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How many elections need to return a majority to this place—there have been significantly more than the Conservative Party had secured when it legislated for a Brexit referendum—for there to be a referendum about Scotland’s constitutional future?

No.

My view is that it is a good thing that there are senior members of Government who have responsibility for intergovernmental relations and that there is a clear locus. However, having said that, I think that it is really important for the heads of Government to understand that the matter is important to them and is not just something that is palmed off to somebody who is thought to have the political smarts to deal with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The other Dunlop recommendations included a new Cabinet sub-committee on cross-Government strategic priorities—

I agree with Mr Adam. He is absolutely right, in general. I would draw the committee’s attention to the fact—I would not be the first person to say this in giving evidence on this question to the committee—that, although it is not enshrined in a constitution, the right of self-determination for a constituent nation in this United Kingdom is written into legislation and international treaties. That is the route by which Northern Ireland is in a position to determine whether it should become part of a united Ireland or not—and it involves not just the mechanism of how that might take place, but that it might take place every seven years.

I have said before that Scotland’s position is not exactly analogous with Northern Ireland’s, but the right of self-determination is an inalienable right. It is not held only in one place and not in another. Either we believe in the right of self-determination and in a family of nations that are all valued, or we do not. We have an inconsistency in that that is the de jure situation only for Northern Ireland and for England, by dint of its size. England has a de facto right of self-determination within the context of the United Kingdom because it constitutes 85 per cent of it. It is just not sustainable for it to remain so.

Should there be a mechanism? Yes. Why? It is because it happens elsewhere in this state and it happens in other comparable multinational states. It is not a difficult thing to do. We know that, because it has happened already—ergo, there is precedent, so we know how it can happen. It is disappointing that colleagues on the other side of the constitutional argument are not prepared to step up and avow the democratic principles that they say they adhere to, when we all should do so.

Democracy is not a secret; it happens in public. It involves a ballot box, people voting and people being elected to this Parliament. I am sorry to say that those who stand in the path of it are denying the democratic process and, by extension, people’s democratic right to exercise the right of self-determination. That is not sustainable.

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.

Convener, with your permission—am I in a position to answer the question?

No, I do not, because the current UK Government, having said before it was elected that it would repeal the internal market act, did not act on that commitment to repeal the act when it took up office and overlooked two votes in this Parliament for the repeal of the act. The position here is the same as that of the Welsh Labour Government. The issue is not about making the internal market act work; it is about repealing it and making the common frameworks mechanism work. That mechanism precedes the IMA, which is the Trojan horse in the devolved settlement. Since the new UK Government took office, we have seen it reviewing the internal market act. The formulation that it uses is that its preference is to “foreground” the common frameworks. I think that that is the UK Government’s way of saying that it would, as a matter of course, prefer to deal with these intergovernmental matters through the common frameworks route but that it wants to keep the internal market act in reserve. That position has been resisted very strongly by the Scottish Government, which still believes that the IMA should be repealed.

Convener, you have drawn attention to the fact that, in a letter that was sent earlier this month, a significant number of Labour members of the Welsh Senedd express the same view as we do. I am sure that the committee has seen the correspondence. They go into some detail in criticising the UK Government’s continuing involvement in areas of devolved responsibility and say that that is not what the UK Government should be doing.

I have always taken the view—I have given evidence on this to the committee—that where there is a willingness to make common frameworks operate, they can and they should operate, and the internal market act is a Trojan horse in the devolved settlement. It was a political project and it was there to undermine devolved Governments and Administrations. Sadly, it is being continued by the current UK Government.

Thank you for the invitation to discuss this and other matters.

There has definitely been a change since the last UK general election, certainly rhetorically. Immediately after the election, and for some time, UK Government ministers were very keen to stress their understanding of how suboptimally the predecessor UK Government had approached intergovernmental relations, how that was not sustainable and how there needed to be a change—and that they were committed to making it.

At the start, that often required little more than simply meeting. It was previously the case that, often, across a wide range of subjects, meetings never took place or were cancelled, or documentation was not provided for them. As for the contents of meetings when they were held, the process simply was not working. That was the view of not only the Scottish Government but the Welsh Government and Northern Irish colleagues. The incoming UK Government stressed that it understood that that was the context of intergovernmental relations and that it wanted to change that.

That led to a flurry of introductory meetings, which I took part in with the Secretary of State for Scotland and—from memory, in terms of my policy areas—ministers in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. All of them said the same thing: that they wanted a reset in relations with the devolved Administrations and with the European Union, and that the UK Government was committed to resetting relations with both.

After the initial meetings, we began to see a pick-up in the meetings of the different formats of intergovernmental relations. I am sure that the committee is aware that the IGR structures include a format in which the Prime Minister and the heads of devolved Governments meet. Under the previous UK Government, it was more often than not the case that the Prime Minister did not attend at all. However, the incoming Prime Minister has attended and has continued to attend.

Those meetings have been held regularly with the heads of devolved Governments. There are also interministerial standing committees, finance interministerial standing committees and portfolio-specific interministerial groups. Those have all been meeting—some of them have been meeting for the first time—and that is a significant improvement.

That is step 1—rhetorical acknowledgement that things were not working well and a commitment to making them work better. The first part of that commitment is that we should be meeting. There is then a broad range of how well that is working, and perhaps we will come on to that as well.

I acknowledge that there are areas where there is good and improving dialogue. The Government minister that I speak with most often is Nick Thomas-Symonds of the Cabinet Office, who has responsibility for negotiations with the European Union. He has been the lead UK Government minister dealing with the UK-EU agreement. I met the previous Secretary of State for Scotland, and I have met him again in his new role at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Not long ago, I met with Michael Shanks, who is one of the UK energy ministers. I will stop there, because you will, no doubt, want to get on to how those meetings and processes work, and I can perhaps share some insights on that as well.

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.