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I will say again what I said to the committee then. This was under the previous Government, of which Mr Halcro Johnston knows that I have been very critical in general. The record shows clearly that I gave an example of dealings that I had with the then UK Conservative Cabinet Office minister Chloe Smith in relation to common frameworks. Because of my personal commitment and hers, we acted in good faith to try to find a solution to the lack of progress that was happening on common frameworks. Neither of us understood why things were not progressing. I was relatively new to office and I think that she was probably relatively new to the Cabinet Office and perhaps did not know the back story to why matters were not progressing. We saw no reason why things should not proceed. As that was the case for both of us, we asked officials to go away and make progress and agreed to meet again in however many—although not many—weeks.

We understand that, in politics, there is a contest of ideas—we know that—but I want Mr Halcro Johnston and colleagues to know that we operate in good faith in relation to these interactions. With Mr Thomas-Symonds, I discussed the gulf in custom and practice between the UK and the European Union, given how it deals with information, a negotiating mandate, documentation and all the rest of it. I acknowledged that, no doubt, there would be some people in Whitehall who might not be tremendously keen for that amount of information to be shared, because there might be a risk of—I do not know—leaks. However, I said to him that I would be very confident that, having called for something like that to happen, those leaks would not be coming from us because, were that to be the case, the process just would not continue.

Of course, the information on Erasmus+ ended up in the newspapers before it was announced in Parliament. We knew nothing about it, so it could not have been the Scottish Government—I say that with tongue slightly in cheek, and by way of context.

My point, which is genuinely made, is that the process is in all of our interests, because we are often dealing with a lot of quite technical issues. Often, they are not matters of party-political difference at all but are about reaching the best administrative decisions or how to make systems work. There is not tremendous political advantage for anybody, and certainly not in anything performative. I agree that, on anything to do with intergovernmental relations—this is not only a Scottish, UK or European issue; it is much wider—a performative approach does not serve anybody well. It is certainly not my position, nor that of the Scottish Government that it does. However, it cannot be beyond the wit of the UK Government to understand the situation, where there are workable practices and we are working in parallel.

Another point in relation to the European Union is that, ironically, the Scottish Government can be better informed about EU-UK matters because of what we hear in Brussels than because of what we hear from the UK Government. That is an extraordinary state of affairs, and I am sure that everybody would agree that that is not the way that things should operate.

We know that there are established ways of working. Mr Kerr drew attention to how the European Union works, and he is a Eurosceptic. If it is possible for some of this to work in those ways elsewhere, why on earth can we not try that here? If there is a feeling that we should try it with a Government department to which that is particularly relevant—for example, in the European Union context—we should do so, as that would be really good.

I acknowledge Mr Harvie’s point and agree that there is a difference between those two things. I also acknowledge that both of those are the responsibility of parliamentarians in holding Governments to account. The question is that, if things are sub-optimal, what needs to happen in order for parliamentarians to be able to hold ministers, both here and elsewhere, to account, and what format would transparency take? Mr Bibby asked a question about the number of meetings that have taken place. There is transparency in that the meetings that ministers hold are publicly signed off and available, but the information is perhaps not held in a format that lends itself to holding a cabinet secretary to account as easily as it should be.

I say again that I am perfectly content to take away any suggestions that the committee might have; no doubt you will be publishing your conclusions, considering a draft report and will think about different ways that such things might happen. I signal to the committee that I am open to hearing suggestions about how things might work better in this and any other way.

There are a couple of things there.

First, I have a thought about Mr Harvie’s original question about locking things in. I know that the committee has looked at the issue of the Sewel convention being only a convention. One way of driving profound change through Whitehall would be to put that on a statutory footing, because Government departments in London would know that they were literally unable to continue acting in the way that the previous UK Government in particular acted. We have egregious examples of the convention being observed only in the breach and absolutely not being taken seriously. Such a change would be a start, but Mr Harvie would be right to say that that would deal only with the issue of legislative consent motions and not with the daily intergovernmental relations that he went on to talk about.

We should not overlook the fact that there is regular churn in the civil service. You will hear regularly about civil servants who are working to the Scottish Government moving on to the Department for Work and Pensions, as was the case with the previous permanent secretary here. There is movement throughout the grades of the civil service. There is a level of insight. Could there be more? At this point, I will pass over to Mr Mackie.

I am sorry, but I have a snippet of insight into that, which did not fall immediately to mind. Just to confirm to Mr Halcro Johnston, I have turned up to meetings at which I recognise my civil service colleagues who I normally deal with and been asked, “Oh, here is a colleague from whichever UK Government department who is shadowing—is that okay?”, to which I have always said, “Absolutely.” I give some assurance that there are different approaches being taken to make things work better. Do they ultimately help us with our challenges? Well, they can do, but not necessarily.

I think that, at the time, because it was thought that there would not be a clamour for another referendum, that was a simple thing to concede because, intellectually, if one is in favour of the right to self-determination and one is a democrat, how could one say anything other than that?

I have not spoken with any members of the Smith commission since, but I have no reason to believe that they acted in bad faith then. However, I think that, having said what they said then and given the situation in which we find ourselves now—a Parliament with a majority elected for there to be such a referendum—there is a significant inconsistency there.

The only explanation that I can alight on is not intellectual. It is a political consideration that the starting position for a referendum campaign is that, de minimis, 50 per cent of those who express an opinion on how they would vote—yes or no—would vote yes. Therefore, it is more of a consideration about the risk of losing a referendum than about the principle of either democratic values or democratic processes.

I cast no aspersions on the members of the Smith commission then, but I am interested in hearing what they would say now. It would be very inconsistent of them, or, indeed, of the political parties that signed up to the commission’s recommendations—including the Scottish Conservatives, Scottish Labour and the Scottish Liberal Democrats—if they now take a position that is diametrically opposed to that which they agreed to in 2014.

I totally agree. Riffing off the point about different departmental realities, joining those two things together is key. I gave the example of trade agreements and the absence of meaningful interaction in areas in which there would be very significant interest or devolved locus, which is a problem in governmental terms and a matter of political discourse. We are told, “Foreign affairs are reserved, so you cannot have any external affairs,” which, as we all know, is total nonsense. However, that reflects the very same point, which is that there is a lack of understanding. However, although we are living in an asymmetrical union, our main public service broadcaster still thinks that it is accurate to report, every single day, that “the Government” is doing something or other.

Indeed. It talks about “the Government”, when there is more than one Government in the United Kingdom. That would never happen in Germany, Austria, Belgium and so on. If we want to circle back to the main points that we have been discussing, it is about an attitude towards how things can work.

If we are coming to the end of this agenda item, convener, I want to stress again that we will do everything that we can to try to make systems work and that I am very open to systems being included for transparency and accountability. However, with regard to the bigger picture, we need to understand that we are dealing with an attitude that has not changed that much through devolution. That is the point that Mr Brown has made, and he is correct.

I am delighted that that has been minuted.

The short answer is that not as much has been done as we would like. I will hand over to Mr Mackie, who is a bit more closely involved in that. Given the length of time since the UK general election, it is a bit surprising that we still have not received that memorandum of understanding or made substantive progress.