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That is entirely helpful. The purpose of having a committee session such as this is to gauge what members of this committee and the Scottish Parliament more widely regard as the optimal way to understand processes. Our default position is that the Government wishes Scottish legislation to be de minimis in alignment with that of the European Union. That is our position.

Thank you for putting that on the record. You have the advantage of having been in the previous evidence session; I was not. That is helpful. We go through the written and oral evidence, take away suggestions that have been made, and consider them.

Scottish organisations were represented in Brussels for a long time. They were co-located in the same building, which was an excellent model that ensured that local government and other organisations with an interest in European Union decision making were in the same building with Scottish Government officials. I want us to repeat that model when we become a member state of the European Union, because it is clearly the best one.

On the absence of funding, we do not have enough time in this evidence session to consider the replacement of existing European Union schemes with the anaemic and underpowered versions from the UK Government. Members should consider what has happened in respect of the Erasmus programme and how much less has been spent on the Turing scheme, and how much less has been spent on economic support through the UK compared with the structural funds and other European Union regional funds. That is no doubt another area in which people will, unfortunately, find that they are in a worse-off position than they were in when we were part of the European Union.

We will definitely take that away. I want people to be informed and to have the administrative capacity to inform and influence Government thinking and decision making. Obviously, we live in constrained times. If the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy was sitting here, she would no doubt impress on me the need for us to be financially responsible. We are, of course, financially responsible, but we need to ensure that we have the best governance that we can have.

If there is a feeling that it might not be obvious who made that point, can that be shared with me and officials, please? We will then have a look at any specific proposals that have been made.

Absolutely. It is my view and that of the Government that it is detrimental that we are no longer in the room and able to influence the decisions that are made at European Union level. We seek to change that. You are right that that is a description of the facts. There is a change in circumstances. We must ensure that we are making the best decisions in the best possible way in the circumstances.

There is also a flipside, which is that we have colleagues in the third sector who are involved in projects, planning and other priorities, and we might not be aware of what those are. Therefore, it is a two-way street. I completely agree that we want to make sure that we are as well aligned as possible in that regard.

Yes, and that is a good example. There is an example in relation to plant health where there has been a divergence, but it has been a divergence upwards. What is the Scottish Government’s policy objective in relation to the European Union? It is that we remain aligned as best we can, using the different ways that we have outlined. However, when things come along on which we want to have enhanced standards, that is exactly what we have been doing.

I understand that people want to be assured that we do not want a diminution of standards, and I am delighted that we are hearing that from Conservative members, too. If there has been a divergence, we have sought to have higher standards. I will probably not pronounce this properly, but one area that has been flagged up to me is about Xylella. Is that correct?

Indeed.

I am sure that Mr Russell will be delighted that he is in your thoughts. You obviously have the advantage of having been involved in the process at a time that I was not. I deal with the ball as it is at my feet. The committee will know that the power is there in legislation for it to be used, and it is the Scottish Government’s intention to do so, but not within the current reporting period.

I will draw your attention to an issue that you might want to come back to in order to understand how the decisions are made. The recast drinking water directive came into force on 12 January 2021, following formal adoption by the European Parliament on 16 December 2020. There is a two-year transposition window. The Water (Scotland) Act 1980 provides for regulations to be made insofar as they relate to standards that must be met by water that is for human consumption. However, the recast directive introduces a much wider set of requirements, such as those relating to risk assessments of catchments, supply systems, internal plumbing systems and so on.

I flag that up to the committee as an area in which we are considering using the powers. When Government ministers have said that it is important that they have that legal club in the metaphorical bag to be used in certain circumstances but have not yet used it, the question, of course, is why they needed the power in the first place. The answer is exactly for circumstances such as those.

I have looked closely at the whole area, and it strikes me that, because the range of ways in which that Government can legislate and introduce regulations is very broad, we should seek to use the most sensible way of doing that—Mr Cameron, as a lawyer, will know that. Being pragmatic, Government has sought to make sure that it does that in the most appropriate way. In short, the process was proposed for a good reason, is there for a good reason and will be used for a good reason, but has not been used yet. Other methods have been used to deliver the Scottish Government’s intent of retaining alignment with the European Union.

Indeed. However, the baseline position is that we are trying to remain as aligned with the European Union as we can be and as it makes sense to be. I understand that, for you to be able to understand how that is working in relation to specific measures, you will have queries about how it works. You have a range of ways whereby, if you are unaware of how things are working, I, as the cabinet secretary with lead responsibility for external affairs, can answer on that, through answers to direct questions in the chamber and written questions, and through statements from the Scottish Government in relation to specific legislation.

We possibly need to draw together the range of ways in which one can access information about things, so that it is obvious how one does things or can do things, and so that we can make it absolutely clear how we are going to flag up and incorporate information about the processes that we are using in relation to specific legislation and proposals by the European Union. If there are additional ways in which we can proportionately answer such queries—for example, I refer to Ms Boyack’s suggestion of a website, although people are also interested in paper—those are all things that can be looked at. From our perspective, it is a question of how we get a balance between doing what we are doing—we are remaining aligned—and ensuring that you have as much information as you require for your purposes in scrutinising the Government’s work. I am entirely open to considering how we can best do that.

Yes. Exactly that point was made in a discussion that I had with the voluntary sector. The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations has had extremely positive and mature links with colleagues across the rest of the European Union. I think that Irene Oldfather, who is an erstwhile colleague who is very well versed in how Europe works, is involved in that.

Colleagues in the SCVO were extremely keen to ensure that we use Scottish civic society’s links and, by extension, those of local government and professional organisations, for example, so that we are fully sighted on developments. We need to look at all the ways in which we can ensure that we are up to speed and have the best co-ordination and the best practice. We need to look at what we are doing with this and that, take that away and work out a format.

I have given the example of speaking with the SCVO. We are already having such discussions. However, there is the question of the format and regularity of discussions and the extent to which they are structured around particular proposals that emanate from Europe or the priorities of the European Commission or of an incoming presidency. We want to be flexible to ensure that we capture experience, insights and good will.

That is a very good suggestion.

There is a full panoply of engagement. I am sure that many of you feel that we spend half our lives in Teams meetings. I certainly do, whether that is meeting with COSLA or with any number of other organisations. Our colleagues in Government deal with stakeholders, some of whom you have taken evidence from. It is helpful to get that evidence. I have previously said to the committee that input from those stakeholders is valuable, because it allows us to reflect on how things are working and on what we need to do more or less of. I stress again that we want to ensure that we do that as well as we can.

The Scottish Government’s intention is to retain what we believe are the higher standards of the European Union, rather than join the race to the bottom that is signalled by the approach of the United Kingdom Government to no longer being part of the European Union. If anyone is concerned that decisions are being made in Scotland with the intention of diverging from or diluting the higher standards of the European Union, I can give them an absolute assurance that that is diametrically opposed to the Scottish Government’s aims.

The trade agreements that are being forged by the UK Government illustrate a weakening of standards compared to those previously agreed by the European Union. We are right to be concerned about a race to the bottom, but the Scottish Government is not in that race. We are racing to try to maintain high standards in their own right, so that we have the highest standards, but also so that, when we rejoin the European Union, we can do so with the greatest of negotiating ease, because we will in effect be fulfilling the standards of the acquis communautaire.