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Oh, I very much think that, unless the United Kingdom had agreed the terms of the headline agreement, the dynamic alignment would not have passed go.

I am sorry—there were no formal discussions between the Scottish Government and any European Union member state or any individual institution. Officials from representative offices and embassies talk to one another about progress that is being made and about what is understood to be happening. That is the way in which civil servants talk to one another. It is not common practice for there to be formal records of discussions in passing between officials. Mr Bibby knows that that is not the way in which such things operate.

I have made my view clear to the UK Government that, unless the process changes, I am at the end of the road. We cannot have the United Kingdom reaching significant agreements on very important devolved responsibilities, with the system not working properly because the United Kingdom Government chooses for it not to work properly. We are at the end of the road. If the situation does not improve, there will not have been a reset, because what is happening now is the same as what happened under the previous UK Government.

It is a fact that meetings have been cancelled. It is a fact that documents and details have not been shared. It is a fact that we can learn more from the front page of the Financial Times or by speaking with diplomats from other countries. That is not how we should be doing things. That should matter to everybody on the committee—those from all parties. There is zero defence for what is happening.

It is not a case of two partners not wishing to have the best of relations. We in Scotland, along with our colleagues in Wales and Northern Ireland, are trying to make this work, but the process for the UK-EU summit agreement did not work. Very soon, we will be able to see, based on how the UK Government acts in relation to its negotiating mandate and its relations with the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Governments, the detail that the committee has asked me about. Proper inclusion involves consultation, not just read-outs of what the UK Government is negotiating on our behalf. Very soon, we will see whether there has been improvement. I am as interested as the committee is in UK ministers answering those questions in public and in detail.

I am sure that it did come up. I did not attend the meeting that Mr Kerr—

I think that it is really important that—

No. There were no formal discussions between the Scottish Government and European Union member states—

Thank you for the question, Mr Harvie. Perhaps it would help colleagues if I highlighted the annex to the Scottish Government’s position paper on this question. I most certainly would not want to read all of it into the record, as it would take far too long, but it goes into considerable detail about the regulatory systems in, among other countries, Switzerland, Australia and Canada, and explains how one manages systems there. Mr Harvie is alluding, I think, to my previous point about ensuring that the system that is in place must surely reflect proportionality and balance.

Mr Harvie also asked me about the UK Government’s position and whether I have an understanding of it. It seems to be saying two things at the same time. First, it is saying that it would wish common frameworks to succeed, which I agree with. Secondly, however, it is saying that the internal market act should be retained, specifically for reasons relating to the Windsor framework. That is the reason that it has given. Frankly, that is spurious—that is not the reason. There are plenty of other ways of doing whatever one needs to do in relation to the Windsor framework; one does not require the internal market act to be retained in toto for that.

Why, then, does one wish to retain the internal market act? I can only conclude that it is because UK Government ministers can imagine circumstances where they would wish to use the power to drive a coach and horses through devolution in order to stop something. They will work, in the first instance, to try to make common frameworks satisfy the processes in order to be able to say that they are respecting the devolution framework, that they have reset relations and that they are working in good faith, but somewhere in SW1, there is a fear that issues will come along where they would wish to override the devolution settlement using the internal market act.

That is the only rational explanation that I have for the act’s retention. If it is an agreed position that common frameworks are the appropriate way of dealing with things, and if everybody has agreed that the IMA is not required for anything to do with the Windsor framework and is not the only way of satisfying that criterion, that is the only logical conclusion that I can come to for its retention.

Indeed it does, and there are very few people out there—there might be one on this committee—who do not agree that common frameworks are the best way of proceeding. It is the commonly held view of the UK Government, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Senedd and, I imagine, the majority of parliamentarians in the House of Commons. Common frameworks are where it is at.

The issue, though, is the retention of the internal market act, given all the reasons and concerns that were expressed to the committee, the evidence that the committee has been provided with and the absence of recognition by the UK Government that it should do what Labour promised in the run-up to the previous UK general election, which was that it would repeal the act.

Will the Scottish Government continue to invest its efforts in working collegially to ensure the effective workings of the single market, while at the same time understanding that devolution is about different policy making, and potentially different policy outcomes and priorities? It is a balance, and because of that divergence, it is necessary to work out how one makes sure that one can do that with proportionality and balance, not with the ultimate muzzle and restraint that the internal market seeks to impose on elected democratic Governments and Parliaments in the UK. That is not what the devolved settlement was about. I point again to the evidence from the then Secretary of State for Scotland, Donald Dewar, in a debate in July 1987, on that very question: it is “germane”, it is not theoretical and it matters.

We are, increasingly, seeing a list of policy areas in which the uncertainty that the internal market act imposes is growing and growing. It is very disappointing that the UK Government has not taken the opportunity to consider that while reviewing—it is a good thing to review, of course—how single market arrangements operate, and that it has chosen to exclude the agreed position of the Governments and Parliaments of Scotland and Wales on the question.

Of course, Mr Adam is correct, and that is the position of this Parliament, which has voted twice for the repeal of the internal market act. I would prefer to invest my time and effort in making the common frameworks work, with the internal market act being taken off the statute book, and—to paraphrase Mr Adam—getting on with it. We need to work together on the questions that are brought up by legislation in the rest of the UK and by legislation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and on making the common frameworks the only route for doing so.

Apart from anything else, if the common frameworks are, ultimately, going to work, they have to be understood as the sole route for dealing with these internal market questions. That would be a good thing, and I hope—even at this late stage—that the UK Government will reflect on its error, because it certainly does not reflect a reset of relations, if that was the intention. It has been pointed out that, by excluding the position that is supported by the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Government and the Welsh Senedd, that would most certainly not be a reset, but a continuation of the previous UK Government’s approach to devolution.

Mr Harvie asks a very interesting question, about how one reconciles the operation of intergovernmental agreement—whether in the form of treaties or in the form of rolling, on-going arrangements of intergovernmental relations—and how one involves Parliaments in that process. It is a good question.

I have lost count of how many times I have come to the committee. Committee members know that I am perfectly happy to come here as often as you would wish to hold me and the Government to account in the area for which I have responsibility. I have no objection to coming back here for detailed sessions about how common frameworks are working in this area or other areas. It is not for me to answer as to how others would allow themselves to be held to account in their Parliaments but, especially given that it is the position of this Parliament that one wishes the common frameworks to work, I am very keen to be answerable to you about the extent to which we are able to ensure that and about the progress of all of that. I have no objection to that whatsoever.