Seòmar agus comataidhean

So we are still on track for the original date of April.

You announced the consultation on the establishment of the agency today, and you are talking about the set-up being next year rather than—

It is a complex landscape; there are many different rooms in Brussels to be in or out of. I ask Dr Marks then Professor Pittock the same question.

I have a follow-up question. The Law Society of Scotland’s submission makes the point that formal mechanisms for monitoring our international engagement are needed. Given the potentially complex picture that you have just outlined, what should those mechanisms look like? Dr Marks suggested that there should be a memorandum of understanding between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament. How can we get a grip of what the work looks like? I am not suggesting that there should be a list of every Burns supper that takes place—that might be a bit too much—but what should the formal mechanisms of scrutiny look like?

Perhaps we can start with Dr Hughes, then others might want to comment.

Listening to those comments, I was struck by Dr Hughes’s reference to a “multitrack paradiplomatic process” and wondered where sub-state legislatures and governance might fit into that alongside the actions of states. Do you have more examples of that? One that springs to mind for me comes from a discussion that I had with a Canadian mission in Brussels, from which I learned that there had been quite a lot of bilateral discussions between Québec and Wallonia during the talks on the EU-Canada comprehensive economic and trade agreement. Do you have any examples of sub-state actors being involved in wider multilateral discussions that might point to how Scotland could be involved with the UK in that respect?

Do the witnesses have any brief reflections on what remains of the UK presidency in the run-up to COP27? What do you see as the key milestones or objectives that the UK needs to aim for?

Also, what about the linkage with the biodiversity COP? We saw some significant text in the Glasgow pact on biodiversity and the nature emergency, but what do you think alignment with COP15 on biodiversity should look like?

I am reflecting on what you said, Mike Robinson, about the opportunity to take particular sectors and develop a protocol. I think that you mentioned that in relation to cement. I would be interested to hear you explore that a bit more with the committee. My sense of COP was that the process was not ideal. What happened on the Saturday, in particular, with the watering down of texts and some of the geopolitics around that, was deeply worrying. One of my children watched it and found the response from other countries, such as Switzerland, incredible. It seems that a more diplomatic effort is needed in the run-up to COPs. I am interested in whether you envisage protocols or initiatives for particular sectors in the run-up to COPs.

Aligned to that, could we have some reflections from both of you on the various high-ambition alliances that are emerging? There seemed to be more of an informal multilateralism at this COP. The Costa Ricans have been very prominent in the development of alliances around nature, and there are also the High Ambition Coalition and the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance. I am interested in the architecture of all of that, and what can happen alongside COP that can feed into much more ambition at future COPs.

My question is slightly different. In the final text of the Glasgow pact, there was, for the first time, a recognition of the need for a just transition, but I wonder what the definition of that is. At COP26, I was walking around the blue zone and looking at all the country pavilions. On the one hand, the definition of just transition from the oil and gas-producing states seemed to be about saying, “We’ll continue to extract and burn oil and gas because we need it, and we’re going to make a just transition by investing in carbon capture and storage and blue hydrogen.” On the other hand, some states had formed the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance, which says that we should phase out oil and gas but do so over time, rather than turning the taps off overnight.

There seem to be many different interpretations of just transition. What are your views on where the global conversation is? Do we have clarity on what a just transition for oil and gas looks like?

Do you have any thoughts on the biodiversity COP?