 Ond i gyntaf. Welcome to the 15th meeting of the Constitution, Europe, XNL affairs, and Culture Committee in 2022. Today we will be joining us slightly at 9.30 as a substitute for Jenny Minto and Dr Allen has dedicated he has to leave early at 11.00 a min. Our first agenda item is decision taking business in private. I remember is content to take agenda item for in private. Thank you very much! We will now move to agenda item 2, which is the Scottish Government Resource Spending Review. I now welcome to committee Kate Forbes MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Economy, Angus Robertson MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture, and Kirsty White, team leader of resource spending review Scottish Government and Penelope Cooper, director of culture and major events at the Scottish Government. Thank you very much for coming to committee this morning. Can I open with a question for Ms Forbes first of all? The submission on the spending review highlighted the need to re-appraise the contribution of cultural activities in terms of wider societal benefits, including health and wellbeing, and the committee agreed with COSLA evidence that stated a need for a whole system approach. Could you let us know how, what extent you've factured culture as applied to a whole system approach in this review? Thanks very much and it's great to be able to join the committee this morning. I think for me that question goes right to the heart of one of the opportunities through the resource spending review. We have talked at length over the last few years, certainly since Kirsty was published about the importance of preventative spend, but preventative spend requires reform. It requires us to essentially be able to move budget lines over the longer term, knowing that if we invest in certain areas up front, for example, like culture, our environment and a few other examples, we ultimately relieve pressure at the more acute end. Over the course of our annual budget, that can be very challenging to do. A resource spending review allows us to look over a three or four-year timeframe and try to shift that. I emphasise that the resource spending review is very much the beginning of the process, so it sets out spending parameters. It's not the final budget for subsequent years, but it gives us the spending parameters and I'm sure we'll get into the discussion around some of the challenges right now, particularly facing culture and other lines in the spending review. However, it allows us that multi-year reform. The fact that we've worked extremely hard to protect the culture lines, albeit in cash terms rather than real terms, because inflation is eating our spending power, there's no way around that. The fact that we have sought very hard to protect in cash terms that the culture line demonstrates that we're serious about trying to shift that balance. If I could ask Mr Robertson a question on the back of Ms Forbes' answer around the cost of living crisis and inflation and what's happening. Interested in the available data participation in cultural activity from the national performance framework, particularly the lower participation of people from more deprived areas, and I just wondered if you had any view on how we could increase participation given the challenges ahead. I think that that's a very opposite question, because it's a consideration not just for the Scottish Government, but it's also a consideration for the likes of, for example, national museums and galleries. I was yesterday meeting their trustees and this is exactly one of the areas that was being talked about. They were observing the changes that they've been able to see over the last 25 years, which has seen a change in the picture, a much broader representation of people attending the likes of the National Museum of Scotland, but there are other museums too, but there is still a gap to be bridged there. I think that to echo my cabinet secretary colleagues' observations a moment ago by embarking on this approach, it is going to encourage all of us to make sure that we're thinking about all of these things, because one of the potential ways to deal with times of constraint is to increase the numbers of people who are attending and using our cultural institutions of all backgrounds and to help to increase the number of people—for example, children from deprived backgrounds—how to make sure that there's more school participation in museums, galleries and everything else. Those are considerations that are very much in our minds in Scottish Government, but I know that they are also in institutions as well. They see it as part of their tasking in the years to come, and we're going to work very much on a collegial basis to try and work out in which ways we can help and in which ways they're going to be able to manage to do that themselves. Thank you very much. I'll now go to questions from committee members. Thank you, convener. The general question firstly, the spice briefing that we've been provided, shows that there will be an estimated real terms fall of 7.8 per cent in the Angus Robertson's budget between 2023 and 26-7. Within that, the funding for culture and major events would fall in real terms by an estimated 4.7 per cent. You'll well know how scarred the culture sector is in particular by the pandemic, and the committee has done a lot of work on funding in the sector. There is a major concern, particularly within the more organic, informal parts of the sector about their funding. I would just like to get your response to what is a predicted cut in funding. Yes, in that part of the cultural world, but across the whole of the cultural world, there has been an immense challenge getting through the Covid period. It was, I think, the second to worst impacted part of the Scottish economy. For people living and working in the cultural and arts community, it was an extremely testing time. I'm very proud of the level of resource that the Scottish Government made available to individuals, to cultural organisations, to make sure that they could get through it. Now we are faced with the resource picture that we are having to live within in the years to come. We are going to have to work very closely with all parts of the cultural community to make sure that we are able to protect it and foster it as best as we can, given those constraints. Whether one is a smaller, organic, community-based cultural organisation or one is involved in a very large project that requires a lot of funding, everybody is going to be looking at the bottom line, everybody is going to try and work out how they can manage, given the resource constraints that exist. We are going to have to be innovative all of us in making sure that we are able to deliver the level of cultural provision that we all want to see and to do it within the means that are at our disposal. Can I ask specifically about HES, which sees a 2022-23 figure of £61 million decreasing to £48 million in 2026-2027? Can I just ask you why that line is in the review? Can I underline the distinction that my Cabinet Secretary made before about the difference between a resource spending review and a budget? It is not the same thing, point one. Point two, I think, Historic Environment Scotland is an organisation that is significantly better funded in global terms than other parts of the portfolio. It is fair to say that absolutely everybody is having to play their part in making sure that we are able to live within our means. I am the first to acknowledge that HES as an organisation because of the particular responsibilities it has, point one and point two, the specific nature of the challenge of the estate that HES is having to look after. I acknowledge that this is an area of significant challenge. Firstly, the point about this being a spending review and not a budget, point one and point two, that this is the beginnings of a process of working with all the organisations, including HES, to work out how it is that we can manage through the next years. Also be imaginative about whether there is the potential for additional and parallel funding streams. It is one of the areas that I am extremely keen to explore to make sure that, hopefully, not everybody is going to have to deal with the constraints that the resource spending review points to as an envelope, but I am highlighting the point that it is not a budget projection. Do you think that one of the reasons potentially why the HES figure is decreasing is that increased visitor numbers may mean that the Government grant, as it were, decreases in the hope that numbers go up? That is most certainly part of the consideration. I think that all committee members realise that all of our institutions, which have a high throughput, a high number of people that we will visit, have in recent years seen that income level fall off a cliff. I do not have the HES numbers at the forefront of my mind. I can, just as an example, share the one that I remember, because yesterday it was at the National Museums. They pre-COVID, their annual visitor numbers were £3 million, and in this last year they managed to recover to one and a half. It is an illustration of the fact that there is still a way to go, but I do think that there is a huge opportunity if we, in the royal sense, all of us, the institutions, Government and everybody else that is involved with the culture and arts sector, is able to help to give people confidence to go back to museums, galleries and events. We do what the convener was highlighting, which is to make the most of the untapped, unincluded thus far, parts of the population that have not been able to make the best use of things. I think that that will have an impact, and, hopefully, for those for whom this is an income stream, it will see them being a better financial position that they would have been otherwise. Just to follow on the question from Donald Cameron, I take your point about visitor numbers. I hope that we will go up as we recover from the pandemic, but one of the things that it is concerning is about the properties that Historic Environment Scotland manages but are not reopening, and the discussion paper about what happens to those properties, do we let them face managed decline because of climate change? It is part of our history, it is part of our culture, so you are saying not to worry because it is only a spending review, it is not the budget. Is that a suggestion that there might be capital investment that might flow to Historic Environment Scotland that would mean that they could actually repair and keep those buildings fit for purpose? I am not saying no reason to worry. I suspect that, like other members of the committee, I care passionately about our heritage and the fact that our built heritage, much of it very old, is facing environmental degradation, which leads to instability and dangers, which leads to the requirement to maintain and support castles and old buildings and all the rest of Scotland's built heritage. This was going to be a challenge with or without a resource spending review, and it would have been a challenge if we were sitting here discussing the budget line, which were not. I am saying to you that I totally acknowledge that there is a major challenge for Historic Environment Scotland in general because the nature of the estate, the nature of the decline in the built infrastructure, and we are going to have to work very closely to work out how we can maximise the resources that Historic Environment Scotland has from ourselves and from elsewhere to make sure that we can protect our historic sites around the country. I mean, just to stress the point that has been made by Kate Forbes and myself already, those are the issues that are at the heart of the discussions that are beginning to take place. Beginning to take place with cultural organisations, beginning to take place with trade unions, beginning to take place with trustees. These are the conversations that are now happening given that we are having the information that we now have from the resource spending review, and it behoves all of us to be as imaginative as we can be to work out what is it that we can do with the resources that we have in constrained circumstances to do what we need to do to protect the lights of the built heritage in Scotland, and the first to acknowledge that this is not a simple task. It is not going to be easy, not just in a financial sense, but also in all the other considerations that will have to be given given the size of the estate that HES is responsible for. We could probably do the whole evidence session convener just on HES and the nature of the challenge that it is facing, but this is absolutely there at the top of my inbox as an area where we in government need to work with our agencies and armed length organisations to make sure that they are able to do what they are supposed to be able to do. Thanks for that, because it is about the buildings and the land, as well as the staff, thinking about both those budget lines, I think, is critical. Is it okay to come in with a different follow-up question, convener? Thanks very much. There was a comment that we've been told that it's about the whole government responding, and when we had the Cabinet Secretary for Health in front of us, there was a lot of talk of social prescribing, as the convener has said, but one of the things that comes out in the resource framework issue is about local expenditure on culture. The evidence that we got from Audit Scotland was that, if you look at the local government bench working framework data over the last decade, services such as culture and leisure services have taken the biggest cut of almost 30 per cent over the last decade. So, looking at the local government budget going forward, how do we join up the gap because the need for social prescribing, local community, arts facilities, who's going to pay for that, given the huge pressures on local authorities? I wonder if the Cabinet Secretary for Finance would like to hear about that. I think it's an excellent question, because, again, if I look right now at the challenging outlook, and I'm not going to sit here and say it's anything other than challenging, I think I've been quite open and honest about the fact that it is a challenging outlook right across the board, but the only way, therefore, that we are going to achieve our objectives, for example, on social prescribing, on preventative spend, on protecting culture, is if we ensure that we are not working across purposes across the public sector landscape. So we need to be as good as possible in terms of joined-up thinking. You're talking specifically there about local government. You'll know that the local government lines that we have published are at level 2, which means that what you don't see is all the transfers that go from the Scottish Government to local government. Some of those are very substantial in terms of education, in terms of social care, but there's a whole host of other lines, which I know sometimes frustrates COSLA, a whole host of other lines across portfolios that are transferred in. We're working with COSLA right now to look at how we de-ring fence, more of those. The challenge is that it then means that certain areas don't necessarily deliver the aims that we intend, so there's a fine line between how you determine Scottish Government funding going towards purposes like culture, like leisure and so on, and how you give that maximum freedom and flexibility to local government. Obviously, Angus Robertson can speak more about how, from a policy perspective, it's joined up. My job is to make sure that, from a financial perspective, it's joined up. I think that there's more that we need to do, and certainly resource spending review provides us with a framework for doing that, because it does two things. It boils down what our core objectives are and says, let's make sure that we're actually achieving these. Secondly, it says to the public sector at large, let's get better, let's get more flexible in actually working together to achieve these aims. That applies across public bodies, so it applies, it will apply across culture bodies, but it also applies across Scottish Government and local government to say, where can we get more joined up rather than working at cross purposes? Can I just add to that and say that, in addition to that, there's also the other end of the telescope, which is cultural organisations and cultural institutions themselves coming forward and saying, we have something to offer in this space. I suppose that that is an example of what can and hopefully will come out of this exercise, which is having to rethink how we are able to deliver certain priorities across Government, and it is by working in partnership with organisations and CERBOICs absolutely right to highlight how important local government is in that, but there are others in addition to that. I go back to my example of being at the National Museum of Scotland yesterday and saying to their trustees, what are you thinking about, because our museums, and they're not all based in Edinburgh, and they're in different parts of the country, and there are other institutions right across Scotland as well, that lend themselves very well to being able to provide the kind of services that social prescribing can offer, but it also means that they are going to have to think about how they can make that accessible and understandable to practitioners who would then have to prescribe. Members here will remember the evidence session with Humza Yousaf, where we were beginning to explore what is it that we are going to need to do in the next years to make sure that those who are likely to want to use social prescribing then know what facilities are available to them, and that's why this kind of exercise is not an unforeseen consequence, I think it's actually at the heart of it of making everybody think, okay, so what is it that we need to be more innovative? So it's not necessarily about the cash drive or the constraints that there are, but it's about what is it that we can do differently to make sure that we're using the resources of our museums and galleries and so on to fulfil that purpose. Appreciate that. Are we at the point where we need a strategy to actually pull this together so that people know what's happening next and that it's accelerated, given the points that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance made about the Christie principles, because the evidence that we got from UCL was really important about the access to arts for children, people with mental health issues and using the arts to reduce the physical decline of people in older age? So we are working together on it and I'm happy to give Sarah Boyack comfort on that, that officials between the culture directorate and others are discussing in an ongoing basis how is it that we take all of this forward, but I was just taking the opportunity to highlight that the point that I think shouldn't be lost in all of this is that there are more actors involved in this than just government and we're needing to make sure that we involve all of them too. So you know that is something that needs to be taken forward and we need to make sure that we're trying to do that at pace, but involving everybody that needs to be involved in it. Could I add just to that because it goes back to the first question that was asked around preventative spend. Whenever I set out a budget or I set out a spending review, obviously all the focus will be on any lines that decrease. But if we're serious about preventative spend, so if we're serious for example about what I think Sarah Boyack has touched on, which I think is exceptional again around ensuring that we're investing upfront with a view to reducing pressure at an acute level, then inevitably the sublines are going to have to go down in order to supplement other lines going up and therefore that requires a far more mature debate amongst politicians about that shift because you'll know, and I've used this before in the environment committee, if I were to shift budget from let's say an acute care setting to investing in parks or in our environment or in our culture, you know what the debate is going to be like. So I think that if we're all serious it's as much about government being scrutinised obviously about getting this right as it is about having a more general intelligent debate I think about the very issues that Sarah Boyack is touching on because I think that's the only way we are going to get through the next few years which are going to be challenging. Did you look back in? I look forward to seeing that strategy and I hope it's soon, not into the future. Thank you. I wonder if I could ask a supplementary question as well. As Ms Forbes mentioned at the very start about how this is a step change in attitudes and while we've all adopted the Christie principles has been the right way forward, the progress has been really really slow but also the spending review as you say it's level to this time because of the inflationary pressures and it's not tenable to go any further down at this stage for this but it's also outcomes focused. So can you tell us a little bit about how you're going to measure the outcomes when it is about preventative spend and wellbeing and you know these kind of principles? Yeah and it is intentional, intentionally outcomes focused. So we have prioritised certain areas and you'll have heard me say it before but I'm just going to repeat it again, tackling child poverty, transitioning to net zero, resilient public services and economic recovery. Now three of these were included in the budget and we added resilient public services spending review because of course when you boil down priorities you know there's some areas in our public landscape that may not obviously lend themselves to the other three priorities but we're still going to keep funding them because they're important but those are the priorities. In terms of how we measure that we obviously have metrics already in place so the resource spending review is not independent of for example the tackling child poverty plan, the child poverty plan, so that sets out quite clearly what our measures are and you see that running through the spending review you'll see for example in another portfolio in my own economy and finance you'll see the employability line going up because that's funding, the commitments we made in the tackling child poverty plan. Transitioning to net zero we know what our metrics are to be net zero and in terms of economic recovery we've set out in the Covid recovery plan. So those things are not, those are how we measure them. This is about trying to align the inputs to what we've set out as outcomes and normally in a budget you start with the inputs, you start with this is the money we have available and you try and squeeze as many commitments as possible into that funding. What we did here is there's our commitments, there's our priorities and we work backwards from that. Obviously that's going to require an awful lot of innovation and I think my last point would be I think actually the culture sector has led to the way already when it comes to demonstrating effective innovation. Do you think of some of the commitments that I've set out or the objectives I've set out around innovation maximising public value from our assets? If you think about you know the points around efficiency the culture sectors can teach the rest of the public sector I think a lot about how to do that well. Okay and Dr Allan? Yes thanks it was just a supplementary question really on that very point which is about innovation and this was something that came up when Mr Yousaf was in the committee where we're talking about how to ensure that there is buy-in not just in government which there clearly is to the idea of social prescribing or spending to save but that they're buying from the agencies that will be delivering health, health boards not waste and I just wonder what work is being done to ensure that there is a cultural change if you like within health boards that would facilitate that. Forgive me I should probably have mentioned health boards in my reply to Sarah Boyack in terms of partners as part of this process because you know everybody who is involved I go back to my telescope regardless of which way you look down the telescope you're going to work back from the individual all the way back to who is it that thinks that that individual needs some intervention or support of a form that has not conventionally been prescribed and that involves a number of organisations you know national government local government health boards the cultural sector cultural organisations and then individual GP practices and there's probably some other links in the chain that I haven't mentioned there and everybody's going to need to play a part in it and I think you know Sarah Boyack's point on on strategy is is is well made for me as important to that is having the confidence that all of the links in the chain are going to play their part we can have as many strategies you like about things we're dealing with something which is I say a relatively new innovation in terms of who has adopted successful models of making this happen and what we're trying to do is introduce this here as quickly as we possibly can but to make that work it is going to take quite a lot of different organisations institutions and then at the end of the day individuals if you remember the evidence session we're talking about how many GPs are going to take out their little contact book of well here the types of organisations that are available in the western aisles that one could socially prescribe a patient perhaps making use of and you know that's the last part of it is that we have to make sure that this is available everywhere and not just in some places so I'm acknowledging the fact that you know there are quite a lot of links in this chain to make sure that it works and there is a broad geographical spread and we need to make sure that it's something that's available to all because you know healthcare is there for everywhere everybody at the point of need so you know the points well made that it's something that needs to be got on with but at the same time I think there is also an awareness that if it were so simple it would have been done already and you know it's a mixture of pull and push is going to be required to make sure that this actually happens but you know going back to the conversations I was having yesterday just as a reflection of things people are very aware of this and I think people are turning their attention as to how is it that they can play their part in it yeah interesting responses from you both on the prevention question and I suppose it is difficult to see though within the RSR exactly how that preventive approach is being driven through I mean you talk a lot about culture and about changing the way that public services are working but it's hard to actually see a budget line shifting within health towards culture well being or whatever it's partly issue here about the timescale that the budgets are are addressing I mean obviously it's very hard to show the impact of preventive spend within one year I would say probably very hard to show it within three to four years as well so is there something about having that longer term look as we have with wider strategies and how do we then frame that within a within the short term budgets that we always have to look at including RSR yeah I mean it felt challenging enough setting out a four-year spending review at a time like this so setting out anything longer I think would be would be really difficult but the four-year period even that has allowed us I think to not only set out obviously the spending parameters and that's what they are they are spending parameters but to have some very important conversations internally as you can imagine the process for getting to this publication is not simple and perhaps you know not not going back on what I've already said but we took a very different approach the spending review than we normally take to budgets a budget process internally is normally a case of here's your allocations based presumably on last year plus an inflationary uplift tell me how much you can achieve for that budget what we did here was say right before we get to the numbers let's look at outcomes let's look at the need for reform and let's look at the post coveted post brexit landscape of what we want to achieve and we started with those cross ministerial discussions about outcomes and then built the budget around that so obviously that you know there's a limit to that because you still have to maintain your public services you know you still have to and that's why I worked extremely hard to try and protect budget lines in cash terms I accept across the board but you will also see a particular focus on on the core objectives so that is starting the process now what I would I would hope is that subsequent budgets reflect that priority so I would hope that future settlements i.e. in advance of next year's budget are moving in a more positive direction than we think one would hope that because remember that the spending review is based on the UK government's spending review of autumn last year when inflation was 3.1% what at 9% it's gone up to 11% based on Bank of England forecast so I would assume that the UK government is going to have to take into account inflation and therefore there might be enough uplift now that uplift might not translate into spending power because it just accommodates the inflation we uplift but in that event we will continue to invest along the lines of our objectives and I guess my appeal and you've heard my appeal too many times probably to count is that when we get to that point we have that intelligent debate in Parliament that nearly always happens in committees which is let's not let's let's accept that if we serious about preventive spend that will mean budget lines moving so you might see you know some of the acute services releasing some funding to elsewhere because you know that that ultimately reduces the pressure on on the acute line I'm not sure that I have much to add to that I mean I think that the the logic is is sound the making it work in practice is the challenge isn't it and we are going to have to be mindful of and you know this is going to be the subject of your deliberations and myself and the cabinet secretary and others coming back on a regular basis as we are and saying okay is that switch beginning to happen is there any bite that we're able to see progress being made on things that can give you the confidence to say well this strategy this approach is working it's certainly been pursued at what point is it working when will we begin to see that well you know that depends on how quickly we get up and running doing some of these things but and another observation that I don't think necessarily makes things any easier is that some things I think may take longer to change than some other things and I don't I don't know which those might be and how long they might be but I just I think that kind of echoes the point that Kate Forbes is saying about having a having a mature debate about some of these things if we're agreed in general terms this is the best way to go go forward and I think there's large scale consensus that it probably is then we have to find our feet through working our way through this process and I know I'm committed to making it happen and I'm you know as I've said to the committee before I'm very interested in any ideas or pointers that you and other colleagues in the committee have to ensure that government is thinking about how it can be make some things work faster some things work in different ways and you know are there any areas that are being missed as part of this process because you know it is one of the the models that how the Scottish Parliament is supposed to be working in in this sense we are a collegiate whole and trying to make sure that we're able to deliver particularly on big cultural changes in how we do our business I mean would you see for example a role for a future generations commissioner in taking that very long term view about wellbeing and investment whether it's culture whether it's our wider wider wellbeing I wouldn't rule anything like that out I mean we need to be open to suggestions of what can make sure that we understand things as well as as we can and make sure that we're doing everything that we can I need to know more about the proposal but I'm I'm open to suggestions as I've just said a moment ago about ways in which we can ensure that we're leading the change that we know that's necessary okay I had a couple of specific questions so one is about national cultural events I think we're all looking forward to the world cycling championships coming to Scotland next year but I suppose what's kind of noticeable looking at the marketing for that is that there doesn't seem to be a contribution from the UK government to an event which will still largely be seen as a GB sporting event can you give some background as to as to why that that's the case has that been a conscious decision or I'm going to have to I think I mean you have raised a question in relation to this before in as much as that it's the Scottish government that's playing the significant role in terms of funding from a public sector point of view I'd need to write to Mr Ruskell about where we are with with UK government funding in relation to that I would say in general terms there's a great deal of work that is going into both the world cycling championships as and I think certainly the committee will be aware this but people perhaps watching the proceedings might not be it is the first example of world cycling championships bringing all of the different disciplines I think from memory there are 13 please don't ask me to name them all but there are 13 different cycling disciplines taking part in this and at venues throughout the length and breadth of scotland point one it's unprecedented in scale I think I'm right in saying that it is off the order of the commonwealth games and it is a huge event that's taking place here and a major part of the consideration is yes how is it organised yes how is it funded yes how do we do that in these constrained times but there's an awful lot of thought is going into what what are the societal benefits of an event like that what is an event like that going to do to make more of us use our bikes and to change our attitudes towards health and wellbeing so yes it is you know there are there are cash questions absolutely and I will write back to Mr Ruskell on that so that he has the the latest statistics but you know I'm also minded and this goes to the heart of the the points that we've been making that there are considerations as part of this which you can't enumerate in cash terms and are part of the wider agenda that we have in terms of health and wellbeing that are very important part of it as well okay I mean obviously government is very constrained as is local government in terms of the the tools that government has to raise revenue one tool that could be available to national parks and local authorities would be a visitor levy um so i'm interested to know what your your thinking is on that and how that could be used to invest in cultural assets and visitor experiences I mean I would imagine most people for example going to sky uh hundreds of thousands of people every year would would probably not bulk up paying a couple of pounds to support you know car parks at the ferry pools or you know better toilet facilities or investment in cultural heritage on the island so I'm interested in what what the thinking is in government on that in these very straightened times how do we get that contribution from visitors who are enjoying Scotland into our communities in a way that we can help to make them thrive maybe very update on visitor levy and then I just want to add on the culture side just briefly on the on the sky example I mean it's an excellent example of the point that Sarah Boyack was making around bringing together community local government Scottish government with a little bit of investment in infrastructure and then the requirement to raise revenue from parking facilities or otherwise the infrastructure has massively improved the visitor experience has massively improved the local experience has massively improved and there's now a revenue stream for the local community that can be invested in for example they've bought a local community bus so I think it's a fantastic example and you know that kind of thing isn't necessarily covered in a resource spending review but it's the smaller pots of money that can absolutely unlock community impairment we are committed to introducing a visitor levy I stated in the budget that's just passed in the letter to local authorities that we were committed to introducing it and we believed that there were two caveats one that we need to consult with industry and secondly that we were conscious of the sort of post pandemic impact on the tourism industry but that that commitment and I think you know as we take forward the physical framework review with local government has got to feature obviously we've set out that it would be set this out in the past but it would be it would be local so you know I think this is where it could really work alongside local authorities and local communities and businesses to release a bit of funding for greater investment and again improve all those experiences but I suppose the bottom line is that we we are still committed to introducing it along the lines of with those two caveats well if I can join the msp for sky talking about sky is the msp for Edinburgh central can I say how strongly I'm in favour of the visitor levy this is the norm in parts of the world that have significant tourist numbers and as people who travel ourselves I think we are used to that and I'm perfectly content to make a financial contribution to places that I visit to make sure that both the visitor experiences everything that it can be that for people who live there their quality of life and their public services is as well supported as possible I think obviously this is where we we get into the heart of a debate about empowering localities to make the appropriate decisions for their locality on the extent to which there is national guidance around you know here are good things to be thinking about no doubt we'll be talking about this at greater length but I think the literally millions of people who visit the likes of Edinburgh will have little to no difficulty in paying the kind of levy that they would be paying in any other capital as part of their overnight costs and it is a revenue stream that I think could be transformational in many different ways but it will involve local decision makers having innovative ideas and putting their focus in the right areas to get maximum benefit from such a funding stream. Mr Golden. Thanks convener perhaps I'll just pick up a point that Kate Forbes made around increased UK government public expenditure and I just wonder if the cabinet secretary accepts that there's a tricky balancing act with this because increased UK government public expenditure were also fuel inflation so well in cash terms it's a benefit in real terms it could be problematic as well. Yes and no so you know there's a principle there which I understand but on the other hand right now we are for example eating into our own budget to a greater extent because the UK government's spending plans haven't been updated in light of inflation and I think it's inevitable that inflation is going to have an impact on UK government capital initiatives it's going to have an impact on perhaps even pay policy it's there's no avoiding the fact that citizens are struggling with the cost of living and inflation is having an impact on on spending and so my difficulty is that because our last basically information on UK government spending plans was last autumn what would be really helpful is to have updated spending plans which would allow me to then build a spending review on the the latest information so we already have a bit of a challenge with different forecasters that OBR obviously forecast most recently in March it was just on the cusp of war and Ukraine and so on the sfc which is what we base our numbers on forecast obviously just last week so I guess the point I'm making here is around different timescales and I think it's inevitable that UK government will have to update it but all I've got to go on is something that's about nine months old so there's a principle yes that you've touched on which I understand and accept but I think it's inevitable that the UK government's going to be contending with the same inflationary impacts that we are and it'd be enormously helpful to know where that changes their original spending plans because it's inevitable it has changed. Thanks for that and perhaps open it up slightly and in terms of looking at increased visitor numbers to ameliorate some of the cuts to cultural organisations has there been any assessment on the cost of living crisis and therefore consumer spending which in this case isn't driving inflation as to whether that's a realistic proposition? Yeah I mean that this is this is why I think we have the right priorities in the spending review because you know what we have done is try and target let's take the the cost of living crisis response and the tackling child poverty response here we have intentionally for example funded a fairer social security system we are proud of our commitment to increasing the Scottish child payment and there are also in terms of the employability lines I talked about in terms of helping more people into work all of these areas are designed to try and alleviate some of the cost of living pressures but not all because we don't have control for things like energy but if we can raise people out of poverty or protect them from falling into poverty which is essentially what you're talking about in terms of cost of living we know that that reduces pressures on public services we know that and this comes through the discussion I had with the finance committee on Tuesday we know that they are more likely to spend too you know and that's where it's a it's a balance where the more targeted the funding you know those that they are more likely to spend than those who who save so I think you know I'm trying to carefully articulate a point which is that if you target your spending at those who need it the most and who are more likely to spend it then it not only protects them from poverty or takes them out of poverty which is the intention it also reduces public pressure on public services and has an economic boost because consumers are spending can I just add to that because morse golden has thrown a pebble in the pond for me because talking about the issue of visitor numbers when I was talking before about the visitor numbers for the national museum being at one and a half million rather than three million it a sort of light went on with me I don't know if it did with anybody else given that we haven't seen the full return to with international visitor numbers and it seems to me that we're what obviously what we are seeing is more confidence in domestic visitors call it a staycation it may be people not traveling very far to go to different cultural institutions and so I think there's there's that gives us some hope I think that maybe part of the small c cultural change that there's been because of the Covid pandemic is that perhaps people are more open to exploring what is on their doorstep and you know maybe there's something in that for all of us in in realising the opportunity that there is yes because of the societal advantages that we know it brings for you know absolutely everybody to be able to make use of them but realising that this is a phenomenon which is happening it's something I'm you know thank you for asking the question in the way that you've asked it because it's made me want to understand that a little bit better because it shouldn't just be a passing fad because there's a way of keeping that whilst also attracting people to come back and I think we're all beginning to see those those international visitors on our streets and they're very welcome but it's what can we do to ensure that those people who perhaps haven't been going in the past to use and visit cultural organizations and institutions closer to home that they are indeed doing that just say incidentally people were standing queuing outside the national museum for Scotland yesterday before it opened which I thought was just a tremendous straw in the wind and just walking past you could hear yes it was people who were visiting but you know lots of families lots of people who were clearly from here or not far from here who were going and were you know wanting to wait in the rain in chamber street to go to you I think that's a good sign but there's something in that that Mr Golden has asked that is is definitely worth better better understanding thanks for that I've got a specific point for Angus Robertson as you'll be aware one of the organizations facing a funding reduction is the cultural and business fund Scotland who's facing a 33 percent cut in funding for 22 23 and this is an organization that makes funding available to cultural sector organizations and it's matched by business so therefore the cut is a double whammy for the cultural sector and I just wondered if the cabinet secretary could explain the rationale behind that funding cut yeah so this is something that my colleague Neil Gray has been dealing with and there's some internal communication that is circulating around that probably would make more sense for me to write probably to the whole committee because I'm sure that Mr Golden is not the only person on the committee to to want to understand the background to all of this but just make the general point that you know we are going to over the next um over the next years we are going to see funding constraints impacting organizations that do good work would I wish it to be so no I'd far rather that we did not have the constrained circumstances that we have and you know underlining this point as we come towards the end of the evidence session it's probably important to make this point we are as government having to live within our means this government does not have the normal levels at its disposal that other governments do ie the ability to borrow would I wish for us to be able to maintain our spending commitments as had been envisaged in in in in less constrained times absolutely will issues come along where people quite rightly want to know well is this the appropriate decision to be made yeah that's a perfectly that's a perfectly legitimate approach to take but I'm just I'm just acknowledging the fact that there are difficult decisions that are going to have to be made and I think one of the challenges but opportunities that we are going to have to be as as good as we can be in government is if there's one traditional funding line that has supported you know a good organisation and Morris Golden has highlighted one of them is are we making sure of other parallel funding streams that may be able to bridge the gap I'm not saying that that's a case necessarily with this specific case but we need to make sure we're getting maximum value out of the resources that we have to maintain and support the organisations that are operating out there but on the specific case I commit to write back to the through you convener so that Morris Golden and and colleagues can have better insight of that thanks cabinet secretary final question okay and I was just going to say I think that's very reasonable obviously the the spend review which we're on today doesn't went to the detail of mr golden's question so look forward to getting that response mr golden thanks convener we've focused quite rightly I think on in this evidence session on how cultural organisations can continue to do what they're already doing but clearly business as usual isn't acceptable in terms of achieving net zero and therefore despite the climate of a reduction in expenditure there's also a requirement for our cultural organisations to invest in energy efficiency measures which is going to be extremely challenging and I just wonder both in terms of assessment of that expenditure for cultural organisations which scottish government could assist with through directly or through their agencies or whether there is even a consideration for exemptions for certain buildings or indeed organisations but clearly then that needs to be squared off as a whole with meeting our wider net zero targets I just wondered your your thoughts on that cabinet secretary well it kind of goes back to the historic environment scotland questions that Sarah Boyack was was posing earlier in the session it's you know it's much easier to retrofit a relatively recent building to reduce its its carbon emissions it's very very difficult to do that the older a building gets and so yes there are there are a range sort of sliding scale of challenging in all of that are there different ways that or different allowances that should be given for that reality I would we want to be better advised about how it is that we're doing that in the first place but you know I would observe and this is a conversation that I was having again yesterday is that a lot of organisations that have have begun down the path of trying to make the necessary changes that we're all going to have to do we we've all kind of started with the lowest hanging fruit and I think there is a general understanding that the closer we get to the more testing targets that we have and we're going to have to make you know more difficult decisions as we go along and I think that that fits in part with the appeal that Kate Forbes was making for us trying to protect a space to have a mature debate about how is it that we do that because if all all we do is kind of retreat into our own ideological trenches around things and do not allow ourselves to think in new ways in all directions we're probably not going to be able to answer some of these really really big questions and so I'm not sure that I have the answer to hand for the specific question that Morris Golden has just asked about about this but I acknowledge the fact that you know specifically on the question of buildings and older buildings some of them are going to be next to impossible to to to upgrade to the the latest stage of environmental standards and many of those most of those that are are being built and have recently built been built are so how does one account for that differences against something that I'm content to have a look at thank you cabinet secretary back to you continue Mr Cameron thank you can you turn to the vex question of spending on the independence referendum I don't think this is either the correct time or forum to talk about the rights and wrongs of that and I don't expect we'll agree on it but can I ask you just as a matter of fact do you think a referendum will happen by the end of 2023 can I ask Kate Forbes first that is the intention and certainly that is what we're working towards in cabinet secretary yes and sorry to take issue I'm not sure it is a vexed question we can differ of course as we do honorably on how we would vote in such a such a referendum but I would hope as democrats all of us believe in having democratic votes and when governments are returned in elections on a platform for votes to be held that we all as democrats should agree that that's what should happen yes there's a cost that is associated with a referendum there's costs that are associated with Scottish parliament elections with UK parliament elections and it's somebody reasonably suggesting that having Scottish parliamentary elections is a vexed question I hope not our UK parliamentary elections are a vexed question of course it's not these are democratic votes and as a democrat I respect the results of the Scottish parliament elections last year that elected a majority of parliamentarians to this parliament the people voted for this that there should be a vote and a vote there should be and the government has set out its timetable I mean I would suggest gently to Mr Cameron that it would be helpful if his UK government colleagues were not just as amenable but also as respectful of democratic election outcomes in Scotland as former Prime Minister David Cameron was that would be helpful because it's not a vexed question the decisions being made a referendum has been asked for by the electorate and that's what should happen on the back of that there is a question as to the timetable we know that we await a referendum bill we know that has to be consulted upon legislation takes time and there is the potential for litigation and it is possible that either the timetable will slip or a referendum won't happen and if that transpires will you redeploy the funding of 20 million pounds within the culture portfolio given the very significant challenges severe challenges that that portfolio faces well Mr Cameron left out the other option of course which is that a UK government respects the result of the Scottish Parliament election and that Prime Minister Boris Johnson acts in exactly the same ways as predecessor David Cameron acts so I'm Scottish politics is as this Mr Cameron on this committee knows is full of UK government saying no no no yes and I would invite him to work with me to persuade the UK government to live up to their democratic undertakings after all they're particularly keen on going around the world saying that the UK is a democratic country upholding the highest standards of human rights democracy and the rule of law and it'd be really nice if they did it in this case as well will you will you redeploy the funding cabinet we're going to have a referendum aren't we don't think we're going to make much more from that this morning and I don't see any other oh mr mcmillan's big pardon thank you thank you convener and just for the record I don't have any relevant interests to declare in this committee so it just it's one question for both cabinet secretaries certainly the mid-term financial strategy was really quite stark I'm sure for anyone who read it regarding the population demographic of Scotland and it's not a new issue as we know it's something that's been around for quite some time and also by mid 2043 the projected 22.9% of the population will be of pensionable age as compared to 19% when it was in mid 2018 and also we've had Brexit and the severe implications of that affecting Scotland with particularly with migration and obviously people going back home so just the question is really just regarding any has been any update or any progress made with discussions with the UK government on helping inward migration to Scotland to actually help deal with it with that really important issue certainly which cleve has an impact upon Scotland's economy forgive me convener we we could do a whole session on this as part of my broad range of portfolio responsibilities I chair the Scottish government's population task force and I acknowledge Mr McMillan will have a particular interest in this given that the population statistics for Inverclyde in particular are of great concern for elected members there and so I can answer the question a number of ways firstly the Scottish government is a very seized of this as are understandably so especially local government leaders in authorities that have suffered historic population decline I think traditionally we in Scotland would have looked towards the northwest of the country looking at the highlands and islands areas where there have been particular population decline challenges in the past but we're now seeing that in other parts of the country not least in Inverclyde observation one observation two we are heading towards population decline in Scotland as a whole and this is a huge challenge and it is frankly totally unnecessary it is sadly in significant part because of UK government policy and the restrictions of brexit has foisted on us the type of brexit which has ended the free movement of people and that is the biggest single contributor to us facing population decline this is something that could be changed by government policy and I think that goes to the heart of Mr Macmillan's question our views are very well known they are very well understood in Whitehall and Westminster and they are totally ignored the UK government has shown no willingness thus far to be imaginative about different approaches different approaches to immigration policy different approaches to taxation policy if we look at the approach that we favored in terms of dealing with refugees for Ukraine which is not the same thing as immigration but it is about giving people a place that they can live and stay and as we know often is the case with people in those circumstances they then make a life decision to stay in the longer term and we have a UK government that's pursuing a refugee crisis as an immigration issue so on all of these levels the the UK is taking the wrong approach I mean the simple the simple solution to this of course is is that Scotland's parliament and government should be in charge of immigration and should make better decisions that makes Scotland attractive for people to come and live and work and study we're doing what we can we're setting up a migration advisory service we are doing everything that we can to join government up national and local to work out what it is that we can do we have international marketing campaigns we have policy ideas that we're trying to better understand we are working with other countries something I've spoken with Spanish colleagues for example not long ago because it is it's a challenge that's also been felt in parts of Spain and there are lessons that can be learnt from other countries perhaps primarily Norway because of what they've been able to do to support population numbers in in the west and northwest of that country so there's a lot in the question and there's a lot more that could be answered and you know I think it would be worthy of an entire session frankly and I'm keen to keep up my attendance rate at this committee convener because it's been pretty good thus far but I'm not wanting to slip down the batting average and now that I'm having other colleagues from government attending with me so if we're wanting to have an exchange about where things are with but because I really think it is an issue of such importance and because it will bring with it very damaging consequences economically and socially having a population decline in Scotland thank you um I think that does exhaust questions this morning can I thank both cabinet secretaries and your officials for your attendance at committee this morning I'm going to suspend for five minutes while we change over witnesses thank you we're now moving to a third agenda item which is intergovernmental relations it's a third session a series of meetings focused on post-euw constitutional issues and this morning we are joined by Dr Paul Anderson senior lecturer in international relations and politics from Liverpool John Moores university Dr Cory Brown swan lecturer in comparative politics at Queens University Belfast and Jess Sardin senior researcher at the institute of government and a warm welcome to you this morning we're also joined this morning by the committee's advisor Professor Michael Keating emeritus professor of politics at university Aberdeen who may contribute during the course of the meeting as well we're forming themes to explore this morning and we have just about an hour or so from the panel so if we could be concise with questions and answers that would be really helpful if I could start off by asking about the some of the work the committee has been doing regarding the iGR mechanisms following the review by the UK Intervolve Governments and there has been a lot of evidence that we received that in terms of UK internal market and common frameworks that has done very little to improve transparency of that process and that's also been a comment that's been shared by other devolved parliaments in this area and sort of equal committees in other areas and it's really to just say what your view is on this and in a situation where the UK Parliament is perhaps seen as paramount in the hierarchy that how as a Scottish Parliament we can push for more visibility of what is happening and governmental relations at that level and I'll go to you in turn I can see Jess smiling at me so I'm going to go to Jess Hardin first please yeah sure absolutely so there were some kind of specific measures in the review to try and improve transparency including this annual and quarterly reports of the whole of the intergovernmental relations that's intended to be published by the secretary act we've seen a couple of those reports so far I was perhaps a little disappointed that they seem to be quite UK government branded they had the kind of logo of the department for levelling up on them the foreword by Michael Gove now I don't know if that is just because the IGR secretary hasn't been set up yet and they will move to a more kind of jointly published format but I think it would be nice to see that kind of as an agreed measure in terms of some of the communicates that we see come out of various IGR meetings and now we have not only the kind of the top level forum the kind of the middle level forum the interministerial steering committee and then the interministerial the interministerial groups they all produce communicates I think they're incredibly variable with the level of detail that they have actually we've seen some useful ones so for example in the kind of Efra quadrilateral meeting the Efra IMG so that's the meeting of all the environmental ministers that that's actually quite helpful that was where that we saw that the poor governments had agreed an exclusion to the UK internal market act for single reusable plastics that's really useful information but in other areas we still see a kind of it was we discussed x y and z no actual substance of what went on and I think there is a question as to what the main barrier to that is I think secrecy in the need to we're not necessarily secrecy but confidentiality is one of the reasons why we don't see some of that information I think actually perhaps an underrated reason is that any communique has to be agreed before it can be published and I think sometimes there is a risk that the people get bogged down in trying to argue about the particular wording of various communicates which just means that they end up with less detail so I think that is actually also a barrier and I think that is the responsibility of of all four governments I think they all have a tendency to object to particular wording which makes it more difficult to agree these kind of communicates but I think the Efra example shows that we could get to a position where there is more information published if the four governments cooperate so I think it's a very mixed picture in terms of the amount of transparency of the various kind of intergovernmental meetings but hopefully they'll be moving towards a position in which more information rather than less is published. Dr Anderson do you want to? Sure, no problem. I think the first thing to say is there's recognition in these new arrangements that transparency is an important issue and I think the new arrangements do to some extent address some of the main critiques that were levelled at the previous joint ministerial structures where transparency is an issue and I think another important thing to say is intergovernmental relations across you know all systems throughout different countries are inherently opaque anyway they are as Jess was pointing out for good reasons for confidentiality you can't always reach agreement and of course you know meetings do take place behind closed doors at times so there is an element there of a need to maintain confidentiality and transparency therefore becomes more difficult where these new arrangements may signal a change and they do signal a change in this direction at least on paper is a commitment on the part of the different governments to engage more with publishing information particularly engaging more with parliament in terms of submitting reports and there you know there's going to be onus on particular committees within parliaments to effectively scrutinise what's coming out of these committees I think as Jess was saying detail is important and from what I've seen so far the detail is not what I would expect from these new structures given what it says on paper the detail is still and again it could be teething problems or trying to get into a rhythm of what information we should be teasing out of these things but I think that the commitment to increase transparency is important and I think here that the independent secretariat plays an important role because one of the main critiques of the previous structures is that you know it's not only that there wasn't any transparency but information wasn't shared in a timely manner but even post meetings information was scarce you know there is no for example place where you can go to get all this information different governments publish it in different places so I think there is a commitment to transparency I think the proof will be in the pudding whether or not the governments continue to to commit to publishing things in a timely manner and sharing that information that has been agreed to to go forward to the public but also to parliamentary committees I think that centralization or support for for a clearing house or central spot for these details is really important and it's we see mechanisms we see processes for this elsewhere because it was just mentioned the exclusion to the internal market act on single use plastics and it took quite a long time after that was agreed for that community to come out so I do think that Paul is right that there's something around teething that this is a new process you need to have this engagement you need to have this commitment you have good faith efforts here and it will hopefully work itself over out over time where you see kind of the timely publication of community communication reports I'm less convinced by by the annual reports of the importance of the annual reports I mean it's helpful to have everything consolidated together but in terms of your function your scrutiny function as a committee it's quite difficult to to scrutinize something to engage with something 12 months after the fact and you have a lot on the agendas are quite full and so that scrutiny can become more difficult if it's only released annually thank you Dr Alon thank you just briefly um please don't take this question as unduly loaded or unduly cynical however it relates to some of the things we've been looking at in this committee I mean just looking at the context of this is any dispute mechanism that's designed to fix these problems unduly hampered if the UK can fall back on residual power simply to legislate and devolve areas to solve the problem that it sees and I don't expect you to solve that problem but given that there has been this debate about the circumstances in which that can and should be done and the the debate about what constitutes normal circumstances how does that context impinge on this whole discussion that you've been looking at? I think the issues around Sule create or have created a sort of atmosphere or interaction between the Governments under guarded by mistrust and so I think that the the movement in the in the new arrangements towards dispute resolution merit special sort of or are good in terms of recognising that there is a problem that the UK government shouldn't be you know judged jury and executioner in these arrangements that the independent secretary that should play an important role and I think that does significantly improve how disputes should be handled and the issue there of course is whether or not the devolved Governments believe that's going to necessarily lead to you know more effective relations or a dispute mechanism that they will have faith in and I think the UK government naturally deals with devolution hierarchically and there is a unitary mindset in Westminster and Whitehall that still exists today so on paper there's at least a move to say we're going to move away from this slightly but still that sort of unitary mindset persists not withstanding two decades of devolution and that's always going to be an issue but I think here that the important thing it comes back to trust so the Governments have agreed to to move forward in these terms in terms of intergovernmental relations as Corrie saying they should enter into these negotiations in good faith and I think the important thing to point out as well is the UK is not the UK is unique in terms of Sewell and the UK government still being able to legislate but politics is not so harmonious business in many multi-level states and the UK of course is unique in that there's four separate Governments with four separate parties which makes intergovernmental relations complicated but not impossible it happens elsewhere and the difference is you need to enter into these negotiations with the willingness to compromise to work out problems and at times that's not or that certainly in recent years particularly since Brexit with legislation hasn't been the case particularly on the part of the UK government where I think the onus here is to to sort of set the scene or set the benchmarks a bit higher than it has been doing in the past so I think dispute resolution it's not impossible to resolve these disputes there are of course issues still around finance the financial disputes which are the most important ones as far as devolved Governments I think are concerned and the most frequent but I think there is a step in the right direction the proof of the pudding will be in the eating whether or not it works so I do I just come back to Paul's point around around trust I think what we've seen over over the last 20 years of devolution is a disuse in intergovernmental processes and it's hard to trust people that you don't know that you don't see that there's a contentious partisan dynamic at play and that's that's again not unique to the United Kingdom um but perhaps a more more formal more routine system of intergovernmental relations in which people are meeting each other people are building those relationships learning how to trust each other um I think is a is a positive step forward can that overcome the inherent empower imbalances in the UK no it it can't it can't it can't fix that system um but it can hopefully um allow for more productive um working relationships and every time you do see an agreement every time you do see positive negotiation and progress um is is a positive step like that it can build over time miss sargent yeah absolutely I mean I'd agree with Paul that I do think the dispute resolution mechanism is an improvement on what was there before I mean I think the problem you speak to is a fundamental problem of the UK constitution I suppose in that there aren't kind of strict rules it's you know parliamentary sovereignty ultimately a government with a majority in Westminster is able to to change legislation which can alter the constitution and I think traditionally the UK constitution's operated quite well as a political constitution on the assumption that all actors will kind of act rationally I think one of the reasons why the soil convention has actually worked so well previously to the most recent brexit period is because that threat of consent being withheld was enough to extract concessions when the UK government and the devolved administrations were in discussions now it does appear that that's that that's broken down exactly what what you do about that I guess there's kind of two options one is to restore that kind of traditional sense of political constitutionalism to ensure that there are kind of those negotiations and those concessions in that give and take that makes the constitution function but inevitably some people are also thinking about the possibility of a kind of a different system in which rights are more entrenched I mean that would require fundamentally a some kind of codified constitution because even if you codify elements of the devolution arrangements like in the soil convention you know that can still be overruled by by parliamentary majority so that's obviously something that people are looking at now including in the Welsh government and potentially also the Labour Party but obviously that would be quite a radical change and so there's a question whether there is the political will to overhaul the whole of the UK's constitutional system. Very briefly just on the point you just made miss sergeant I suppose again a loaded question but you've pointed out that the history where in the past people would not want to have been seen at UK level not to care about the view of devolved legislatures but how do you cope with a situation where they don't? I think it's a very difficult one because I don't think there are any easy answers because what it requires is a change in kind of culture and approach that's very difficult to really encourage anyone to do other than by you know just saying that that's the way to approach it you know there's there's no mechanisms you can use to enforce people to think that way I do think the Brexit process did create particular dynamics which lent itself to this slightly adversarial approach I say slightly actually quite adversarial approach between the UK government and the devolved administrations and the fact that there was a referendum also added a kind of extra complication into the picture there I think there is an opportunity now to return to more normal working so I would hope that going forward perhaps some of the the disputes that we saw over Sewell over the Brexit period might be avoided in future and we could return to this system where there are these behind the scenes negotiations there's discussion on legislation but yeah there's no easy answer to how you encourage people and I think you know all of the Governments at this point as well because I think there is also a risk that at times there's an incentive for the devolved administrations to or the devolved governments to object because politically that's also quite helpful for them so I think all sides need to come back together and and try and fix it thank you thank you Mr Cameron sorry did anyone else want to comment on that sorry sorry thank you thank you thank you convener can I address the question of international comparators which a number of you I think all of you have spoken about or written about and from the european systems whether it's a sort of federal or quasi federal system to through to Australia India and Canada can I just ask each of you for your observations on those and whether you see any of those providing a model for Scotland in relation to IGR going forward and if I could start with Dr Cory Brown's one great yes and so we have done quite a significant amount of comparative work looking at looking at those formal federations but also quasi quasi federations I think I was I was before your colleagues in 2015 talking about scrutiny and transparency in intergovernmental relations and someone asked me well what's the model what's is there a system where it works well where intergovernmental relations works well I honestly I think intergovernmental relations is always difficult because there's disputes over power there's disputes over money there's there's partisan disputes so it's always very difficult but we do see models where you have a more cooperative system where you have buy-in where you have faith that that people are working together um I think what we see when we look to Canada we see quite significant formalization of the system of intergovernmental relations supported by a secretariat um which brings people together on a regular basis there's this formal mechanism for dispute resolution when you look to the the management of the internal markets the provinces feel that they have an important voice there um so we do see examples of of where this works in Spain you have sectoral conferences and it's it's a case where intergovernmental relations because of the dispute over Catalonia is quite difficult so at the executive level things are very difficult but you have sectoral conferences that meet regularly that bring together ministers and civil servants regularly together outside of the domain of the constitutional debate and so I think when we look towards those models you we see cases we see states where you have similar constitutional dynamics to that of the UK contentious debates over the constitutional future of each um but at a sectoral level at at a ministerial level that some of that can be put aside to cooperate on key issues to cooperate on the economy to cooperate on COVID response things like that um so I do think there's there's not a perfect model there's not there's not blueprint for the Scotland and the rest of the UK um but we can look towards some of those other states where things work better um to to see if we can borrow something from there and Jess Sargent please sure I mean I'll keep it brief because I know uh Paul and Cory have done a lot more kind of detailed research into various international examples and my point is perhaps less helpful than than what they're gonna say um but I think I just wanted to point out the kind of unusual nature of the UK constitution and I think one of the barriers to adopting some systems that are used elsewhere and that's the kind of dual role of the UK government as the government of the UK and the government of England which makes it it very difficult for them the UK government to kind of act um in a in a way that makes decisions for the whole of the UK in a kind of neutral basis but also to act as a kind of convener or um the kind of central part of the other member states because of this kind of complicated dual role so I think just a kind of note of caution of borrowing too many examples from other places um it's not as I say not necessarily helpful um but I think there are things that make it more difficult to implement those types of systems I think that's a point that Dr Anderson you've made as well isn't it yeah and I think I mean echoing exactly what Cory said there is no perfect model of intergovernmental relations these relations are conditioned by political context they're conditioned by political culture um and you can have the most perfect structures that does not mean intergovernmental relations are going to work and that the interaction is going to be there so you know picking up on what Cory is saying around Canada that are and I think you can see this clearly in the new arrangements um these lessons have been taken from elsewhere because the sectorial conferences in Spain which do work well notwithstanding um inter-regional issues particularly around Catalonia and secessionism um sectorial conferences happen agreements are made um there's clear commitment on behalf of most governments I think potentially where the UK um it finds it more difficult is we're talking about um three devolved um governments and a UK government as Jess was saying with with a double role in Canada where we have 10 provinces in Spain we have 17 autonomous communities um I think the the big difference between where inter-governmental relations work really well is the federal way of thinking um so you know Switzerland Canada at Germany where the second chamber um is a federally representative chamber where there's a culture of compromise and cooperation built into these arrangements um the UK government or the UK itself is probably never going to become a fully fledged self-identified federation um but certainly over the last two decades it's moving in that direction but lessons there can be learned in terms of how political culture can inform these relations and I think that's potentially sometimes more important than having the perfect structures and I think the other thing to to not forget is inter-governmental relations are also effective when they happen informally um so I find this in my research as well speaking with ministers in this parliament and elsewhere to say well you know we go to these meetings and it can be contentious and difficult and not harmonious um but I can phone the minister and Westminster because I know who they are um I've got their mobile number we deal with things informally or and civil servants play an important role here as well so um formal structures are good they're stepping in the right direction they're needed that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have the most effective relations and that's the case in all multi-level systems thank you just one final question um about the internal markets comparatives because that's something that I think is at the foremost forefront of our mind um and has been recently and I was very struck by something that um dr Cory Brown wrote in her submission which was about the comparison between Australia and Canada um whether I think that I quote there are two modes of thinking about the internal market in these two states in Australia there is comparatively minimal state level resistance to process of harmonisation whilst in Canada barriers to trade are to a degree considered an acceptable cost to maintain provincial autonomy do you want to develop that at all? Sure sure so that's um concurrent work looking at and and really trying to build find lessons for the UK internal market on how these very developed federations which which also have a Westminster system our Westminster style system and manage the internal market in in Australia we see we see an instance where the federal government the commonwealth has there's a significant power imbalance um they have all the money the vertical fiscal imbalance is is so extreme in Australia um that often the states go go along with things because they the the centre has the purse strings and so it's very different from Scotland um it's also a political culture aspect as well where there's a sense and and this is something I continually found in interviews in Australia where they say well we need to tidy up the federation it doesn't make sense to have this policy divergence we need we need to all we need to have it the same throughout there's not a whole lot of tolerance for policy divergence in Canada it's very different especially in in provinces which with a distinctive political identity a distinctive national identity there's a sense that yes you're going to we are going to accept some barriers to the internal market um in comparison to other federal federal states the Canadian internal market is a very fragmented one um but that's accepted because provincial autonomy is very important so the the ability of the federal government to intervene to to harmonize or to um reduce barriers to trade is much more limited and when we saw the Canadian free trade agreement to reduce barriers to trade that was brought about at the impetus of the provinces themselves they agreed to have a general baseline and then brought the federal government and um to that agreement it's a bit up in the air whether that's worked um but you have very clear dispute resolution processes you have processes for reconciliation to reduce barriers to trade to agree things between the provinces um so you're very formalized structures um with a quite fragmented internal market but that's politically, culturally that's that's that's accepted that's that's considered to be a worthwhile compromise thank you thank you convener thank you mr rascool yeah i was struck by what you were saying about um sexual conferences and i know that belgium i think has ministerial conferences i'm quite interested in that kind of wider conversation i mean not not to dilute the role of politicians and ministers but you know it seems that a lot of the kind of legislation that we deal with is statutory instruments are very technical so it is perhaps a discussion more between government agencies with stakeholders and the agreements that then follow that you know legislation then gets brought forward before it gets near politicians so can you say a little bit more about how those that kind of wider approach works that wider conversation where politicians are in the mix but it's actually you know civil servants and agencies and others that are that are that are part of that and whether whether we have that in in the uk and across these islands or not yeah jess you want to go first job um yeah i think there is actually a lot of working that goes on official and public body level um that's kind of on a four nation basis um if you think it's some of the areas covered by common frameworks there's the food standards agency that works very closely with the food standards scotland you've got um the hse which is responsible for a lot of areas of kind of chemical regulation and actually speaking to a lot of these regulators they almost don't really think that um the the the potential for regular regulatory divergence is that much of a problem because they say you know we make recommendations to ministers in some cases they do have regulation making powers and to ministers and all four nations on the basis of of the evidence and the evidence in each part of the uk is actually very similar um although obviously there are different circumstances in in each part of the uk generally um it's not like there are kind of wildly different economies or different kind of circumstances that would necessitate different food standards or or those sorts of things so i think one of the interesting things is that a lot of the bodies that were established are were established kind of pre devolution so they weren't necessarily set up to serve for governments and actually different regulators take very different approaches to this some of them do have kind of formal representation from the four nations on their boards some of them have what's known as service level agreements which are much more informal so for example the HSE has that just kind of they agree with the Scottish government that they will advise on this little bit rather than kind of looking at the whole picture so i think there is a question of particularly post brexit when some of these functions are returning to the UK from the EU whether we need to think a little bit more about how that kind of system works generally and thinking also about organisations like the competition and markets authority which will now have responsibility for subsidy control across the whole of the UK and also houses the opposite of the internal market which will be advising on a lot of instances of regulatory divergence whether more needs to be done to ensure that that's a kind of four nation basis but actually i think there is a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes and works quite well and perhaps that's why we hear about it a bit less because it is working well kind of behind the scenes but perhaps yeah it's a bit more kind of piecemeal approach than there might be in in other countries and um corrie do you want to talk a bit more about the sectoral circumstances i'm aware that various sectors were very much involved with the CETA trade deal including our own scotch whisky association i think that managed to carve some concessions out of it who knew but yes definitely so we have the um when we look to to other federal states um we we have sectoral conferences in in spain in belgium in canada which are are often driven by ministerial priorities by priorities of the governments and set out on an annual basis on perhaps by annual basis um but largely driven by civil servants with input from civil society with industry associations um so i think in in spain there is there's upwards of 20 um that meet throughout the year some of them meet very frequently because it's something that you need to bring people together on to coordinate or ahead of an agreement you see a greater degree a greater intensity of coordination there um some meet less frequently because there's not kind of a need for cooperations the minister for sport and sports don't need to really cooperate that much um while the minister is for the economy do um so you see sectoral level intergovernmental relations which often works quite well um both for the formation of agreements on certain areas and cooperation agreements whether those are bilateral or or multilateral agreements um but also just for for information sharing and policy learning and that those coordinate that coordination that those relationships tend to be quite important um in spain they're they're very formalized um so they have official agreements they have decision making processes they have processes for voting um there's an emphasis on consensus and a priority to securing consensus but the in the event that consensus can't be secured there's processes for for decision formal decision making um but again the issue of a of a sing of a government representing multiple entities um or having um the kind of dual-hatted role of england isn't present in in spain or in Belgium Belgium's always complicated with their with their regional and community component but there's a similar process so yeah i'm cool um i think the first thing to say is don't underestimate the work of civil servants and keeping into governmental relations going um igr are at times the glue that keeps states together but they're they're also the oil that keeps things going and even throughout you know the last five uh years of difficult intergovernmental relations um in the media and and very you know public um intergovernmental relations happen behind the scenes because civil servants are there to to keep these um issues going i think in terms of bringing in other agencies it's a common practice across different states um particularly to take advantage and exploit the niche expertise that these agencies have that that governments potentially don't have um you know with no offense to to politicians um in the intergovernmental relations is not the top of priorities when people uh or come into politics or want to be elected um i don't think um and so i think here you have to rely on this sort of niche expertise not to underestimate however that devolved governments have niche expertise the joint ministerial committee on europe um worked very well because the the devolved governments were able to bring in niche expertise around agriculture and things like this that wasn't necessarily shared um within the uk government and i think just picking up in the final point around sectoral conferences it's intergovernmental relations is is about interaction it's about cooperation and collaboration but as cori is saying it's also about opportunities from learning from each other so it's about sharing information um it's about sharing best practice and we see this in the uk where where things have been introduced in in this parliament that have been rolled out elsewhere you know in terms of smoking bans and things like this so you can see there is opportunity for policy learning and i think sectoral conferences offer an important lesson there but where they also work is the horizontal level that is governments working together without the central government involved and typically this happens in spain to present it for all the reasons i mentioned about policy learning and things like this but also then to coalesce around a particular position to then challenge the central government or go so as cori's mentioning around um the provincial governments in in canada horizontal relations in canada predate vertical relations with the federal government so it's easier for these governments to come together with a position around you know trade and then go to the to the federal um government the uk's hamper tier because there's only three devolved governments and england doesn't have a devolved governments although there's potentially devolved leaders around metro mayors and things like this but i think sectoral conferences it's not just about facilitating co-operation which is important there are other things that can be learned from governments parliaments civil servants and of course this the niche expertise of individual agencies and and other organisations okay thank you can i ask a quick supplementary um in terms of the stage where it changes after it breaks it and and building these new systems and and working towards them so uh deput convener and i attended the ppa as observers in in brusels um ministerial level there is a a pre meet of the ministers and and the UK government to that but with the delegation made up solely of Westminster MPs and House of Lords members the devolved um parliaments were all there as observers now there wasn't someone there from the senate due to the irish electoral cycle but it was the northern island protocol that absolutely dominated the two days and um i guess i'm asking is it a similar situation anywhere where the parliamentary or the the federal arrangements where they don't mirror the ministerial levels in the way that the you know the ppa doesn't seem to in the fact that um the there's no pre meet with the UK delegation for us to be able to contribute to or or be involved in um as devolved nations so how does that work in other in other areas um if i'll i'll i'll i'll try i think uh potentially here one of the things that needs to be more explored in the UK which is um what you've hinted at is around interparliamentary relations um the you they have happened in in the UK but they've been very ad hoc um and i think here there's exactly you know just like what i was saying around sectoral currencies there's opportunities to bring parliaments together to learn um you know around processes within parliaments scrutiny of committees um sort of sharing best practice and things like that and i think that you have into parliamentary relations in other systems they're normally not as formalised as into governmental relations but they do exist and potentially there that can help um sort of what Corry was saying at the beginning bringing people together and building that trust and so that you sort of work um together i think one of the issues around intergovernmental relations and lots of systems is the difference between being listened to and being heard um and ensuring that in the case of the UK the devolved governments have a voice um that's something that was not the case in the devolved in the joint ministerial structures with potentially the exception of the joint ministerial committee on Europe where the devolved governments um you know where they are they could have input in pre meets and uh you know with certain caveats and limitations but those structures worked more effectively because the devolved governments were much more involved in them and other structures so i think and i think that's the case in in countries in other countries federal countries including uh you know quasi federal like Spain where still central government tends to have a key role at the sort of apex of intergovernmental structures um it's not a great thing it's not a good idea um to have this centralised um control it's obvious um why it exists but it's that that sort of taints how relations can happen but i don't think here the UK is necessarily an outlier in how in bringing governments together but i think it comes back to this building trust relations and opportunities to sort of share those things and not necessarily in pre meets but at least having a discussion where where the governments feel they're not just saying or grandstanding or it's in the interpretation of grandstanding actually what they're saying is being listened to and being actioned or being critiqued and then policy formulated or agreements formulated from this but it's not an easy it's not a linear process and it isn't like that in any intergovernmental relation structure in other countries i guess the pre-meat for well certainly for myself i don't have any different opinion but the pre-meat is the key thing for us and that we don't have an opportunity to feed into that delegation pre-meat um i'm going to move to questions from Sarah Boyack please thanks very much convener um can i also thank you for the submissions we've had in advance it's been able to give us a bit of depth in terms of looking at the alternatives it's really to follow up the questions about inter-parliamentary work but to kind of broaden that out as well because one of the issues that's raised and we've just briefly heard from dr anderson about the horizontal relationships which are not factored in and they're not formalised and the scope for doing that in the UK to learn from other countries so the horizontal relations being both between the UK government and the devolved governments but also with local governments so acknowledging that multi-tier set of relationships and so i was wondering to kick off dr anderson you want to say a bit more about that and where you think we are because we've met with PACAC the UK Parliament's constitutional affairs team we've met the house of lords team that are looking at constitutional change and there does feel like an appetite for change so it's thinking through what are the priorities to push in terms of both inter-parliamentary and inter-government relations that you don't miss out that potential radical change that could actually solve some of the challenges sure i think inter parliament interparliamentary relations are not are often not they're not as interesting as intergovernmental relations because you don't necessarily have the tensions that pop up you know you're not going to find front page news of a meeting between committees within this chamber and west minister but i think they're important and i think they're particularly important given that we've had devolution for two decades we have parliaments well in wales and in scotland in the assembly in northern island where lessons can be learned between all three where we see particularly in wales at the moment you know changes being mooted around electoral systems and how to move forward a sort of coming of age of you know after two decades taking stock and where are we and i think it's a good thing we've seen you know over the last few years committees in this chamber working with committees in west minister that works and i think it's a good thing that the committee particularly given where we are now in the uk in terms of inter interdependencies particularly post brexit where we have competencies now that are overlapping there needs to be more interaction between governance but that doesn't mean that committees can't work together either in seeking to address issues in coalescing around for example a particular issue to to force government into interacting so i'm thinking here there seems to be consensus in the different parliaments around what jess was saying at the beginning around the sewell convention and perhaps you know how to address these issues and that's certainly the case from committees in the house of lords in the house of commons in the welsh parliament and here as well so why not bring these different committees together in the forum and sort of take a position to try and not force change but encourage debate and conversation local government as well i think you know there there's a contentious issue at the moment around shared prosperity fund and what how money is going to be spent whether or not the devolved governments will be involved in those conversations or cut out and things like that and i think there it's not normal to have the central government and local government necessarily cooperating together they're having intergovernmental relations but why not bring local government into some of these conversations to work better with devolved government you know having local government devolved governments work together is clearly a good thing and if the UK government involved in those conversations then fine with the caveat of course that local government is very different elsewhere and just sort of final point one of the weaknesses of the new arrangements is the elephant in the room which is england and the UK government has a double role as the UK government and the English government and here i think england potentially loses out a bit because you do have nine metro mayors you have metro mayors with significant policy responsibilities we've seen during the pandemic that certain mayors took on big roles and stood up to central government when they were unhappy why isn't the Scottish parliament or the Scottish government working potentially with some of these institutions you know there's some exciting things happening in Liverpool and Manchester around transport transport you know are there lessons to be learned for other parliaments could they work together so i think their horizontal relations could potentially address that imbalance but that's with help that england sort of gain a different voice from the UK government because of course priorities are very different but also an opportunity to learn and share policy ideas and things like this as well i think it's really good to get that on the record in terms of change that could actually make a big difference and your your point about transport i mean there's also stuff that could be learned from glasgland strathclyde in terms of the work that's been done on on transport there too i was going to ask just a follow-up question for Cree round swan about that issue about different levels and relationships and you talk very interestingly about canada and the work that's done that's cross-border and intergovernmental in terms of relationships and agreements i was wondering if you could say a little bit more about that because it's a way of strengthening the impact that we could get and thinking about that linking across to the intergovernmental but focusing on the interparliamentary work and would you agree that there's a potential role say for the metro mayors to just change the dynamic at the centre and stop thinking of the centre running things and then acknowledging multi-level parliaments and governments yeah i think i think that bringing in those voices into intergovernmental forums is really important and we see this elsewhere where mayors where where council city councils or major urban areas have representation in the sectoral conferences in in canada and spain and when it impinges on their areas of responsibility that's often very helpful and i do wonder if in a formalized system of intergovernmental relations if if the Welsh Scottish and Northern Irish executive would would be quite keen on on being at the same level as the metro mayors so there's some sensitivities there and that is always perpetually the issue how do you do if in a constitutional future of the UK do you carve up England into a federation does that how does that work and no one's no one's ever come up with it with a concrete answer there um but i think it is important the more voices that you have in the room particularly for that policy learning for sharing um for cooperation and coordination on things i think the more voices the better makes decision making more complicated but we know that the the forums for intergovernmental relations aren't really aren't always decision making forums or aren't forums where they need to have a vote um i think of the parliamentary interparliamentary level i think that coordination is is important we do see it you see it less i think within federal states but within um within european member states where you have committees scrutinizing european legislation particularly on security and defense and so that's perhaps there's some lessons to be gained from there um so i don't it feels a little bit silly to say everyone needs to talk more but everyone does need to talk more because that is how you gain ideas that's how you cooperate that's how you build trust so that when it comes time to take these big decisions these difficult these sensitive decisions you're doing so from a place of trust and you're always going to have the constitutional elephant in the room you're always going to have this this big party partisan dynamics um but if you can speak to how do we respond to this economic issue how do we improve transport how do we improve connectivity if you if you can speak from a position of trust and the pre-existing relationships that's that's often very helpful yeah because on one level you've got uh longevity amongst civil servants who might be there longer ministers do get reshuffled um and parliament to change around but there's a bit more stability in parliaments in terms of committees but you also get the cross-party links so it's interesting just looking at how you how you make that work going forward um I'm just wondering if I think also you made some comments Cory Brown swan about the memorandum of understandings do you want to say a little bit about how you think that's worked because it's it's not that long that we've had them and then we had Covid so are there any lessons from the last couple of years about what we need to accelerate to make them work better um I think the MOU so agreed between between this parliament and the Scottish government um to increase transparency to notify committees when relationships with the with between governments when and when meetings are taking place I think that's worked to a degree um it's it's been consistently achieved it's been consistently you see the publication of um of those communicates often they're not very detailed and coming back to Jess's initial point I think the more detailed those can be um the more helpful they are and they're helpful for broader transparency they're helpful for researchers who work on intergovernmental relations um but they give us a sense of what's going on and and you need a sense of what's going on to to be able to ask the right questions to figure out who to call for witnesses to be able to ask to to tease out more data there and I think there is always the question of confidentiality whether things are sensitive um but more detailed communicates more detailed outputs and I think are are always helpful so I don't have Jess Sargent do you want to come in on the inter-parliamentary work and how you make that work better yeah great I mean I think um I agree with uh a lot that um Paul and Cory have said um I think actually one of the the keys to inter-parliamentary working is through the committee system so I'm really pleased to hear the work that you've been doing I think what we need to make sure is that it's not just the reserve of people that are explicitly looking at inter-governmental relations and actually that it really feeds through um kind of regular policy issues I mean we set out some kind of proposals for um inter-parliamentary working in our report on the UK internal market and one of the ideas that I'm quite attracted to is a kind of a chairs forum um that mirror some of the inter-ministerial groups that will be set up and this was a model that was used with the chairs of the Europe committees um when there was still the the JMC in Europe and I think that would be really helpful for information sharing um and particularly flagging potential instances of regulatory divergence I know that one of the um one of the issues the committee has been looking at is around kind of scrutiny of common frameworks and regulatory divergence and the Scottish Government's response to kind of one of the recommendations was that the committee will have the opportunity to scrutinise any kind of piece of legislation that might be part of a common framework and that's certainly true but this committee this committee won't necessarily have the opportunity to scrutinise a piece of legislation that's coming through another parliament and vice versa so I think that can actually be a really useful forum to allow people to recognise where there have been even without waiting for the governments to come and tell them that they've made this agreement and this is happening um to to yeah to flag those issues coming down the pipeline to potentially um make joint reports because I think fundamentally the the best way of influencing inter-governmental um discussions and decisions is through inter-parliamentary working um because if there is negotiations in the inter-governmental sector once they're concluded and then the the the governments present that to their parliaments they're very unlikely to want to go back and change that because that will mean reopening the discussions really reopening negotiations whether is if there is a specific issue that all the committees or all the parliaments can can flag as a particular problem that they all commonly feel all their governments need to address and I think that puts a lot more pressure on them um so there's the potential to actually extract changes which you know scrutiny for scrutiny sake is very important but actually fundamentally it's about what impact that that could have I think we agree with that environment and rural issues economic issues trade issues we just can't be experts on that so it's how how those issues are flagged so that we get that effective cross-parliamentary work really important thanks thank you thank you miss challenge uh dr Alan's going to leave us at the public sector do you want in quickly no i'll have to leave i'm afraid okay sorry thank you mr mcmillan thank you thank you convener it's a dr anderson that you said something yellow on which i'm sure we'll actually strike a chord with everyone in the room and you said it's silver servants of the glue that keeps things going when it comes to igr because obviously i think there's some of the discussions that have taken place elsewhere at the point also politicians do move on etc and i'm going to say this is my third session in this parliament of talking about igr and i was on the devolution for the powers committee way back so it's a bit of groundhog day to say the least but the it's kind of struck me certainly looking through the submissions and also the comments from Professor Nicola McEwen when and i quote she stated that parliamentary committees in every UK legislature have called for greater transparency and greater oversight of igr not least in light of its increased importance in the context of both brexit and covid she could want to say there is no reference to parliamentary oversight or a requirement to engage the parliaments with regards to this new igr review do you do you agree with Professor McEwen or would you have any other thoughts i've stopped with yourself first of all dr brownstone i think that's true i think i think as we're looking at formalising as there's been a process to move forward in formalising intergovernmental relations there needs to be specific opportunities for parliamentary scrutiny to take place for oversight to take place and in other cases we see we see committees specifically charged with intergovernmental relations the there's a committee within the Quebec national assembly that has remit for intergovernmental relations you know that's necessary i wonder if it's it's better for individuals committees the environment committee the health committee to to engage in the scrutiny functions but i think that's something there's an opportunity and a need for that for that scrutiny and oversight to take place across the UK and so not just here in this parliament but elsewhere but it does seem to be a bit of an oversight to not and perhaps we can understand the motivation behind not not not telling parliaments how to do how to do their job so it so there's an element there that it's up to each individual parliament to decide how they want that to exercise that scrutiny function but it is it is crucially important i think before you come in miss sergeant i think it's fair to say that population tells us how to do virtual world of time anyway so so you don't have to be shy about it yeah i mean i certainly think it's important for there to be scrutiny of these intergovernmental discussions i think one of the challenges is around the appetite of parliamentarians and i think actually particularly in in the uk parliament particularly to scrutinise igr in the abstract and although the house of lords has done a very good job on scrutinising common frameworks we've seen very little engagement from the commons because they don't understand like a lot of mps don't think that this technical complex thing which you know has some you know these little dispute resolution procedures is what they should be spending their time on versus you know being with constituents or working on policy issues and so i think where there is a lot of potential for better scrutiny of igr is through specific policy issues and in order for that to take place i think all the governments need to empower parliament to to look at the igr aspects of various policy proposals um and that could be through including some information about um the kind of intergovernmental discussions that have taken place within explanatory notes it could be a discussion of uh the kind of broader regulatory context so what other governments are doing as as part of that um the kind of resources that are given to parliamentarians when they're asked to look at legislation or policies or those sorts of things i think another really great resource could be the office for the internal market um which can at the request of governments um look at the implications of a particular policy um either before it's in place or after um that will rely on on the governments themselves to trigger to ask for that advice and i think it's something that um parliamentarians should be encouraging governments to use so that they have that um thorough analysis economic analysis and regulatory analysis so i think rather than perhaps just giving it a role and saying you need to do this i think actually what governments need to think about and what parliamentarians should be pushing governments to think about is what resources and information they need to be able to not just do that role but do it effectively rather than giving them another thing to kind of think about at their kind of committee meeting i think actually it's how can it be meaningful how can it make changes how can it relate to decisions that are being made or policy that's that's going to be taken forward sure um just sort of briefly on the first point around civil servants i think um not to say civil servants don't do a great job one of the big issues that i think we have in white hall is civil servants do move on pretty quickly so i think well civil servants in the devolved parliaments understand the evolution that's not always the case in white hall and that's potentially why we have so many issues around and i think we saw that's very clearly during covid misunderstandings about what the devolved parliaments do because civil servants change and then have to be you know educated or reeducated on what the devolved parliaments do so i think they are important but you know perhaps here needs to be a lot more education around for civil servants particularly in white hall about devolved governments and things on parliamentary oversight i i certainly agree with with what professor mcun has said and i don't think it's um unsurprising that there's not work or there's not comments on parliamentary oversight based on what cori is saying but also because the different governments interact with parliaments in different ways as well so the onus is on the devolved governments to engage with parliaments and to agree sort of terms there and how to share information or to ensure that parliaments has a scrutiny and oversight function again here why don't the devolved parliaments come together in a horizontal capacity and discuss how to do that you know is there a way that can be learned between the different devolved parliaments and how to do it and i think here that's where memorandum of understanding between the parliament and the government is a good thing it's good practice and perhaps it needs to be updated in light of the new arrangements because i don't think an annual report is enough and is cori is saying it's an annual report that's being examined 12 months after relations so it's a potential moving that to a quarterly function the only caveat and i think that's important because then there should be an expectation on ministers engaging into governmental relations that they're going to be held to account by committees that they should be sharing information that this is important not in a negative way in the sort of positive you know come along and engage with us and share this information where it's important is to find that balance because too much transparency may lead to you know ministers sending off stock answers in with regard to requests or you know if we have to after every intergovernmental meeting submit a report on this then you know it's a copy and paste job from the previous report with a few words and so it's trying to find that balance between creating expectations that the intergovernmental relations through governments are being held to account and scrutinised by parliament but also not creating an extra layer of bureaucracy and work that puts perhaps ministers off and engaging properly with with interparliamentary structures. Okay, well thank you for that. I mean notwithstanding the points raised regarding civil servants I think it's fair to say that anything anything that's happening now is certainly an improvement upon IGR because what was there beforehand just wasn't fit for purpose in any way shape or form it was very much a failure. So with a new process it's there which certainly I welcome the fight to progress certainly being made. So it's no longer ad hoc but also it's not in a statutory provision. It seems to be somewhere in between. Do you think it should actually be in a statutory footing? I'm neither convinced nor unconvinced by the statutory footing and I think the SEAL convention shows that some of the distrust around what placing intergovernmental relations on a statutory footing would mean and I think one of the things that the UK politics did well until Brexit was to keep things out of the courts to try and deal with things politically. This is not the case for example in Spain where we have a politicisation of the judiciary and the judicialisation of politics and that's something that I'd be keen to avoid in the case of the UK. I think that statutory footing has a symbolic importance it's there to say you know we need that these intergovernmental relations are important they should take place but if you look at cases around you know other federal or devolved systems very few form you know the most important intergovernmental mechanism is normally not required you know grounded in statutory footing and I think I put in my briefing paper the in India is an exception here. In Spain you have a more sort of legal framework around intergovernmental relations and here there's an expectation that or sort of a legal requirement that information is published that the information is shared and things like this but that's not doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have effective relations the catalan government post 2017 referendum didn't want to engage in multilateral relations with the Spanish government you know what's the punishment for that under if there's a legal provision saying you have to do it so I can understand why it's there and I think there's an important symbolic issue around it but I'm not convinced you know it doesn't mean you're going to have effective intergovernmental relations very very quickly running out of time we've only got about five minutes left so I'm going to allow an answer to to strip a messy to limit it to not one word but one sentence please yeah absolutely I mean fail to basically I'd agree with paul I think we can't return to the situation where the bodies that the jmc just aren't meeting I think that's completely unacceptable but fundamentally what it really needs is is political will from all four governments to continue to to meet and that's not an easy thing to to fabricate but I certainly hope that post this review there will be renewed impetus on those structures I think statutory requirements are symbolically important but but as just said it it returns to political will thank you in the interest of time I'll try and bundle my questions into one so I'll probably be two parts and I just wanted to firstly explore we've discussed around changing the culture I used to work at the Murray Darling river basin commission in Australia which was a tricky process attempting to manage a finite water resources between competing states and indeed competing actors within states so I just wondered your thoughts because we've also mentioned a sectoral conference as well or or some other body to look at a specific issue but even with that is the structures sufficient where it's in political interests for intergovernmental relations not to work very well and I think beyond the sectoral conferences where I think sharing best practice on specific issues is a really good point and would be welcome you know Wales have done fantastically on recycling there's a model there that could be rolled out certainly in Scotland but more challenging in England but is there something beyond sharing best practice within those structures so who would like to begin I think where you say intergovernmental relations and work work quite well beyond information sharing is when there's a specific project or specific need in Canada we see regional cooperation on environmental issues around pipelines around renewables and so when you bring governments together to work on a specific project which is in their shared interest which has cross border implications and I think that's an important opportunity for intergovernmental relations and and takes it beyond that kind of information sharing function and builds that record of trust and cooperation and collaboration and so we do see that quite a bit in in Canada specific coordination particularly on the environment which is of course a cross cutting issue. Jess? Yeah just to echo some of what Corrie said I think where there is the real potential for all four governments to see the benefit of IGR is on these kind of policy issues where they have a shared interest like climate change like food standards and you know that is happening actually you know one of the post Brexit freedoms that the UK government mentioned in its paper was around kind of new action to prevent puppy smuggling that is something that's being implemented GB wide on the basis of the agreement of all the governments even though it's a devolved area similarly something like the adding folic acid to bread which was recently agreed between the four governments because it was understood that actually implementing it only in Scotland wouldn't actually be effective because supply chains are UK wide so those things are happening the problem is sometimes the big constitutional issues do get in the way and I think although Brexit is somewhat kind of behind us and that will help to some extent I think that it's going to be a tough time ahead with you know potential for a second independence referendum ongoing disagreement over the Northern Ireland protocol it is going to be challenging but hopefully setting up these new inter ministerial groups will allow ministers to continue those discussions at a policy level even when the kind of high level politics might be a bit more difficult thanks yeah just very briefly on political culture I think political culture is the main issue around getting more effective into governmental relations in the UK unlike other sort of federal states where you have this political culture of compromise negotiation the UK doesn't you know this has not been the experience of intergovernmental relations in the UK since 1999 I think here a lot of the the onus is sometimes on the devolved governments that perhaps have a different constitutional vision and so therefore you know you can say they don't want it to work but it is within the interests of all governments to at least cooperate together but at the same time I think you know this is very clear within the UK government where ministers have attended these meetings in the past because they've told to attend you know there was whole debate around these new arrangements where they're not the prime minister should chair the main committee and there seemed to be retinence that that would be the case for the prime minister which of course the prime minister should be involved in these and so I think as well it's about trying to the political culture around whether or not Westminster thinking the governmental relations are important as well as the devolved governments but also building up this political culture of trust of good faith negotiations of working together and willing to come together and work on common issues and I think if intergovernmental relations are going to improve that there needs to be a change in mindset in how they how governments approach intergovernmental relations on paper there is whether or not that happens in a practical level remains to be seen but I am cautiously optimistic I think here the important thing to say is the mute music once a new relation once a new arrangements were published Westminster the Westminster government Michael Gough said you know these are going to be great and it's going to revolutionise relations that was not the case from the words from any of the representatives from storming from the wealth government the British the Scottish government or the Northern Irish executive it was much more cautious with with we will see and so I think political culture is the main issue and and that's certainly something that should and will and will have to change if intergovernmental relations to become better and more effective thank you for that agenda item can I thank you all for your attendance at committee this morning it's been a very interesting session I'm going to close this meeting we do have a a further agenda item in private so could ask people that are not in the room for that to please exit as quickly as possible and I'm sorry to do that but it's parliamentary time table sort of thirsty thank you