Chamber and committees

I will stay on that issue of internal market act exemptions. Evidence that has been taken in other committees in Parliament has suggested that the discussion under the common framework on deposit return schemes has been on-going for a long time. To what extent should that whole process be codified and made more transparent, so that all Parliaments could see exactly what the nature of those discussions has been, or would that impact in some way on the nature of the common framework? The common framework seems to be led largely by civil servants. There is ministerial engagement within that, but it is a very evidence-based process. Would a codification of that exemption process have an impact on common frameworks?

Okay. My last question is about an area on which we have taken quite a lot of evidence, and that is retained EU law. You might have general comments to make on the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill but, specifically within your area of expertise in human rights, are there any potential unintended, or even intended, consequences as a result of the proposed law and the 23 December cliff edge?

Okay. What do you think will happen?

As you have noted, this is a type 1 notification, so it relates to a significant change in the regulations. I noted that the regulations in effect delay both the registration and the compliance deadlines for a number of years. For one category of chemicals in particular, they delay compliance checks until 2035. That has raised some quite significant concerns, particularly at the Westminster Environmental Audit Committee during its scrutiny of the regulations. It is important that we hear from our Scottish minister about this, particularly about whether it represents divergence from the existing European Union registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—REACH—regulation.

I would also like to understand a bit more about what the alternative transitional model is that is evolving for the development of our chemicals regulation in the UK and how that has worked in relation to the common framework for chemicals and pesticides that our ministers are directly involved in with their counterparts across the UK.

There are some questions here for the minister and I think that it would be a great service to the committee if she could appear before us.

[Inaudible.]

That is still a significant blockage. How about the electricity network? We had discussions with the first panel of witnesses about the Beauly to Denny transmission line and others. How prepared are we to take 20GW of onshore wind?

I will move on, but I might come back to Mark Hull in a minute. I want to ask about onshore wind. We did not discuss that much with the first panel of witnesses. Morag Watson, how do you think the onshore wind target will be delivered? Are we looking at using existing sites that have already been through planning or those that have been loitering in the planning system for some time? Are we looking at repowering? Is it a mixture of both?

I would like to bring in Mark Hull at this point, followed by Aileen McLeod.

I will come to Stuart Haszeldine and then to the rest of the panel.

I want to pursue that point a little. Clare Lavelle talked about a bucket of flexible technologies that can be deployed—they are dispatchable technologies. Is there a route to market for each of those? You mentioned pumped storage, thermal generation, which could involve CCS, and battery technologies. Is there an effective route to market for all of those, or are some far from market rather than near market?