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I agree. That is contradictory, not just in terms but in publicly stated positions. As stated in June 2014, the position of the leaders of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, the Scottish Labour Party and the Scottish Liberal Democrats was:

“Power lies with the Scottish people and we believe it is for the Scottish people to decide how we are governed.”

Also in 2014, the Smith commission stated:

“nothing in this report prevents Scotland becoming an independent country in the future should the people of Scotland so choose.”

Another very strong quote states:

“Mandates come from the electorate in an election ... it should be the people of Scotland that decide when the next referendum is.”

That quote is from Anas Sarwar.

I could go on. It does not matter whether politicians—I could go back to Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Theresa May and so on—have all said similar things, there has been an acknowledgement, even among people who do not support Scottish independence, that self-determination, which was the key point in Mr Brown’s question, is an inalienable right of the people of Scotland. That being the case, being repeatedly unprepared to answer the simple question, “By which mechanism can Scotland secure a referendum on independence?” is withholding the right of self-determination.

It is a denial of democracy. A number of rhetorical flourishes are thrown into the debate, which are there to stymie, when people say that now is not the time and that things are required to be the settled will. There is a whole series of things that are absolutely and totally irrelevant to the simple question that you have asked, which is about what the mechanism is.

I think that, as democrats, we all agree and would avow that the only route for significant constitutional change is through the ballot box. The question for all of us to answer, without cavilling at that, is about how that can be secured. The good news is that we have done it. When the Scottish Parliament election happened in 2011, the UK Government acknowledged that a majority in the Parliament had been elected on a manifesto commitment that a referendum should take place, and that is exactly what happened.

We have now had a number of elections since, including those for the current Scottish Parliament, in which a majority of members were elected on a manifesto commitment that there should be a referendum, yet a referendum is being blocked. We have the de facto blocking of a referendum, and we have the de jure challenge from others who oppose independence, although not from all of them—there are some observers out there who have made other points. I have read commentary from the likes of Kenny Farquharson, a Scottish columnist who did not support Scottish independence, that there should be a mechanism.

There must be a mechanism. The issue is not going to go away. I acknowledge that there are strongly held views for and against independence, and for and against the union. However, that is not the question before us. The question is, what is the democratic mechanism at the present time? At least half the Scottish electorate support Scottish independence, and a higher percentage believe that one should be able to make a decision about it.

There is a precedent, and there are different ways in which this happens. Mr Brown mentioned other parts of the world. The National Assembly of Québec has the right to decide whether there should be a referendum, but we do not. That is perfectly possible elsewhere, and it should be possible here. The longer the current situation goes on, the more unsustainable and corrosive it gets for our democratic culture, because it is a roadblock on democratic decision making and a denial of a democratic right of self-determination.

That is the only rational explanation that I have. Let us cast our minds back to the 2011 Scottish Parliament election and the way in which the then UK Prime Minister was able to agree a process with the Scottish Government. That was done on the basis that a majority had been elected to the Scottish Parliament on a manifesto commitment, but support for independence was considered to be in the 20 per cents. I think that the calculation for the then UK Prime Minister was that this was a concession that would lead to a no vote and would then stop the debate and end the question.

The difference now is that not only do the majority of those in this Parliament support independence but a majority in this country support it, too. I see some shaking of heads, but the average of all the independent polling that one is able to point to shows that support for a yes vote is ahead of support for no.

Even if that were not the case, that would not negate the point that I am making, which is that the difference is that the starting point for a referendum in 2025, 2026 or 2027 would be support percentages that were not in the 20s but were, de minimis, in the 40s. Recent polls have also shown that, among those who have a view on how they would vote, support is at more than 50 per cent. That is the only rational explanation as to why someone would seek to block both a democratic choice and a mechanism for exercising that choice.

I am sorry to have to say it, but I think that colleagues who support that position should look themselves in the mirror and be honest about the fact that seeking to stop a vote simply because we do not like the potential outcome does not behove us as democrats. When we go into elections, we all know that we might or might not be elected or re-elected, and we are prepared to stand for election knowing that context.

Decisions have been taken about wider constitutional issues—such as devolution—on which we have had a number of referenda. We had a number of referenda on Europe. People’s views change, and I think that I am right in saying that we now have about 1 million people living in Scotland who were not able to vote in the 2014 referendum. We have also had a material change of circumstances since that vote. We were promised that, if we were to vote no, we would remain in the European Union, but we have since been taken out of the European Union, although a majority in Scotland voted to remain. That was a case of misselling.

Not only is there a strong rhetorical case for a referendum but we have the results of election after election after election. There are those who are not supportive of a yes outcome but who agree, as democrats, that the only acceptable mechanism for determining our future in governmental or constitutional terms is the ballot box. However, some are seeking rhetorical routes to put off answering an actually quite simple question.

I have another simple point. How on earth is it sustainable to have a mechanism in one part of the United Kingdom but not in another? That is just not sustainable.

I can answer that question only about myself, but I am happy to update the committee more generally. I have been provided with confirmation that I have met UK Government ministers at least 24 times since the change in UK Government, but the total number of meetings will be a significant number.

I think that it is actually the Deputy First Minister who has governmental responsibility for intergovernmental relations. I have responsibility for the constitution. My civil service colleagues keep a note of all the details.

It is also fair to acknowledge that some UK Government ministers, because of their area of responsibility, are very committed to meeting regularly. Nick Thomas-Symonds, who is responsible for Europe, is a good example of that. I observe that, more often than not, I tend to meet Scottish and Welsh UK Government ministers. It is perhaps the case that they have a better sense than others that they should be meeting about things—that is just my perception.

I am sorry, but to keep my answer brief, I do not have the full number of meetings, Mr Bibby. If the committee wishes for us to make the best stab at a global number, I am happy to then provide that number.

I hear Mr Brown using the word “shambles” and I have used the word “suboptimal”; I am not sure that they are that far apart. I agree very much with him that this is not primarily about structures. Notwithstanding that one should keep an open mind as to how structures might work—that is fine—I agree that the key underlying issue is the attitude towards things.

The term that Mr Brown was looking for from a European context was “codecision”, which is the decision-making process between European institutions. That approach is certainly not what happens in intergovernmental relations.

As I think that I have said to the committee before, we have come to the end of the rhetoric about reset having any validity, because now we are down to the content and the quality of intergovernmental relations. I have no doubt that the attitude in Westminster is that devolved Administrations and Parliaments are subordinate and that one should do as much as is necessary to help intergovernmental relations to work when it is in one’s interest and to ignore them when it is not. That is the reality of things.

Mr Brown drew international comparisons. I have discussed the issue with colleagues in other European countries that have quasi-federal devolved structures and they are aghast about how the system works in the UK. “Ad hoc” sounds like a formal way of describing things, but it has most certainly been suboptimal.

Regardless of whether one is for or against Scottish independence, or of whether one wishes to have a more federal situation, which is what a previous UK Prime Minister suggested we would be having after 2014, we are very far away from that. Can we try to get some of this to work better? Yes—I am trying, as are other colleagues. A lot of it would not be that difficult, such as the European stuff.

I reflect on my earlier point that there has to be trust between Governments in an intergovernmental structure. That is a very important element of how it can all work. However, unless one tries it, things will never get better.

In fact, in a European context, the approach is going backwards. Keith Brown could have reminded the committee that, in the past, Scottish Government civil servants took part in the annual fisheries negotiations in Brussels, in the room—they were there—but that is not the case now; we just get a read-out of what has been agreed without any on-going discussion about what has been considered. That has gone backwards from pre-devolution custom and practice, and it is worse.

I am sorry—words are being put in my mouth by Jamie Halcro Johnston and that is not acceptable. What I have stated—

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.

Again, I reflect that a member who is not in favour of independence has the opportunity to suggest by which democratic mechanism the people might be able to determine the future of their country, but that suggestion is—again—totally absent.