Chamber and committees

I am very interested in this area as well. Obviously, the interparliamentary forum has started up again and those links are there. The scrutiny of decision making is a concern across all devolved Parliaments at the moment and is a concern for the House of Lords, whose Constitution Committee has raised these issues. I am interested in how we go forward with that. As Maurice Golden said, a formal interparliamentary forum is an informal grouping of the Parliaments. As we move forward, are we in danger of not formalising some of those things as a way of future-proofing for dispute resolution in other areas. I am also interested in how the Parliaments can possibly scrutinise common frameworks.

I want to bring in Mr Clancy and then open up those points for the wider group.

I can neatly bring Akash Paun in at this point.

We have exhausted our time, if not our questions and interest in this area. I echo Ms Boyack’s comments and thank everyone for their submissions to the committee, which were extremely helpful, and I thank Dr McCorkindale for his continued support in our evidence sessions. As I said, we are holding a series of round tables in this area, and I am sure that the committee will report on it in the near future. I thank everyone for their attendance.

Welcome back, everyone. I invite questions or comments from Ms Boyack and Mr McMillan, after which we will open up the discussion again.

I am conscious of time. I will suspend for five minutes for a comfort break. When we come back I will bring in Ms Boyack and Mr McMillan.

I will bring in Ms Boyack, before I open it to the floor.

I will go to Mr Clancy first to answer that specific question. I will then bring in Professor McHarg and Mr Paun. Perhaps Professor Tierney could then reflect on his statements about other federal arrangements. What other places get this right and who might have solved some of the questions that we are asking about?

I am very conscious of time; we only have a few minutes left. No one else is desperate to come in.

Mr Clancy wants to come in. Sorry—I missed that.

Good morning, everyone, and a very warm welcome to the 13th meeting in 2022 of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee.

Our first agenda item is an update on the meeting of the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly that the deputy convener and I attended last week in Brussels. It was the first meeting of the assembly. The agenda was very much a scene-setting one on deciding a way forward and possible future topics. A note of the meeting has been prepared by the clerks and will be distributed to members and published on the Parliament website, so I will not spend too much time talking about it.

There was a very good debate on the Friday afternoon on Ukraine, with a lot of consensus across Europe about the work that is being done by the United Kingdom and the European Union in that respect. There was also a very interesting discussion on energy co-operation and energy security going forward. However, on the first day it was absolutely clear—and I will invite Donald Cameron to say a few words on this as well—that there was a complete impasse between the UK and Europe in relation to the Northern Ireland protocol. As an observer—colleagues from the Welsh Senedd were represented as observers as well—my observation was that the issue dominated the two days and it was very disappointing that there was not a Northern Irish voice in the room. If our Northern Irish colleagues had been there, they would not have had speaking rights at it. Everybody was talking about them but we heard very little about the actual experience of the people who were being talked about.

The assembly meeting was very interesting and I am looking forward to seeing how the assembly develops. I invite Donald Cameron to say a few words.

As I said, a note of the meeting will be published on the website for anyone who has an interest and committee members will have the opportunity to read that.