Chamber and committees

Our final two topics are potential solutions and a general opinion on the introduction of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. We have touched on some of that already. In our final few minutes together, can you give us an indication of how far apart people are? The EU’s proposals have now been published, and the bill is going through Parliament. How far apart are some of the potential solutions, and has there been an analysis of the EU’s proposals for some of these issues? I will come to Dr Whitten first.

Mr Billington, do you want to come in? I am afraid that I can see only one person on the screen at a time, so I am not getting any cues from people if they want to speak.

The connection might be a bit sticky. Can we persevere for a few moments?

Thank you. I will turn briefly to Dr West on his comments about scrutiny and consent, and how the Sewel convention is being interpreted at the moment. Where will it leave the Scottish Parliament and this committee, which are responsible for scrutinising the Scottish Government, if EU law in devolved areas is amended through that process?

Kirsty Hood and Professor Armstrong want to comment. We are very tight for time, so please be succinct. The last word will go to Professor Armstrong.

Thank you very much. I thank Professor Lock for joining us as our adviser this morning and everyone else who has contributed to our panels. We will consider a draft report covering all five of our round tables on these areas—the report will be available after summer recess.

Before we close, I thank members for their constructive and consensual approach to the committee’s work over the past year. It has been demanding, productive and rewarding. I thank our parliamentary staff and our advisers for their support. I wish everyone a good recess and send special good wishes and congratulations to our colleague Maurice Golden, who is not with us today. Enjoy the summer. On that note, I close the meeting.

You say that exports must be protected. Does protection mean keeping the protocol in its current form or does it need to be amended? What does protection mean?

Unfortunately Thursday morning committees do not have any flexibility to run on, and I am very conscious that we have about 10 minutes left.

I will move to our second area of questions, which is around dynamic alignment with the EU, which has already been mentioned by Dr Whitten. I was struck by a comment that Mr Billington made earlier about the lack of knowledge or a loss of knowledge in Whitehall. We know that there are plans to reduce the number of civil servants in Whitehall quite significantly. One of the things that we are struggling with in a Scottish context is the Scottish Government commitment to keep pace. We have the keeping-pace power, which has not been used yet, but we know that some issues being introduced through secondary legislation, which is a bit opaque to stakeholders in particular and is also a bit opaque to the Parliament. Legislation has not kept pace in certain areas, which sometimes can be almost as important.

Do you have any thoughts or lessons that we might learn here about what that means and how the dynamic alignment is working in Northern Ireland?

Thank you. Before we move on, I offer my apologies for not mentioning that Professor Tobias Lock, who is a committee adviser, has also joined us and may take part in the discussion.

I ask Kirsty Hood to comment.