Chamber and committees

Mark Ruskell has a supplementary question.

Ms Snowden, do you want to comment on any of those issues?

Good morning, and welcome to the 10th meeting of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. Our first item of business is the continuity act draft policy statement and draft annual report.

On 29 October, the draft policy statement and draft annual report on the use of the keeping pace power in the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021 were laid in the Scottish Parliament. As part of our scrutiny of the draft documents, the committee will hear from Professor Kenneth Armstrong, professor of European law at the University of Cambridge, and Mhairi Snowden, the director of the Human Rights Consortium Scotland. I welcome you both and thank you for your written submissions.

We will move straight to questions. I will start with a question for Mhairi Snowden to answer initially. In your submission, you highlight that one of the key areas for debate during the passage of the continuity bill through Parliament was the transparency and openness of decision making and how stakeholders in civic Scotland would be involved in that process. Can you elaborate on those thoughts?

Professor Armstrong, in your role as adviser to the session 5 Finance and Constitution Committee, you highlighted the impact that the market access principles in the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 could have on policy making in Scotland. How might the Scottish Government’s commitment to keep pace with EU law be impacted by the market access principles?

Does Professor Armstrong wish to respond to those questions, too?

I will return, Professor Armstrong, to something specific that you said earlier. You said that the issue concerns devolved issues that are to be considered by the Scottish Government. So much in these matters is dependent on the operation of the TCA. There is also a delegation to the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, which will not include the devolved legislatures of the UK but will be from Westminster. This is very much a hypothetical question, but do you see the potential for a situation in which, if the common frameworks do not work and the Scottish Government wants to align with the EU in a devolved area, an executive power could be used at Westminster? How would we resolve conflict in that kind of situation?

Thank you. I should have said earlier that Mr Golden is delayed by travel problems, but we hope that he will join us at some point.

I said that that was the final question, but I have a supplementary question on that point. You said that we have gone to a higher standard than the European Union and that there is no divergence, but the UK Government has not done so. One issue that was raised in the evidence that we have received was about how that might affect market access principles in the UK, particularly in relation to Xylella. Can you explain what you think the outcomes of that might be?

Thank you, cabinet secretary.

I open the questioning by highlighting a general theme that has arisen from the submissions and, indeed, from some of the evidence that we have heard this morning. I hope that it will help our understanding of how the Scottish Government is being informed of what is happening in Europe, given that we no longer receive EU directives. What are the capacity issues around being able to take on board and assess what is happening? How might the Scottish Government consider communicating those decision-making processes and that information to the wider Parliament and, indeed, to this committee?

If your question relates to the submissions that we have received and the evidence that we have heard about how the Northern Ireland protocol might affect decision making with regard to these powers, please continue.