mind in South Korea, Switzerland, certainly for our sector, we see that there is opportunity for the UK to look at the terms of the deals that maybe were signed 10, 15 years ago to update it and bring it into line with best practice for the important sectors of the economy, particularly when we look at regulatory cooperation, when we look at supporting innovation. When it comes to the WTO as well, it's worth recognising that the UK now has an independent seat, and that provides us with the opportunity to use things like trade policy reviews, to use our voice to uphold the WTO system, but also to use the committees that we've talked about to go further in some of these agreements and really push for areas that are good for the UK and the economy as we are constituted. In short, there is continuity for the most part when it comes to trade, and there are opportunities now that we're looking again at those deals, to see how we can go further than perhaps the EU did when we were a member of the EU. If that's the case, if there are these opportunities which could be exploited, we're now, I don't know how many years since we had Brexit, those opportunities have not been realised because the big ones, we've not done a deal with the US, with Canada, are much less optimistic about India than Mr Salas is, to be honest. I think that the moderates made it fairly clear that we're not going to do that anytime soon, so those opportunities have been missed the longer and longer this goes on. If the opportunities are there, we're missing out on them because it's not happening, and we're told that these would happen very quickly, I suppose that's my concern. On the point about continuity, I think is the most important part, which is that what we haven't seen is, because of the rollovers of agreements, that hasn't necessarily been a direct and immediate change in the trading relationships that we had. When I started, I said that we were going to try and have three separate themes, and I think that we've overlapped quite a lot on the first and the second ones. The second one was about challenges and how these could be resolved, and we've discussed a wide variety of different challenges and potential solutions, so just to draw that part to a close, does anyone else have anything that they'd like to add around the current challenges and potential solutions? Yes, Adam. Just very briefly referring to what Irene said earlier on governance, I think in the broader structures of the governance of all of the trade agreements that we have, we are slowly moving towards a position where we have a bit more clarity around how all of that works, the UK Government is just another reform of the various bodies that guide into that, and I think that that's useful, but knowing precisely who is doing what, particularly in our case specifically, if you're dealing with the TCA, parts of it are handled by DBT, parts of it by MOJ, parts of it by the FCDO and parts of it by the Scottish Government, and I think we are slowly now starting to get a feeling for what goes where, but that process will take time. I think reform of that as we move forward is useful. The other, and I'll just comment purely from our point of view, is that both ourselves and the faculty of advocates applied to join the domestic advisory groups and were turned down, which has produced the slightly curious state of affairs that the domestic advisory groups will meet in the Scottish jurisdiction without any representative of the Scottish legal sector. We offered to do a joint seat on behalf of it and share it between ourselves, which we've done in a number of other cases where Scotland only gets one seat on a body, so I just think going forward that's another thing, which is a dissatisfying outcome that would be good to see changed as the DAGs evolve and time goes on. To follow up on a few points on Mr Brown's point about trade agreements, I had the invidious position as opposed to being on the other side of the table because I was on the EU Canada DAG, so I was sitting with EU colleagues there and it takes a long time for these things to deliver results, even where you do have the agreement. Again, this is where SMEs are particularly disadvantaged in some of this. I think that the opportunities tend to be there for the bigger companies, so there's some work we have to do to simplify and to bring in SMEs. A couple of other points. I think that we kind of got off to a slow start in terms of the architecture around the TCA. We were a little bit behind the EU domestic advisory group, but, as Adam Brown says, we're gaining ground. We've got visibility. We're beginning to know and understand where the connection points are and who we need to connect into. In regard to Adam Brown's particular point about the Lost Society of Scotland, we are very sympathetic to that. Indeed, there's been a recommendation from the Executive Council of the Domestic Advisory Group, which is the two vice chairs myself and Steve Turner and the chair, Sean Maguire, to the UK Government that this is a bit of a missed opportunity and that we would like to see it rectified at the earliest possible time. I hope that that's something that we can see in the not too distant future. I gather that there's a view that the DAG is already very large, which it is. The EU DAG has 30 members and that's 10, 10, 10, 10 from the business sector, 10 from the trade union professional association sector and 10 from the NGO third sector. It's a quite a concise group of 30. I think that in the UK DAG we're probably running at the minute about 60. That is one of the considerations that I know around this, that if you open it up, we do have the capacity to go beyond 60, but I certainly think that it has been a recommendation from the Executive Council that the Lost Society is a particularly special case and that there should be means to involve them in the DAG. Of course, it's one of the reasons that we set up the subcommittees and I think that it is important and that's part of the visibility and the making progress that I think Adam talks about, that we have five subcommittees and they are not restricted to membership of the DAG. Anyone with an interest can join one of the five subcommittees and our nations and regions has quite wide membership out with the DAG itself, so hopefully that's an opportunity going forward. We're certainly aware of the issue around the representation. I should also add that I'm a member of the Faculty of Advocates, so I'm particularly aware of that and I'm sure it's an issue that we'll return to. Can I move to our third chapter, which was around opportunities for further developing the EU-UK relationship? It's really a sort of looking to the future. Perhaps if I could ask Irene, because I think that your submission touches on the importance of continuous engagement and adaptability, I think it's really a significant point, but what's your sense of how the relationship may evolve in the next few years? We've spoken about the elections and the review etc, but where are the opportunities, do you think? I think at civil society level there are huge opportunities and I think there's a willingness to engage. As I mentioned at the beginning, convener, we signed a memorandum of understanding with the European Economic and Social Committee, which I suppose is our equivalent because it is also made up of social partners in terms of business trade unions and third sector stroke academics, so it sort of mirrors our membership as well. I think that there are huge opportunities through that and we are the first sub-state to actually sign an MOU like that and we don't want to try to do too much too quickly, so our first steps are around youth engagement and youth mobility and, as I said, there's currently an opinion going through the EESC at the minute, which Scotland and Scottish young people have had an opportunity to input to through our conference in November. Myself and John Curtis have been invited to the external affairs committee meeting in April to further those discussions and other areas that we're interested in are around green energy and citizens wellbeing. It's an iterative and incremental process, I suppose, but for so long I kind of felt that post the pandemic we were all kind of sitting in a train station waiting room and all the trains were passing us by because we were quite fragmented in the sector around civil society. I feel like we've now got back on the train. I think there's a very positive response from, as I said, the EESC, which is our equivalent, but also from the EU delegation. I think that they are very keen to work with us and I believe that there's a trip plan to Scotland in April and there'll be a meeting with SAFE and we'll look to develop and expand that co-operation in areas of common interest. In other areas around things like health, for example, my day job is director of the health and social care alliance. We have strong partnerships with, for example, the European Union patient academy on therapeutic innovation, where we've involved academia in Scotland and so on, looking at things like clinical trials and how we can work together to share information and best practice. We're also members of the European patient forum, so I think that there are opportunities, but the fact that we now have a kind of way in which we can bring people together and a sort of pathway into things has been a good thing and I'm sure that others around the table, because we did lose a lot when we left the EU and European funding stocked, as Rachel has said, that had an impact, particularly on the third sector, on communities, but I feel that we are beginning to kind of find our feet a little bit and make the connections. I'm very pleased that enable are joining SAFE and I think that going forward, you know, we now have a forum for discussion and a way in which we can take things forward on a positive basis. Can I come back on one of the things you mentioned, which is that you've given us a very clear picture of SAFE and its work and its activity. It's obviously a very vibrant body that is creating and thinking about things and we also know about what the DAG does at a UK level. Do you get a sense that on the EU side of things there is a similar kind of vitality to what's happening and an interest in the issues? You mentioned some engagement, I think Alistair mentioned, contact with European universities. Do you get a sense that they are as lively about these issues and are interested and engaged? I think that in terms of co-operation and partnership, I do think that there is a vibrancy and an interest. I definitely think that post Windsor things have thawed out quite a bit. You'll know that, within the architecture around the TCA, there is an opportunity for a civil society forum, a joint civil society forum. We've now had two. The first one, there will be some people around the table that were at it, was very stage managed. I think that there was general agreement, didn't really take things forward in a positive constructive way, but the second one, which we had last year in November, October, I think was much better. I think that there are differing views, and certainly the European Commission has very much of the view at this point in time. If you take evidence, I'm sure you'll hear that, but they want a very strict interpretation of things. Whereas I think third sector, academia, trade unions and business groups are a civil society, and I suppose that it comes back to Ms Forbes's point. I think that they are very interested in taking forward that engagement, because we are in a very unique situation. As I said, I sat in the Canada Dac, but we were members for 50 years. We're near neighbours. Europe is our biggest market, so there are good reasons for us to find partnership opportunities and work together going forward. Huge amount of goodwill and desire for ever closer connectedness from partners within the European Union. Already on the research side, the partners at our universities are working with in Europe. Their consistent message to the European Commission is, please, please, please, let's find a way to keep the UK as close in as conceivably can be to horizon and to basically treat the UK on an equal basis to European member states. The mobility vitality of interest is actually quite striking as well. The last time I was on a mission in Brussels talking to people around the commission, around the Parliament, so many of them had actually been on an Erasmus exchange into the UK and into Scotland. They were representing a real hunger to get that restarted, because they felt that this was a bilateral benefit. Actually, so much of what we do in Scotland, so much of what we do in the wider UK, is interesting and valuable and culturally enriching for people coming from the EU. That vitality of bilateral relationship is something that they want to see fully enabled. I think that there are a lot of, particularly in a post Windsor, I think that there are a lot of extraordinarily open doors building on what I would say is a deep reservoir of kind of cultural desire to have the closest possible relationship with Scotland and the UK. If that's right and I'm sure it is, why does it appear that the EU only want to short somewhat technical review the TCA? Is this not the opportunity for a much more wide-ranging and substantive review? I think that that's a huge political question. I guess there's a sort of a degree of fear that once you start on stitching this with a wide range of interest groups and member states, do you end up somewhere actually worse than when you started? My general sense is underneath that, the direction of travel, the momentum, is that there are still relationships in many, many levels politically and culturally and academically between UK and opinion formers in the EU that create a momentum that actually is is meaningfully towards a closer relationship. Just following on briefly from Alasdair, just from the environmental NGOs point of view, many of our members remain parts of European and international networks because we recognise that the environmental questions are global and multinational. Scottish Environment Link is still a member of the European Environment Bureau, which has members in all countries on the continent of Europe, not the European Union. To come back to your part 3 opening question about opportunities in the future, I think from our point of view that the biggest opportunity is to use the co-operation that the TCA agreement and the review offers to agree and deliver on shared environmental ambitions. Rhetorically, all of the Governments in the UK and the EU do have environmental and climate ambitions that are positive, whether they're delivering them or not is another question. Therefore, we would like to see more mechanisms to help that delivery in a co-operative way. Initially, of course, fixing divergence issues, the divergence of chemicals that I've mentioned. Since we left the EU, the UK has added no chemicals to its list of potential substances of very high concern, whereas the EU has added 31. There are other examples in similar numbers in other categories. A way of addressing that kind of divergence needs to be looked at. One of our members who specialises in chemicals, ChemTrust, has produced a recent report looking at the Swiss model of how Switzerland regulates chemicals in partnership with the EU, and that might be a model that I think would be worth the UK looking at. That's one opportunity for the future. Another opportunity for the future is the European Environment Agency, which is the agency that deals with environmental data and information and shares that information with Governments. It's obviously quite associated with the EU, but it has associate members from virtually every other country in Europe, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Serbia. All of those countries are members of the EU as well. In recent maps and reports from the EU, the UK is unfortunately now a black hole or a white hole, if you see what I mean, in terms of environmental issues across Europe. I see no reason. I think that the Scottish Government would be supportive of that because officials from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency were previously involved. The swapping of data and the comparison of comparing information and ensuring that all of the policy decisions taken by Governments and regulators is based on good data is a crucial part of the environment. Some form of associate membership of the European Environment Agency I think would be a very positive move for the UK in the future. Going forward, I think clarifying what maintaining levels of protection in the TCA means, particularly as the UK and the EU develop new laws in different ways, will be important and how those levels of protection are compared, etc. Since we've left, the EU has moved forward with a nature restoration law. It's also moved forward with a new environmental crime directive, which also includes words to the effect of ecocide. It doesn't actually use the word ecocide, but it uses a phrase that's equivalent to that. How and if the UK matches those would be an important question, but equally an important question for this place, of course, is that many of these areas of environmental regulation and legislation are devolved, so Scotland has the opportunity to keep pace with those areas of law within Scotland. I think that those are things that Scotland should look at, the opportunities of matching the ambitions of the EU going forward. Does anyone else want to come in on the future, as it were, and any quick wins that could be achieved? Yes, Adam. I think the relationship is interesting between the bars and law societies across Europe. We are members of the CCBE, which is the big umbrella group for all bars and law societies across the EU. Post Brexit we negotiated an associate membership status, which in very short terms means we don't vote on things that are EU only, but there is an awful lot of issues that the CCBE deals with, which we still have a vote. I think the thing I would say is that it is actually relatively quite positive, I would say, for where we thought we might be. We are still participating. Our experts are still being asked their opinions. We are still very much involved in this, even if we are not voting on specifically commission-only business, which I think is far better than we had feared it might be at one point. I think that there is a sort of positive wind in that sort of relationship, and just in times of easy winds, I still think, as has been mentioned a few times across the board, the mobility area. Some of the areas I referred to earlier, sort of article 145, 126 areas, but just mobility in general, I think, would tidy things up and enable things to be a lot easier. I mean, surprisingly, a lot of members in Europe that I've spoken to have sort of referred to youth mobility, and I think there's a degree of we've got through Brexit and we've sat back now and well who's going to follow on from us, who's the next generation coming through, and I think there is sort of concerns there as well, so I think there's a sort of broad positive bit of work that could be done there. Actually, the PPA is one of the issues that they've specifically been looking at as well, so it's on their agenda. Yes, Arryn, would you like to sort of close for everyone in terms of, unless anyone else wants to... Tom, sorry, Arryn, if I can go to Tom first and then perhaps you could round off the discussion in whatever way you see it, feel fit, feel right. Give you time to think, Arryn, for a minute. Just a couple of very quick points. One is on implementation. We've talked about, I think, in particular, the sanitary and phytosanitary chapter of the TCA does contain a range of useful provisions. I won't go through all of it, but one provision is that there should not be unduly bed and some information requests that might delay access to each other's markets. SPS procedures and measures should be proportionate to risks identified. These are useful provisions, if implemented to the letter, and when we think about some of the issues for our small business in particular on certification, I think that looking back at those provisions would be useful exercise to do. I mean, it's something we'll be doing anyway regardless of the review, but for us, that's certainly something to prioritise. Now then you've got the difference, I guess, between theory and what's in the agreement and their natural practice and how hard it is to get progress on those issues, making use of those provisions. That, I think, probably takes us to this discussion, which is out there around agri-food products in general and SPS agreement. I know that others in the food and drink sector are looking more closely at that, producer of perishable products. I think it devils in the detail there, but I think it should be looked at, because if there is something which could help, would use some of these requests for documentation, then that's got to be a good thing. As I said, devils in the detail, we've got to look at how Scottish Government could continue to regulate as well. However, I just mentioned it, because I know that it's out there as an idea, and I think that it's worth exploring how that would actually work. Does anyone else want to contribute before I go to Aryan? Colleagues or guests? Keith, yes. Just for the sake of being able to say that, I really don't know as much about this as I'd like to know, but from the opening comments it would seem, if the big question is where do we go from here? There's not a pre-plan based on ideology or whatever else as to where it should go. Surely it should just be things that are not currently working, which could work better, a pragmatic approach, although I think that Aryan's point of the start was that that's changing is likely to change over the course of the year, but surely it's just looking for the pressure points, the friction points that's now in trying to deal with those. Aryan, the pressure is on, so if you can close the conversation. A few points that I felt was important is to pick up, convener, because I think that we've discussed the EU's approach to this and that it's technical. I think that it's worthwhile mentioning that there is a joint statement from the EU-UK DAG, and it's important to reflect the language in that, and that language just talks about things like rights-based, human rights, employment rights, citizens, so they sit slightly out with that sort of technical approach. I think that there is some common accord between the EU and the UK DAG, which is maybe a little bit different from the commission position. I suppose that that is understandable for a number of reasons that Brexit was a long difficult process. As someone else said, there is probably a bit of a reluctance to go back and undo some of that on the commission's part. Also, Europe is moving forward, as one of my colleagues said as well. They are busy with the candidate countries and the war in the Ukraine, so there are other big pressing issues, and no doubt they will be looking at their own elections this year and the elections in the USA. Some of those big-ticket things are around and about, and as I said at the beginning, they will influence things over the year. The way we are approaching the nations and regions sub-committee reports is to think about things in layers, and so we are thinking about what would require an absolute change to the TCA, and what could be done by mutual agreement. We have spoken quite a lot about that today, convener, and what would require a bit of work in terms of domestic policies and relationships with the UK Government. I think that all those three areas are important, and two thirds of them do not require changes to the TCA. That is all to the good. In terms of summing up, I would like to thank you and the committee for giving us the opportunity today, and I hope that what we have done, convener, is to bring the voice of stakeholders, of business, of the third sector, but also of people. We have raised some issues that are important to people and citizens. I think that we bring that democratic perspective, because we are all working in communities, whether it is geographic, thematic or sectoral communities, and it is great for us to have an opportunity to come along and speak to the committee. We have been in operation for, I have meant to check the dates, but I think that it is roughly about nine months. We have achieved quite a bit in that time, and we have built a broad stakeholder group. I hope that we can continue, we will keep a close eye, and I hope that we can continue discussions, convener. Just to say that, from the perspective of the UK DAG, we are going to be holding the next meeting in Scotland. That is written into the terms of reference that the DAG would rotate amongst devolved nations, so the next one will be in Scotland in April. At recent discussion with the convener and the other vice chair from the trade union sector, we felt that if there was an opportunity, I do not know how diaries and parliamentary days and so on will coincide, but we would be very keen, whether it is a private session or a public session, to meet with the committee at that point as the UK DAG, because obviously today I am here in our safe capacity. Thank you very much for that. I am sure that that is something that we can take up with the clerks of the committee if that is a possibility. I just thank you and everyone for attending this morning. It has been a very wide-ranging discussion. As I think you know, this is our first scene-setting evidence session in our inquiry, so it has been incredibly useful. Thank you very much. I can now formally close the meeting.