Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning and welcome to this meeting of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. Agenda item 1 today is to decide whether to take an item of business in private. Do members agree to take item 3 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

The committee is conducting an inquiry into the Scottish Government’s international work. The aim of the inquiry is to consider how the Scottish Government engages internationally and what it wants to achieve from that work. That includes its European Union and wider international engagement, its support for international development and how its external affairs policies interact with United Kingdom Government policies in those areas.

I am delighted to welcome the committee’s first panel on this topic: Dr Kirsty Hughes, who is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; Dr Adam Marks, who is the international policy executive at the Law Society of Scotland; and Professor Murray Pittock, University of Glasgow, who is co-chair of the Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance. Thank you for the written submissions that you sent before this morning’s meeting.

We will move directly to questions. I will open with a question for everyone. What challenges and risks does the Scottish Parliament face in relation to the post-Brexit situation, the EU-UK trade and co-operation agreement—TCA—governance structures, and political and policy dialogue that might result in fewer opportunities for devolved institutions to input than before Brexit? I invite your reflections on that.

Which of the witnesses do you want to answer first, Mr Ruskell?

We move to questions from the committee. I remind members to say who their questions are for or to select which member of the panel they would like to answer first.

Before you go on, Dr Allan, I should say that we are moving far away from the documents that are before us today, although I absolutely agree with the cabinet secretary’s comment that the situation is very much in flux with regard to the elements affecting the decision-making process.

Thank you very much. I call Ms Boyack.

Agenda item 2 is an evidence-taking session with the Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture on the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021, the draft policy statement and the draft annual report. The cabinet secretary is joined, from the Scottish Government, by George Macpherson, the head of policy and alignment, and Lorraine Walkinshaw, from the legal directorate.

I welcome everyone to the meeting and invite the cabinet secretary to make an opening statement.

Mark Ruskell has a supplementary question.

Ms Snowden, do you want to comment on any of those issues?

Good morning, and welcome to the 10th meeting of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. Our first item of business is the continuity act draft policy statement and draft annual report.

On 29 October, the draft policy statement and draft annual report on the use of the keeping pace power in the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021 were laid in the Scottish Parliament. As part of our scrutiny of the draft documents, the committee will hear from Professor Kenneth Armstrong, professor of European law at the University of Cambridge, and Mhairi Snowden, the director of the Human Rights Consortium Scotland. I welcome you both and thank you for your written submissions.

We will move straight to questions. I will start with a question for Mhairi Snowden to answer initially. In your submission, you highlight that one of the key areas for debate during the passage of the continuity bill through Parliament was the transparency and openness of decision making and how stakeholders in civic Scotland would be involved in that process. Can you elaborate on those thoughts?