Chamber and committees

Specifically on the deposit return scheme, if that scheme was amended, would it come within the scope of your remit?

I want to return to the topic of policy coherence, on which I have a question for Lewis Ryder-Jones. You diplomatically talked about a company in Fife. I think that you were talking about Raytheon UK and the account management that Scottish Enterprise was supplying for that arms company. Do you think that significant policy coherence issues still exist? We have talked about successes, but we have not talked about where there are some real tensions. You are working on and have been inputting into the wellbeing and sustainable development bill that is coming forward. Do you see a role for, say, a future generations commission providing some of the governance on sustainable development going forward?

I have a brief question for Mark Majewsky Anderson. You mention in your submission the need to support new EU-based foundations. We have left the EU, but do you have examples of policy areas on which we can focus and should be focusing and developing new initiatives? Should we be looking to join existing EU foundations, as well as foundations that can work outside the EU?

I want to ask about engagement and, in particular, about how you engage with different groups. With the EU there is very deep engagement at policy and implementation level, which stakeholders have been used to up until now. In terms of your role, how are you engaging in particular with businesses but also with other stakeholders, such as those representing consumers and perhaps even regulators? What does the programme of work look like? How are you ensuring that your work is transparent and that you are able to take on the views of, and communicate effectively with, those groups of stakeholders? Some detail on that would be most useful.

I was watching the little video that introduces the role, which is useful particularly for consumers and others. You talk in that video about the health of the internal market. What do you define that as? What are the top health indicators?

I found some of David Hope-Jones’s comments about Malawi to be particularly sobering. I was there in 2005 and you could see back then what the climate impacts were, particularly in relation to the variability of rain. It is terrifying to think about what things might look like in years ahead.

David Hope-Jones mentioned the small grants programme in his submission. One thing that has stuck in my mind from going to Malawi is the impact of community-based organisations, which were doing a lot of work with very small amounts of money.

You said in your submission that the Scottish Government stopping the small grants programme was a “misstep”, and you point to some of the difficulties in the evaluation of the scheme. Can you say a bit more about that? How can the evaluation of small grants schemes be improved? Accounting for public money for development is really important, so how can we continue to do such work while building confidence that the money is going to the right places and achieving its objective?

I have a brief follow-up question for the OIM. I am thinking about the common frameworks that have been established—there is one, for example, around waste and the circular economy. Some regulations are in place already—regulations that, in effect, made the cut and are emerging, such as deposit return schemes—and new regulations are coming forward that will come more fully into the remit of post-Brexit consideration of EU alignment or otherwise. How do you work with those? Is there, in effect, a firewall? You would not consider the deposit return scheme, for example, because that existed previously, although regulations can be updated over time. However, the common frameworks span all three areas and I am interested in where you draw the line, because some of them have contexts that affect each other.

What does that look like practically? Can you give us a worked example of engagement on a particular issue? That might be useful.

What is the top thing that you want to come out of the strategic transport projects review? Is it a mass transit system, which might occur in Edinburgh and Glasgow in the years ahead, or something else?

Can I get Susan Aitken’s reflections on that?