 I welcome to all members to the 10th meeting of the 2019 Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. Agenda item 1, our first item today, is a decision to take business in private. I can ask the committee to agree to take items 4 and 5 in private item 4, being a consideration of the committee's work programme. Item 5 is for consideration of correspondence that the committee has received. Do you agree to take those items in private? Agenda item 2 relates to cross-party groups. The first item here is an application for recognition from a proposed cross-party group on Russia. Andy Wightman MSP has joined us this morning, who is the convener of the proposed group. I welcome Andy Wightman MSP here to the meeting and invite you to make a short opening statement on the purpose of the group, please. As the committee will be aware, the group existed in the previous Parliament and it also existed in this Parliament. It is a group that is intended to foster better understanding and awareness of Russia. It is a place in the world and our relationships with it. From your papers, you will be aware that the group was, I am not sure if the word is disbanded, due to failure to comply with the rules, and I am happy to talk about that if you wish. However, the significant thing is that I think that there is a growing interest in Russia, our relationships with Russia, Russia's place in the world, and we are keen to see the group re-established. I ask members if they have any questions of Mr Wightman, please. I will ask about membership. What was the membership of the original group in the last session and the wider membership in this session? MSPs are members, but I did not get a sense of the papers of who is coming along to this group. What are the interests that want to get into discussion with MSPs about Russia's position in the world? I do not recall who were the members in the previous session. I have not prepped myself for that, but the non-MSP members of the group that wound up in 2017 were the Princess Dashkova Centre at the University of Edinburgh, the Scotland-Russia Forum, the National Museums of Scotland, the Thornton Law, the LLP, I think that there was one more and there were a number of individuals. Thank you very much. Tom Mason, please. Those organisations have you contacted them and have agreed to join them? Yes, indeed. Why did you put them in the application? The application went in immediately after our meeting of a few weeks ago, when we had the initial meeting to agree the purpose and the office bearers and submit the application to standards. We literally wanted to get that in early, and we have emailed all the members who were on the previous cross-party group. I think that all bar one of the individuals wants to become involved again, and the other one just hasn't replied yet. The Princess Dashkova Centre at the University of Edinburgh and the Scotland-Russia Forum have agreed that they would wish to become members, but, of course, they will be only formally agreed at the first meeting of the cross-party group. Can we have Maureen First and then Jamie Please? Thank you, convener. Morning, Andy. You said that you contacted previous members of the group. Did you not think to maybe send out an email to all MSPs and all researchers saying that they were thinking of reconvening and setting up the group again to see whether there was wider interest in it? I am pretty sure that I did send out an email a few months ago, but I am afraid that I do not recollect what I did, inviting whether MSPs were interested. That is where the interest came from, the five members. I cannot recall seeing it and I did try and check back, and I couldn't see a CPG in Russia coming up in any items, including deleted items. It is important that CPGs are a bit more reaching out to other MSPs, not just when setting up a group, but when they are having a group meeting. There may be something on the agenda that interests some people who may not necessarily want to become members of the group but are interested in a particular item that is coming up. It is important that CPGs, not just this one, but all CPGs are more expansive in the information that is sent out. To confirm all the meetings that we did have, we circulated an email to all MSPs inviting them. I can say a little bit more about the meetings that we did have, if you like, because the information that you have in front of you notes correctly that there were two formal meetings of the cross-party group. The first was on 28 October 2016 and the second was on 9 February 2016, when we had a speaker, Dr Derek Averr, from the University of Birmingham, talking about Russia's policies in Ukraine and Syria. We had two further events in Parliament that year. There were cross-party group hosted events, there were not formal meetings of the cross-party group, and it is my fault that I did not think to make them formal CPGs, because we had plenty MSPs at them, and they would have meant that we were in compliance with the rules. On 9 May 2017, we had a meeting called Loaded Words. There were about 100 people attending this meeting, including five or six MSPs plus about four or five MSP staff. Speakers included Ben Nimow from the Atlantic Council Digital Forensic Research Lab and Russ Racks from the Prismani Peter Catholic University in Budapest, Floriana Fasato from the Centre for Media and Society, Oxford University and Jakub Kalenski from the Eaststrakkom Task Force of the EU. That was a very popular event, attracting a lot of media attention, as I recall it even got a front page on the Herald newspaper. On 25 October 2017, we had another CPG hosted event, not a formal meeting of the CPG, with Angus Roxburgh, who I am sure members will know, former BBC Moscow correspondent, talking about his book that published his memoirs, called Moscow Calling. Again, that was a well-attended meeting. We had over 100 people, as I recall we had a waiting list for that. We were actually very active, but it is my fault perhaps that I did not think to make those second two meetings, which had plenty MSPs in attendance, formal meetings of the CPG. Well, thank you for that. As always, lessons are supposed to be picked on anything, but thank you. Jamie, please. Morning, Andy. One of the areas of topics that you have indicated that you are going to cover is propaganda and disinformation. You have covered a number of organisations that are going to be non-members of the group, but I was just wondering how you will manage your engagement perhaps with, whether there will be any engagement with, obviously, representatives of the Russian state and other organisations that may have links to the Russian state, such as some of the media that may have less than an independent viewpoint. I was just wondering if that is an area that you have considered or issued or anything like that. Well, we will have, obviously, if the CPG is approved, we will have engagement as appropriate with representatives of the Russian Government. I could imagine for example that one of the areas that we are keen on pursuing is, forgive me, trade and commerce. I have somebody who formerly worked for the British chambers of commerce in Moscow, who was not involved in the previous iteration of the group, who I met at an event at the University of Edinburgh. It is very keen to become involved. We are very keen to participate in a meeting. I think that if we had a meeting on issues around trade and commerce, it would be almost inevitable that we would reach out to at least the commercial tashi or whatever they are called at the Russian consulate on that. We will engage as appropriate. What are organisations like RTE or Sputnik that have involvement with Edinburgh? Is that something that you have considered or is that something that is important? I do not think that it is normal for media outlets to be members of cross-party groups. They themselves are agents of the Russian state. We are the subject of the meeting that we had in the ninth of May 2017. In fact, one of them was very vocal in the Russian media about why they had not been invited to the meeting, but we took a decision not to invite them. Thank you, Jimmie, and Tom. In one of consistency, Russia does not appear on the new trading nation government report. It did not include Russia on its list of possible trading partners, yet we are setting up a group for Russia. Does that make sense? Could you clarify the fact that Russia is not... We trade with Russia. On the recent government report on trading nation, I think it is called, it listed the objective countries that we would ideally trade with, getting the best returns from. It did not include Russia on the list at all. It included Japan and US and Germany and those other places, but it did not include Russia. We seem to be inconsistent and you said that we are setting up a Russian group, yet it is not part of the objective of the overall country's trading objective. With respect, I do not know the report that you are referring to, but our intention here is that it has nothing to do with what the UK Government thinks of... The Scottish Government, not. Indeed, the Scottish Government is a cross-party group of parliamentarians and outside interests. It has nothing to do with the Government. Obviously, Russia is not a country that is high on Scotland's or the UK's trade relationship in terms of volume of trade. I do not know where it is. I am sorry, I do not have that figure, but it will not be in the top 10. However, there are very strong links, and there are very, very historic links, particularly between Scotland and Russia, extremely historic links. In the current climate in the world where we need to build trust and confidence and reach out, I think that Russia is one of the most important countries with which to engage, to build that peace and stability, certainly in Europe and the wider world. Scotland has a key role to play in that. We are going to have to bring this a bit to a close because we are running on a wee bit more than we expected, but Gil Paterson. I think that you were alluding to the fact that your reason for the group ceasing to function, I think that you were alluding to the fact that you were non-compliant because of MSPs not being in the 10s, but you did not actually say that. Was that your reasoning? Yes, sorry, I think that was in your papers, but there were— Did you put it in the public record? Fine, yes. As I understand it, the requirements to have a minimum of two coreate meetings per year. We had two formal meetings of the CPG, only one of which was coreate. We then did not hold an AGM because we were aware that we had failed to meet the rules. We could have quickly convened a pseudo CPG, as opposed to comply with the rules. However, it is my fault that I did not think to include those two extremely popular events that we had to make informal CPG meetings just to do 10 minutes of formal business and then into the substance, and that would have kept us straight, but that is correct, Mr Paterson, yes. I wouldn't beat myself up with that one to be quite frank, mate, so it happens. I'll take your advice, thank you. Thank you very much, Gil. Thank you, everyone. That was very worthwhile. I hope that it wasn't too strenuous for you there, Andy Wightman. Thank you, Andy Wightman, for your attendance. We'll let you know about the committee after some conversation. We hope to do that as soon as possible, is that okay? Thank you very much, convener. Thank you very much indeed. So we're moving on to agenda item 3, then, and agenda item 3 is regarding cross party group approval. Now, it's to consider whether to accord recognition to the proposed cross party group on Russia and the proposed cross party group on the USA. So could I just ask anyone for any comments that they have following talk with Andy Wightman, please, Gil? Yeah, you have a comment at the end there that beat themselves up. We can make these mistakes and by the sound of it. We're not judging whether it's a good or a bad thing, but the fact that when we consider this one, what was happening before, a turnout of that number of people to an event would suggest that there is a need and that it will be successful in that regard, so I would conclude that we should approve it. Okay, thank you, and Mark? Yes, I agree with that. It's clear that this is a group that's in the wider public interest. It's been very successful. I think perhaps the only glitch has just been in terms of the way that the secretariat has been organised and perhaps a failure in this case to identify the two very popular meetings as CPG meetings. I think if they'd done that clearly, they would have remained compliant, so I mean perhaps if the committee was minded to approve, we could write back to Mr Wightman and just point out some tips there on just ensuring compliance, but no, I mean it seems to be very much in the public interest and perhaps provides an interesting matching pair with the USA CPG as well. Right, okay. No, I think actually to be honest, the fact that Andy Wightman did recognise that there were basically secretarial issues to be looked at, I think that's important, and the fact that it's been brought up at this meeting today, well, I've been useful from that point of view, so thank you, anyone else? Tom? Well, I don't mean happy with more information actually in the application as opposed to having to wait for it to come through on presentation, but I mean I have no objection to it, but I just find it, you know, it's a bit inconsistent with this fact that we're not as a nation, having Russia high in our sights as one of our trading partners, but that doesn't matter in itself. Okay, well, thank you very much for that as well. All right, everyone. Okay, so do members agree to accord recognition to the proposed cross party group on Russia? Thank you, everyone. Okay, so that's it. Next, can we circulate, you've had further information regarding the proposed cross party group on the USA, and Dean Lockhart, who would be the convener of that proposed cross party group, has provided us with some further information that was required or asked for? Any comments on that at all, Gil? I mean, when you see the list of people that have indicated that they're going to be attending, then it looks as if it will be also a fairly successful group, so the questions that were raised last time round have been answered in my view very well, so, you know, I would think that we approve it. I have no problems with that. Thank you very much, Gil. Anyone else? Okay, thank you, Tom. I agree with that as well. I mean, I think that the information that we asked for was, you know, supplementary information, but I think that it paints a stronger picture now of the work of this group and its focus, and, you know, comments from the US consulate and others, it's useful to see exactly who's going to be contributing to this group, so, yeah, I'm content to approve it. Okay, thank you. Anyone otherwise minded? No, well, thank you very much. Okay, so everyone is of one mind that we approve recognition accord, recognition to the proposed cross party group on the USA. Thank you all very much indeed, and that ends the public section of the meeting, so we ask the public to leave, and thank you all very much indeed.