Chamber and committees

Are there any final questions?

No other members have put their hands up, so I will ask a final question. The committee has had a discussion about the EU tracker and the ambition of the Scottish and Welsh Governments to keep pace with European legislation, and the requirement on Northern Ireland to do so. Are you considering looking at the trends with regard to where divergence in relation to the internal market act is happening, so that you can see whether there is a pattern in health, environmental issues, product development or the food and drink industry? Do you hope to be able to report on that in the future?

We have exhausted our questions. Thank you for your attendance, which has been really helpful. I have no doubt that we will see you again at some point in the future.

Mr Cameron, do you want to come back in?

That is extremely helpful. I am sure that we will put our heads together to work out what this committee might do. In addition, we have a Conveners Group for the conveners of all the subject committees in the Parliament. It might be helpful to do a report for them about what you have suggested, as the subject committees tend to do much more in-depth analysis of their sectors than this committee does. We will take that on board and will feed back to you.

We now move into private session.

Good morning, and welcome to the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee’s 23rd meeting in 2023.

Our first agenda item is the declaration of interests as a result of membership change. I put on record again my thanks to Ben Macpherson, Alasdair Allan and Maurice Golden for their commitment to the committee, and I wish them well in their new roles. I give a warm welcome to Kate Forbes, Keith Brown and Alexander Stewart, who join the committee. I invite each of them to declare any relevant interests.

Before we move on to our next agenda item, I point out that we are in a hybrid meeting. Our deputy convener, Donald Cameron, joins us remotely. I hope that we will be able to manage questions and interactions on that basis.

I thank the witnesses from the Office for the Internal Market for attending. We are joined by Murdoch MacLennan, who is the chair of the Office for the Internal Market, and Rachel Merelie, its senior director. I welcome them warmly to the committee. I invite Mr MacLennan to give an opening statement.

Might you publish the requests or data about the number of requests?

We move to questions from committee members, beginning with Neil Bibby.