Chamber and committees

The review is on-going. We provide the Parliament with a substantial amount of information, and we are committed to ensuring that the Parliament receives information within the timescales that it needs it.

The review is getting to the stage where we need to engage more with the committee; I think that my officials will be doing that in the not-too-distant future, which will give us some ideas as to how we take this forward. It is important that we ensure that we have got ourselves into a place where we can have those discussions with your committee clerks and my officials and take this forward.

It is more common. Officials regularly get information 24 hours before a bill is published—and that is if they are lucky; they might get it an hour or so before, including any of the detail that they need. That automatically fires the starting gun and makes it difficult for us to get ourselves into a place where we can have a robust argument or look at the detail and find out how it affects us here.

That is difficult, and it is being made worse because we used to be able to build up relationships outwith the politics—which is a situation in itself—like the relationship that my officials have with your clerks or the one that I have with the committee. When you continue to deal with the same people, it is simple to do that. However, for example, over the past year and a bit, I have had to deal with three different ministers at Westminster on the election side of things.

That means that the chances of being able to break down the political barrier and have a working relationship with someone in Westminster at a political level becomes more difficult. Sometimes it is by having that open working relationship that we can solve some of the issues, as we can say, “We’re just gonnae get this job done. We might not agree on the policy issue, but let’s try and get the work done.” However, we are very rarely able to have those conversations, because there has been such a turnover of ministers in Westminster.

From the officials’ point of view, it becomes extremely difficult for them to get to the stage where they can work up a case for whether the Government is for or against anything that is going on, and do so in the robust manner that your committee would expect to be able to scrutinise.

I will bring in Susan Herbert, who might be able to hit some of the technical aspects.

As the minister—although I was not the minister then—I do not recall it getting to that stage. During the time that I have been in post, it has been like this. I do not know whether that is due to the changes in the Administration or leadership down at Westminster; I have no idea.

I have said this before to you, convener: aspects of my job are very technical, as are aspects of the committee’s job, and they relate to going through the rules and regulations of how we go about our day-to-day business. I have spoken to equivalent Westminster ministers and said, “Let’s not have a fight unless we have to have one. Our jobs are about process; let’s try and make the process work.”

On the whole, we have that relationship at a political level, and I can talk to the equivalent minister, but that has proved difficult over the past year or so, because there have been multiple ministers in various portfolios. It becomes difficult for two reasons. First, it becomes difficult for me to have a working relationship with an individual and say, “We are not here to fight; we are here to get the job done.” Secondly, it becomes difficult for officials at UK and Scottish Government levels, because, although they remain in the same posts and have the same working relationships, the person who is in charge—the minister who is making the decisions—may have a different personality and a different idea of how to take things forward. That makes it difficult for officials to engage, because they do not know how the minister will react to certain things. That has become more difficult and a larger problem.

I cannot think of any at the moment, but I will ask my officials whether there is anything that I have forgotten and they can correct me if there is.

I am trying to think off the top of my head. Susan, do we know that number?

Thank you.

Yes—I can tell you that.

Let us not get caught in negativity, convener. We are in a better position than we were in 2018.

Aye, I would say that it is the same thinking. This goes back to what I said earlier on about being able to have that kind of working relationship with colleagues in Westminster. It becomes difficult when you cannot pick up a phone and say something as simple as, “We are having difficulty with—insert name of bill,” or “What are you trying to achieve with—insert name of bill,” so that we can understand it. When we cannot do that, we end up with a situation where it is just purely emails and letters going backwards and forwards to one another. That makes things a bit difficult for us.

When we are making a decision, we think about how it affects the Scottish Government and, nine times out of 10, the Scottish Government will want to put an SSI down to say that it is the Scottish Parliament that is legislating on the issue. I think it is only right that we would look to do that because, regardless of which political party is in government in Scotland, we do not want to live in a place where the UK Government is legislating too much on devolved matters.

That is a difficult question for us to answer here and now. Trying to unpick EU laws that have been part of our legislative structure since 1972 is quite a difficult task; it is one that officials in both Westminster and the Scottish Government are looking at. We are trying to find a way. We are constantly looking at how that will affect us and at what we can do to deal with it. It is difficult for me to say at this stage what the impact will be. We need a balance between finding a way to make that work so that we can still have full scrutiny and ending up in a position where everything that we do is about EU retained law.