Chamber and committees

I want to ask a bit more about the aspiration to halve the determination time for electricity generating stations. Is there anything more to say on that at this point, or will the detail of that—you mentioned guidance for local authorities—all be published as part of the onshore wind sector deal?

Is there a trade-off among technologies? Is there a view in Government that, if we invest too much in the grid infrastructure that is required for solar, or even allow batteries to connect to the grid, it will hoover up the available transmission infrastructure for onshore wind and other technologies? Is there a point at which our transmission infrastructure is limited and we have to prioritise certain technologies over others?

Is that advice fed into the common frameworks process? If particular issues come up relating to single-use plastics or anything else, would you offer advice? Have you been asked for advice?

You work with businesses, so are there particular scales or types of businesses that are more integrated in the European market and have more experience of working within different regulatory set-ups? In your report, you mention deposit return schemes. Different deposit return schemes operate across the member states in Europe. Some companies will supply to only one scheme, but some will work across the continent and will engage with different models. I am interested in which business sectors are particularly adept at working within that larger internal market and which have concerns about divergence if they are working in one particular market but not in others.

I wonder to what extent you still have an eye on the European Union. Arguably, the EU is the world’s most successful single market, which manages a degree of regulatory divergence between member states in that market. Do you still look across to Europe to see how good practice is developed and how businesses are managing regulatory divergence in their sectors? What can we learn from that?

My last question is about the value of having divergence in different markets. Does that come through in the evidence that you get from businesses? Is divergence just seen as a barrier, or do businesses consider that, if there is a different market for a certain product in a particular area, they are responding to local needs? Is there value in that kind of diversity within markets, or is having different markets operating in difference places just seen as a bit of a pain?

Yes. Political will is a precondition, and that does not exist.

I will pick up on a couple of specific issues. On the deposit return scheme, you say in your response to the committee that

“the Scottish Government was following the agreed and published process to obtain an exclusion to the Internal Market Act ... when UK Ministers intervened and created new procedural steps that are not part of that process”.

Can you go into a little more detail on that?

What is the process? We have just heard that the process for the deposit return scheme was, in effect, being made up as we went along—not by the Scottish Government, but by the UK Government. Is there any certainty as to what the process is now? Is it about repeated meetings between ministerial counterparts who are all trying to win the argument? Is there a point at which things can be escalated, and to whom would they be escalated? Who leads on that? It feels as though we are running out of time with the bill. September is the real deadline, is it not?

Local autonomy and partnership working are obviously critical. However, as a principle, should creative and cultural organisations have a voice in community planning partnerships? Should that be the rule, in terms of individual decisions about what programmes run locally and how funding streams are developed? Should cultural organisations be baked into community planning partnerships?

Is there a balance there, and have we got it right?