Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning. It is a pleasure to join you in a public session of the committee’s deliberations. Thank you for asking me to come back following the publication of the committee’s second report on the EU-UK trade and co-operation agreement. I am happy to address questions that arise from that report and I will provide a general update on UK-EU relations in accordance with our working arrangements agreed in 2024.

Let me start with the UK-EU summit that was held on 19 May and by repeating the words of EU Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, in welcoming the agreement. She said:

“We are friends, and we are Europeans, we are very like-minded. We share the same interests and the same values”.

The Scottish Government is of the same view. We welcome all attempts to rebuild relations with the EU at this critical moment in international affairs, and we embrace the progress that has been made. Indeed, the Scottish Government wants both parties to go further and faster in their reset and to implement the most ambitious package of measures possible.

The deal announced at the summit will bring only small relief compared with the damage that has been caused by the Westminster Government. Although the UK Government congratulates itself on staying within its red lines of not rejoining the single market or the customs union and remaining against the free movement of people, those red lines remain deeply damaging to Scotland. The Scottish Government maintains a much more ambitious vision for Scotland’s relationship with Europe that, of course, involves full membership.

First, let me welcome important elements of the summit agreement. The defence and security partnership is urgently necessary for the safety of our continent and will allow Scotland’s defence capacities to play their part. Many other parts of the agreement broadly align with the policy positions that we have shared with the UK Government through position papers that have been published in the past 12 months. The Scottish agriculture and food and drink sectors should be able to export their products without going through the checks that were imposed by Brexit. Young people in Scotland should be able to study, work and live in the rest of Europe, and we, in turn, can welcome EU citizens here. Closer co-operation on energy should allow us to benefit from greener energy and confront, together with our European neighbours, the shared challenges of climate change.

There is an urgent need for those initiatives to be negotiated, agreed and delivered quickly, and we will put all the support that we can towards their rapid conclusion. We offer our support, but we need the UK Government to better engage with Scottish interests and the Scottish Government. We are deeply disappointed that the UK Government did not share draft texts with the Scottish Government or, indeed, with any other devolved Government before the summit. The fact that the fisheries agreement was reached without our being given any notice—much less with any involvement from us—is testament enough. Given the sheer number of devolved responsibilities involved, the Scottish Government must be more closely involved and included in forthcoming talks, not least to protect the role of the Scottish Parliament. The intergovernmental structures must be tested this year, and they must be tested through their continuous operation and by meaningful engagement.

I will finish by addressing the committee’s second report on the trade and co-operation agreement. I welcome the report and specifically note the committee’s recommendation on the creation of a music export office. That matches the undertaking that we have given in our international cultural strategy to support people working in the culture sector to realise the full potential of international activity. A forthcoming feasibility study will inform how we can best support international cultural activity and overcome challenges for people working in the sector. I will be happy to provide further updates as we make progress on that work, and I am happy to address wider questions from the committee.

I stand by what I said in the Parliament. It makes me smile now, because Mr Kerr would have heard other voices in the chamber pooh-poohing any suggestion that fisheries were being used as a way to get agreement. It turned out that it was very much a part of making sure that an agreement could be reached.

There are some statistics that illustrate Mr Adam’s point. In economic terms, the UK Government’s own figures estimate that this deal will add £9 billion to the UK’s national income by 2040, which represents just 0.2 per cent of gross domestic product. That must be compared with the loss in GDP caused by Brexit, which is estimated to be 20 times that—4 per cent of GDP. Those estimates are from the Office for Budget Responsibility, which, as I am sure all members realise, is an organisation that is worth listening to. The point that Mr Adam is making is very real.

I stand by everything that I said in the chamber in that debate.

My understanding is that the agreement on the roll-over on fisheries and its length was not finalised before the summit weekend and, indeed, that it was raised on the weekend that the agreement was reached. How do we know that? We know that from discussions in Brussels, not from the UK Government.

I will continue in my explanation of the context to the process, which I think is very important. At the meeting on 12 May, at which Nick Thomas-Symonds said to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Governments that the UK Government was making progress in all of those areas, I and colleagues said that we would wish to have not only a readout, without detail and documentation, but rather detail and documentation.

Until I raised it, the word “fisheries” was not mentioned by the UK Government. There was a readout of what would constitute part of an EU-UK agreement at a summit, but it was only when I asked—after a lengthy introduction and scene setting from the UK Government that did not mention fishing—what the UK Government’s position was, that it was mentioned. To say that I had an elliptical reply would be an understatement. There was no detail. Euphemisms for stability were used, but there was no mention of roll-over or of the length of time for which there should be such a thing. My position is that that is not a reset—it is not a proper relationship, it is not respectful and it is not how we should do business, full stop.

When the United Kingdom was in the European Union, there were Scottish Government officials and officials from the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation and other organisations, in Brussels, sitting in rooms in which they were able to inform the process for agreements that were being reached. Documentation was shared, and there was a conversation about process. With this agreement, there was not.

With regard to other issues, we were saying in principle that we wished the UK to rejoin Erasmus+ and to re-associate with the creative Europe programme. We literally had the summit, an agreement and a read-out that said, “We have agreed this”. I then said something like, “What happened to Creative Europe?” and the answer that I got was, “Well, that just did not happen.” We are not clear on why it did not happen. Was it because the UK tried and it did not happen? Did the European Union side bring it up and the UK said no? We do not know.

The process is not working properly. The substance, in significant part, is welcome. It is important that we understand both those things in order to ensure, when things are perhaps more challenging, that the process is robust enough to get us through all that. I have made that point to the UK Government subsequently. Process matters, and that should not involve keeping people in the dark and telling them after the event.

Sorry—there is an additional fact that I should add, because there will no doubt be a follow-up question in relation to interministerial relations between the devolved Administrations and the UK Government in important policy areas. Mr Brown mentioned fishing. In the normal run of events, that should have been discussed at the interministerial group involving Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands and the UK’s Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The last three meetings of that group in the run-up to the agreement were cancelled, all by the UK side, so there was not a substantive meeting on that.

On culture, the last interministerial group meeting took place in May 2024 and since then, further meetings have been delayed repeatedly, so no discussion was possible, in the run-up to the summit, on the creative Europe programme and on the mobility of touring artists.

Is that really how we want to do intergovernmental relations? No, it is not.

I totally agree with Mr Harvie. As a matter of course, we should expect to have good working relations all the time. Of course, one might disagree about things or have different priorities, but where there is a temptation for Parliaments or Governments not to explain themselves to others, because they do not have to, that is a route that, unfortunately, other Governments or Parliaments might choose.

Mr Harvie mentioned Wallonia, which is a very interesting case in point. Unlike the UK, Wallonia and Flanders have devolved rights in relation to treaties. We do not have those here. Although people keep talking about the Scottish devolution settlement being among the strongest in the world, that is a very good example of where it is not. As a result of the treaty involvement of both Wallonia and Flanders, the Belgian federal Government has to work as well as it can with Wallonia and Flanders—because it has to. That is the challenge that we have; in some areas, we operate on the basis of conventions, à la Sewel, for example. That is why we are having discussions about whether that convention should actually be put on a statutory basis.

At some point, the convener will no doubt want to ask about the progress that has been made in relation to the UK Government’s approach to the Sewel convention. A memorandum of understanding was promised, and I am happy to come back at any stage if you wish to discuss that, convener.

Well, I imagine that a UK Government that says that it is in favour of a reset and of being transparent would give evidence in public to a committee such as this, to explain how it is doing things. The record would then show an explanation of why we are dealing with the systematic cancellation of intergovernmental relations meetings, in advance of important issues. If the answers to the closed questions that I mentioned before are unsatisfactory, or if the assurances that are being given in public about how things will be different are not actually being delivered on, I would not rule anything out in trying to help things to get better.

For the record, I want everybody to understand that that is not just the position of the Scottish Government. It is a concern that is shared by colleagues in the Welsh Labour Party, the Sinn Féin First Minister of Northern Ireland and the Democratic Unionist Party Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. We do not find ourselves alone in this situation. If things do not change, we will have to look closely at how we make them change.

It turns out that it most certainly was not gossip and hearsay, given the conversations that have taken place subsequently. When one is in London and speaking to the European Union’s representative office in the UK, one can ask about much of this—it would be open to the committee to do that—and it turns out that what I have described is exactly how things progressed. One might even be able to read about it on the front pages of some newspapers, too.

I will revert to the committee.