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Good morning. I want to focus on what you fairly bluntly described as a failure of the intergovernmental process. It is inevitable that those who are more sympathetic to devolution or to Scottish independence are going to place more of the blame for that failure on the UK Government, while those who are much more concerned about British independence and the sovereignty of the British state would place more of the blame on the Scottish Government. I would like to see whether we can find a way of breaking through that, because just saying that there is a logjam and a failure of the intergovernmental process leaves us kind of stuck.

What do you think that the Scottish Government can do to break through that? For example, are you considering a public consultation? Would there be scope for a joint public consultation with the Welsh Government, for example? We might not agree on everything but we could lay out the options publicly for how these relationships should work better, not only by comparing what is happening at the moment with what happened under previous iterations of devolution and under EU membership, but also what happens in other EU countries that have distributive forms of Government.

You will recall, for example, that the Government of the region of Wallonia has regularly been able to challenge decisions that the Belgian Government wants to make, whether on the comprehensive economic and trade agreement or on Brexit legislation. Other European Governments have multilevel or tiered forms of government where those issues are debated and agreed in a different and more successful way than in our current process, which you have described as a failure.

Would a public consultation that sets out what could be improved help to move things along if the UK Government is not willing to make fundamental changes?

Ah!

Thank you.

I will press you a little further on what “things changing” actually requires. Even in the current framework, I share the hope that you have expressed about relationships and meetings working better. We would hope that UK ministers would be willing to come and talk to Scottish Parliament committees on the record and give us evidence. So far, our efforts to achieve that have not met with success, but I hope that that will change. However, the Scottish Government’s position surely has to be that structural change is needed so that there is a requirement for not just the current UK Government but any future UK Government to make that relationship work. It cannot rely on the goodwill of individual ministers of the Government of the day—whether in Scotland, London or elsewhere—to make that relationship work. There has to be a structural requirement; otherwise, ministers will not have an incentive to do that.

I appreciate that but, in short, will the consultation on the 2026 to 2031 strategy consider how to implement the recommendations from the CCC?

Good morning to the witnesses. Heather Kelman was just talking about the issues that will be included in the consultation on the development of the new strategy, and I was very pleased to hear the commitment that there will be greater emphasis on climate and sustainability. Those issues were mentioned a bit in the previous strategy, but not at a very specific level. How much autonomy does Food Standards Scotland have to set a direction of travel on that?

You will be aware that the Climate Change Committee—the independent advisory body to both Governments on climate—has recently set out its advice on how to meet carbon budgets for the rest of the journey to net zero. There are specific conclusions for agriculture—clearly, there has to be a link between food production and the consumption of food. There is a huge overlap between more sustainable food and healthier food, yet that advice is already getting some reactionary pushback.

The Scottish Government’s climate plan will not be produced in time for you to consult on your strategy for 2026 to 2031. The scrutiny in Parliament of the draft climate plan is likely to run right up until the end of this parliamentary session; it may not even be completed until after next year’s election, in the new parliamentary session. How do you intend to give effect to the very clear conclusions of the Climate Change Committee report about food in the absence of a Scottish Government climate change plan having been published and adopted?

Good morning. Can I just check that you can hear me?

Thank you, convener. Good morning to the witnesses. Will you say a little more about the pattern of complaints that have come in over the years and whether that has changed? In particular, will you say something about public expectations of and relationships to care services, which might have been significantly affected over recent years because of Covid? Have the events of recent years changed the kinds of issues that people have concerns about and raise complaints about, whether or not those complaints end up being upheld?

I can feel the convener’s impatience with me even through Zoom, so I will resist the temptation to carry on with this topic. However, it clearly needs further consideration in the future.

I want to stay with the internal market act. I want to be very clear that I was opposed to the introduction of the internal market act, as were the majority of MSPs. The majority of MSPs support its repeal and I would like to see that, but I am realistic enough to know that the current UK Government does not intend to consider repealing it. We therefore have to make the case for some changes in the review of the IMA that are short of repeal but which respect the democratic will of the Scottish Parliament.

What changes would allay the concerns that you have expressed? For example, the process of IMA exemptions is completely undefined—it is at the discretion of UK ministers. Would the addition of specific exemption criteria address that concern? That is similar to the way that the comparable EU legislation used to work when we were an EU member. Let me give an example. A policy that was intended to achieve a public health outcome could be granted an exemption by virtue of satisfying the criteria, rather than our being left with the current lack of clarity in a system where such issues are simply a matter for the minister of the day to make an individual decision about.