Chamber and committees

Thanks for clarifying that.

Thank you for that. Finally, I invite Gary Stephenson from Devro to come in.

Yes.

I wish you the best of luck.

Does Dario Riccomini or Paddy Jack want to comment on the border controls issue in particular?

As Paddy Jack does not want to comment, I invite Gary Stephenson to come in.

Gary, did you want to come in again?

I am conscious of the time, so we will have to wrap things up, if everybody is okay with that.

Thank you very much for your evidence. We are not a subject committee, as such, so this type of evidence has been a bit unusual in our inquiry. Normally we take evidence from academics, people at Government level or trade bodies, so it has been really helpful to have an open discussion and hear the challenges being expressed so expertly by you all. I wish you all the very best for your businesses, and thank you for attending.

The committee will now move into private session.

It has all been very helpful. Thank you.

This is a round-table meeting, so I want a free-flowing discussion about the issues that have been raised.

We will come to what you would like to see in a review of the TCA. Gary Stephenson mentioned the border controls that are about to be implemented in the UK. What are your worries about that? Do you foresee that some of the problems that you had in the other direction will happen again and impact business?

I will now bring in committee members.

Under agenda item 2, we will continue our evidence taking as part of our inquiry into the review of the trade and co-operation agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom. We are delighted to be joined by Gary Stephenson, global regulatory, sustainability and external affairs director at Devro; Margaret Carlin, execution department manager at Cefetra; Dario Riccomini, managing director at Aldomak; Paddy Jack, business manager for Scotland at DLF Seeds; Tony Dumbreck, global industrial performance director at Innovate Foods; and James Macsween, managing director at Macsween of Edinburgh.

Our clerks have been in touch with you to say that we want to cover three themes today, and we will take each in turn. Under the first theme, we want to gain insight into your experience as Scottish businesses of the trading conditions between the UK and the EU as things stand. I invite Mr Macsween to start.