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I met the previous secretary of state, Jacob Rees-Mogg, twice and was told in both meetings that the UK Government would respect the Sewel convention. As we know, in practice, there have been numerous examples in recent years of the Sewel convention being disregarded. If the Sewel convention is to be respected, we will be able to see that in practice if the Parliament does not pass a legislative consent motion for the bill and the UK Government does not go forward with the legislation as it is currently proposed.

Do I think that that is what the UK Government will do? I have very low expectations of the UK Government doing that. What seems to have happened, in effect, is that the UK Government has reinterpreted what the Sewel convention is. To the UK Government, the Sewel convention would appear to mean only that it must have consulted the Scottish Government on the principles of a legislative proposal, not that it recognises that it has been given a red card and that the legislative proposal must go—it must be withdrawn and must not apply in Scotland. Instead, what it seems to say is, “We have consulted, we hear what the Scottish Government says on the matter and we are going to carry on regardless.”

We need to do what we should do, which is use the mechanisms, and we will continue to do our best to work with the UK Government. We must do that, especially on the level of officials, who have to work with their opposite numbers in UK Government departments. We will, no doubt, come on to what happens next. We can deal with these things only by having a good relationship and, often, that exists at an official level. I am very grateful to colleagues from the Scottish Government and UK Government departments for working in that way.

The absence of good faith and professional working practice is at a Government-to-Government level: there is little to no tangible respectful relationship between the UK Government and the Scottish Government. That is entirely down to the approach of the UK Government, which is, “It’s my way or the highway. We’re doing this. We don’t care what you think. We don’t care about the evidence or the objections that you have. We don’t care about your ability to manage a parliamentary process or a Government’s legislative programme. We’re going to legislate in a way that, notwithstanding your wish to remain aligned with the European Union, will impose on you some of the greatest legislative pressures that there have been since the beginning of devolution.” That is not a respectful approach from a Government that is working from a partnership perspective.

Is there a rational way to go forward in the irrational, surreal and unprecedented situation in which we find ourselves? To be practical and pragmatic about what is a bad situation, is there a better or worse way of getting through all this? Yes, there are ways of doing it that would be more sensible and ways that would be more damaging.

The first point on sunsetting is the self-evident one that trying to do everything within one year is not sensible, given all the constraints that we know about. Incidentally, the constraints that will be felt in the Scottish Government will be felt by the UK Government—that is the magnitude of this. It will be huge for UK Government departments, for the UK Government and for the UK Parliament. As a consequence, it will also be huge for us here and for colleagues in Wales and Northern Ireland. Sarah Boyack raised a very serious point about a democratic deficit in relation to what all this means in Northern Ireland.

If one were to take an altogether more serious approach to minimising the risk of leaving things out and overlooking things that would be damaging and so on, having a phased approach over a longer timescale would be the self-evident way to go about it. That is not what the UK Government proposes. It has rejected the argument for longer timescales, although all those points have been made.

Fast-tracking presents the risk from the other end of the telescope. What is that saying about legislating in haste? Perhaps somebody on the committee can help with that. I am mindful, as I am sure the committee is, of doing things in a way that brings in other kinds of risks, and I have read the evidence that has been given to the committee on that.

In this massively imperfect situation, there is a balance to be struck between trying to do things within unacceptable timescales that may be forced on us and doing them in a way that brings other risks. That is the balancing act that we will have to try to find our way through.

First, you start the process. The process has started in the Government to begin the work of understanding the existing law as part of retained EU law and making an assessment of what would be required to maintain those safeguards. No doubt, a risk assessment will be made throughout that process.

Is there legal jeopardy in processes? No doubt, there will be all kinds of legal concerns, and we will just have to work our way through that methodically as well as we can, with the input of insights from UK Government departments, the UK Government and Governments elsewhere in the UK as well as those who have an oversight and scrutiny responsibility—the committee and your parliamentarian colleagues in Westminster and Cardiff—and from all the representative bodies, especially those that have the capacity. You have heard from many of those bodies. We will have to work together through this process to try to ensure that we do not miss anything in identifying the legislation and then understanding what is required to make sure that it can be retained.

It is important to put on the record again that all we can do is retain safeguards. The provisions have been drafted in such a way so that safeguards can be weakened, which is not the Scottish Government’s intention but is obviously part of the ideological drive of the UK Government. The UK Government might choose, in the process that I described in answer to a question by Sarah Boyack, to introduce another set of laws at UK level in important areas that are devolved, which may well have an impact on the law in Scotland in ways that are not in accordance with the views of the Government or the Parliament here. That is another dimension to all this. It is not simply saying that law A requires replacement by law B in the Scottish Parliament; it is that the UK Government is beginning a process in which it will potentially seek to identify law A and replace it with law B, which may have an impact on devolved competence.

What is the oversight of that? On the basis of everything that we have learned about the process thus far, what would give us any confidence that that would respect the priorities of the Government or the Parliament in Scotland? The answer to that is zero, and we need to bear that in mind as well. We are right to be concerned about things falling off the table because one has not understood their importance or their interrelationship with the operation of the courts, for example, in areas that we know are important. That is one concern. There is a risk that things are lost entirely and that we go back to areas where there was no safeguard or regulation before that provided by the European Community and then the European Union.

We then have the issue of the measures that we would have to undertake and all the work that we need to do to ensure that those are the right form and do what they are supposed to do. We then have the other part of the equation, which is what happens in the United Kingdom Parliament and what the United Kingdom Government does, and how that interacts with devolved responsibility.

Those are all known unknowns, in relation to which we can have a greater or lesser degree of confidence in how we do things. I am absolutely focused on the Scottish Government doing what it needs to do for us to remain aligned with the European Union and to retain the safeguards that we have accrued over 47 years of European Union membership. I cannot be confident about the approach that the UK Government will take, and nor can I be confident in the intergovernmental relations processes as they currently operate, or indeed in the instruments that have been created to manage aspects of policy or policy divergence, such as common frameworks. We have not even got into the operation of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 and what that would mean, when there is a read across from other legislation that may be passed. All of that makes the issues that Mr Ruskell highlights more difficult.

Sure. It would be a very weird tool in the toolbox and it would be a very strange way of approaching alignment. We are, in large part, currently still aligned with the European Union. If there were areas where one thought that, regardless of the general principle on seeking to be largely aligned with the European Union, there was some regulation—historic or new—for which it would make sense to find a different way of doing things, there is already a reasonable and proportionate way of dealing with that, and the ability to do that is held by the Scottish Government and this Parliament. Indeed, your committee would be able to fully scrutinise any particular proposal emanating from our current toolbox to improve existing European legislation. As things stand, the UK Government is seeking to empty the entire toolbox of European legislation of 47 years and is asking us to pick up everything and put it back in the box. It is totally the wrong way round.

In answer to your question, does the bill mean that we can identify European Union legislation that has been retained, that we can seek to reintroduce legislation through the Scottish Parliament, and that we can safeguard? Yes, but that comes with the important rider that, because we are in this suboptimal operation of the devolved settlement in the UK, and a significant part of this involves overlap—to use Donald Cameron’s word—in relation to powers exercised by the UK Government, we cannot be sure that we can fully protect the European Union safeguards that we wish to. So often, the UK Government is indicating that it is not prepared to work with the Scottish Government to do what we have been elected to do.

Can the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government do what they can to ensure that different pieces of retained EU law remain on the Scottish statute book? We can in significant areas, but we cannot necessarily do that in all areas.

Welcome to the brave new world—

I completely agree with you, convener. This relates to 47 years of safeguards right across the policy areas that matter to people in every single part of Scotland—indeed, in every part of the UK. This might have seemed like a dry political process until now, when we know that it is likely to go ahead. We now know, from the evidence that you have been given, that this impacts on legislation that matters, from food safety to biosecurity to safeguards around human rights and common pay. The list is very long.

Most of us around the table would agree that we have safeguards and among the highest standards in the world because we were a member of the European Union, and that those standards are the best in the world. The policy of this Government is to remain aligned with those safeguards and standards, and that is exactly why we will do what we have to do. It is not the route that we would have chosen to go down, but, if we have to do it, we will do what we need to do to give people in Motherwell, Wishaw and everywhere else in Scotland the confidence that, in Scotland, we want to retain the highest level of safeguards and regulation in relation to people’s personal safety, the safety of food, the provision of services, human rights and equality, pay—I will be here for the remainder of the day if I go through a full list of all the areas where European legislation has been so important. That is what we will have to do to make sure that we protect all those safeguards and regulations, and it is what we intend to do. It would not be necessary if the UK Government did not push this legislation through or at least amended it so that it would not apply in Scotland. The UK Government has chosen not to do that.

I have relied on the evidence to the committee and have read it in some detail in order to be fully apprised of where various sectors of the economy are on the matter. Government officials have regular communications with all forms of representative organisations, but the committee has had very thorough discussions with various sectors and with people who have significant understanding of the legal situation. That has been extremely helpful.

For context—we might come on to this, but I will say this, just in case we do not—it is important for me to put on the record how important timing is and how important it is that we all understand what has happened in the past two to three weeks. Since the arrival of the new Prime Minister, there has been a rethink on a number of United Kingdom Government policy approaches. We saw that with the U-turn on the mini budget by the previous Prime Minister, Liz Truss, and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng. We can see news today about the UK Government U-turning on policy on renewable energy in England.

In the past two to three weeks there has been a very active discussion in Whitehall about whether the UK Government should shelve the bill entirely. That has led directly to intervention by interest and representative groups—from the UK Trades Union Congress to the Institute of Directors and many others besides—in a letter that was sent to Grant Shapps and reported in the Financial Times.

At that point, the Scottish Government and colleagues in the Welsh Government decided that we would make a joint approach to the UK Government, underlining our previous approaches and saying that the bill is back to front—that it is wrong, it is disproportionate and it is not the right way to proceed. Even if one thought that revocation was a good thing in principle, the bill is not the right way to do it.

That is all important because we can look back on developments in the past few weeks and, sadly, draw the conclusion that the UK Government has decided that it will go ahead with the earliest sunset date, as was planned by the previous Government. Notwithstanding the opposition of the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and all the interest groups and organisations, and despite the vote in the Scottish Parliament on the subject, the UK Government has decided to proceed.

The window of opportunity for the bill to be shelved or forgotten about after having been at the House of Lords has now passed. It is important to put on the record that we are now dealing with a bill that will go forward. In the UK Parliament committee stage, amendments that would have protected Scotland’s position on retained EU law that had been drafted within the Scottish Government were voted on. They were supported by members of the committee from the Scottish National Party and the Labour Party but were opposed by Conservative Party members. That, in effect, protected the bill’s course through the parliamentary process at Westminster.

That means that we are looking at the worst-case scenario. Any thought that we had of the bill being amended to limit its impact on Scotland has been blocked in committee. There is no longer any thought that it might be shelved or withdrawn, or that we might have a later sunset deadline, with the Scottish Government’s and Parliament’s ability to protect European Union law being spread out over a long period. The evidence to the committee is absolutely clear that there is a big danger, because of the compressed timeframe for managing the process, that we could miss things or legislate in haste.

We find ourselves—the Government and the committee—facing the worst-case scenario, with the bill. I have no doubt that it will lead you to ask another set of questions, but it is important to have set the scene for the committee so that we all understand where we are with the bill. We now believe that it will go ahead within the shortest possible timeframe and without any amendments that are proposed by the Scottish Government being accepted at Westminster by the UK Government.

I will have to defer to colleagues on what we are hearing from UK officials. However, I think that are working on the basis that we will have to ensure that things do not fall off the earlier cliff edge rather than the later. We will always make arguments for things happening later. The Scottish ministers do not have powers over that—UK Government ministers have those powers.

Ms Minto could have added to her question the statistic that only 4 per cent of businesses believe that they have a full understanding of what the bill will mean for them, yet we are expecting businesses, environmental organisations, third sector organisations, Government departments, Parliaments and parliamentary committees—all of us—to get our heads around thousands of pieces of legislation in order to work out what we must do to avoid things falling off a cliff at the end of next year.

I have listened closely. Sarah Boyack, who is a member of the committee, asked me a good question in the chamber of the Parliament about the processes that might be involved in all this. We will all have to consider how we go through this unmatched challenge of working out how existing legislation impacts on us, understanding what needs to happen to retain it—the Government’s policy is to remain aligned, or largely aligned, with existing European legislation, and I believe that the majority of members in the Parliament want that, too—and ensuring that the Government, the Parliament and the committee have the capacity to do that. Those are all known unknowns. We have never had to do something like this before. We should not be doing it in the first place, but we will have to do it.

Is there any silver lining in the process? At least we have a very close working relationship with the Welsh Government, which faces the same challenges. I know from my conversations with Mick Antoniw that there is a huge amount of good will in trying to get through the process. If we can work with one another through the process, we will do exactly that.

Anyone who has any locus, interest or responsibility in relation to any of these matters, including third sector or representative organisations that have particular concerns about the impact that the bill might have on the environment, or colleagues who deal with rural affairs issues—it is largely thought that, in terms of legislation, the biggest number will fall into the category of rural affairs, but that takes us into food safety and related questions—will have to work very quickly to understand what needs to happen to protect our safeguards. That has been highlighted in evidence to the committee.

For the record, I am not a lawyer—as, I think, you all know—but some very eminent lawyers have given evidence to the committee. Indeed, one member of the committee is an eminent lawyer who must understand, as committee witnesses have described, the potential unintended consequences of different aspects of retained EU law, which was previously just EU law, on our domestic legal system. We need to ensure that certain things do not literally disappear from the statute book. That is an overview.

Do we know how long the process will take? No, we do not. Do we know the exact form in which we will have to do this? No, we do not. I could go on. I do not want to give the impression that we are not thinking about such things, because we are. My civil service colleagues have been updating me on the detailed work that has begun to build solid foundations for this enormous undertaking. Now that we know that the UK Government is going to press ahead and will be working to the tightest timescale—we have learned that only within the past few weeks—we will have to work very quickly.

The UK Government has a very narrow window of time in which to give any credibility to the claim that it is working with the devolved Administrations on the matter. If it is already writing to ask UK Government departments in Whitehall to provide lists and the rationale for what should and should not be retained, without the full and active involvement of devolved institutions, any claim of wanting to make devolution work in any meaningful way is for the birds.

I have not had any indication that the UK Government foresees providing any additional funding for us to manage our way through the process.