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Common frameworks are a work in progress. A recent example of that is the deposit return scheme, where mechanisms have clearly not been working, which has led to a situation that acts against the devolved decision-making powers of the Scottish Parliament and means that we do not have the most constructive working relationship.

Theoretically, there is nothing standing in the way of having a constructive working relationship and using the common frameworks. However—and not to exercise the committee on an issue in which it is well versed—since the introduction of the common frameworks, we have seen the passage of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, which sometimes acts in parallel with and sometimes overrides the common frameworks in areas in which those frameworks are the only mechanism through which we might be able to progress issues. In those cases, the frameworks are trumped by the UK Government being able to make a decision and suggest that something is in the interests—as the UK Government sees it—of the UK single market. I will give the committee an example of that. You can easily imagine—[Interruption.]

There are two parts to Mr Bibby’s question. First, I make the general point that, whether it is tremendously welcome or not, I am an extremely regular attender of this committee. I give evidence to the convener and other members and, regardless of what the formal evidence session is about, there is an opportunity to ask me questions about any issue—that is a given and is on-going. That can be done in committee meetings or at portfolio question time, so I would not worry about the ability to raise issues with me.

However, I take the point about having the best formalised structure to update members in a fast-moving situation. I am very alive to that, because of my governmental responsibility and because I think about how the committee can perform its responsibilities. If there are developments between evidence sessions or programmed reporting on the Scottish Government’s approach to EU alignment or retained EU law, I am perfectly content to update the committee on that—as I did in my letter yesterday—to give context that can perhaps influence and inform members’ questions and allow them to be informed of the latest state of play.

I am sure that it has not escaped members’ notice that we are literally dealing with a situation that changes from week to week. If we can do more to keep the committed updated on progress, I am perfectly content that we write to the committee to do that.

I put on record my appreciation to members of the House of Lords, who have been working with the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government and with whom we have an extremely close working relationship, on this and other issues. On this issue in particular we have an extremely close working relationship with them. We share each other’s concerns, and a number of members of the House of Lords—those from Scotland and from Wales, in particular—have been very active in raising the concerns of both Governments, for which I am grateful. In answer to Mr Bibby’s point about whether there is more that we can do to keep the committee updated, that is a very live and on-going issue for me, and I will continue to do my best to keep the committee informed and answer its questions.

On the question of the nine items in the schedule that relate to devolved subjects and whether we are concerned about a clause or sub-clause of those nine items, as opposed to whether we have a general concern that they have devolved impacts, I think that I am right in saying that it is a general concern at this stage, because one really needs to work through all the pieces of legislation and specific provisions.

We have passed the stage of asking whether there is a devolved impact—there is. The question is whether we can gain, through looking at particular scenarios, knowledge of what would happen were the provisions to fall off the statute book. Civil service colleagues are trying to work through that to understand what mitigation might be required. I am happy to update the committee when we get to the stage of understanding that, so that members are aware of that concern, too.

There is no comparison with the constructive working relationship that I and the Welsh Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution, Mick Antoniw, have with a number of members of the House of Lords. From memory, we have had perhaps three meetings on the issues during the progress of the bill through Westminster. I have not had a single meeting with the UK minister in the House of Lords.

I am not sure whether committee members are aware of the sarcastic quip from the dispatch box about the likely reaction of the Scottish Government. I paraphrase, but it was something along the lines of, “Well, you would expect that wouldn’t you?” It was certainly not informed by any communication with me. We have not met to discuss any of the issues. As with many other matters on which the UK Government is proceeding with legislation or policy that relates directly to devolved competence, unfortunately, there is a gulf between the rhetoric and the reality when it comes to co-operation and close working relations, which are illusory.

I think that I am correct in saying that I will be giving evidence to the committee on 29 June on the operation of devolution post-Brexit, and we will discuss at some length at that meeting issues such as intergovernmental relations, the codification of expected norms of behaviour between Governments, the sovereignty of Westminster, the Sewel convention, delegated powers for UK ministers to legislate in devolved competence and, indeed, the UK internal market. However, it is fair to say that this is an evolving and moving situation.

I have to say, as somebody who thought that the devolution settlement was exactly that—settled—it clearly is not, and a variety of mechanisms are being used to row back on devolution.

I am not sure whether I have the microphone, but I will carry on as if I do.

I think that these areas are being explored by officials in the Scottish Government and at Westminster. Following on from what my colleagues have already said, I think that there are other related issues with regard to the extent to which measures are fully devolved or on which there is a degree of shared competence. I do not think that it will come as a surprise to committee members to learn that this was always a consideration that gave us concern.

It is not as simple as saying that the Scottish Government would wish something to remain on the statute book in Scotland, whereas the UK Government might wish it no longer to be on the statute books that would apply to England and Wales; it is about whether there is a duty on both Governments to try to deal with issues where there are currently shared competences that are a contributing factor to the complication of the situation in which we find ourselves.

I suppose that that is a reflection of the circumstance being fast moving, because we do not have clarity on all of that. It leads to the subsidiary but no less important point about what the role of the Scottish Parliament, in committee or plenary, is in relation to having an understanding of the process and being able to play a part in scrutinising it.

I will have to defer to colleagues about specific outside organisations but I make the general observation that, at the heart of the question is a reflection on the difficulty of trying to deal with hundreds and thousands of pieces of retained EU law and work out which are still operable, which apply and which require to be incorporated into what is being described as assimilated law and to do so in such a way as to get maximum external expertise as part of the process. That is one of the areas that, for anybody who cares about having the best legislative standards that we can have, is deeply problematic because, as I have said a couple of times this morning, we are dealing with a fast-moving situation.

Until recently, we were dealing with a situation in which the major concern—not the only one, but the major one—was that, among the thousands of pieces of legislation that might fall off the statute book, there might be additional laws that one had not even identified as being relevant and retained but would fall off the statute book because they were overlooked. Now, because of the change in the UK Government’s approach, we have a list of 500-plus pieces of legislation to be added to the schedule.

The question of due diligence on all those measures is good. Whether one can say with absolute certainty that all the laws beyond the nine that we have identified as potential matters of concern have a clean bill of health is definitely a question. I have been keen to ensure that we are as confident as we can be that we are not losing the high standards that European Union membership and legislation guaranteed for us before Brexit because, as the committee knows, it is the Scottish Government’s policy to remain as closely aligned as possible to the high European standards that exist.

We are seeing a pivot in the UK Government’s approach to dealing with retained EU law and are having to use our resources as quickly as we can, given the timescales that the UK Government has now imposed on us in its legislative programme. That will evolve if we are to assume that the bill is passed. However, that raises as many questions as you have been asking until now.

However, on whether specific external organisations have been part of the sift process, if one wants to call it that, I defer to colleagues.

That is a very good question and we have to get the best possible answer to how we work our way through what is a new situation. I think that committee members understand that we are now dealing with a fundamentally different approach to retained EU law than we were dealing with even a few short weeks ago. It would be fair to say that we are going to have to satisfy ourselves that the processes meet the new circumstances that we find ourselves in. I would most certainly be happy to update the committee on how we propose to do that.

As you will have noticed from Greig Walker’s title of retained EU law management programme lead, an area of the Scottish Government is looking at that area in great detail across the piece. It is correct to say that some areas of ministerial responsibility have a much bigger focus on the issue, just because the corpus of European Union law is much more extensive in the areas of the environment, agriculture, fisheries and so on than in some other policy areas. How we will take this through the various directorates of the Scottish Government is definitely something that we will have to be focused on as we get greater clarity.

It goes without stressing at great length that we are talking about legislation that has been fundamentally changed during its course through the parliamentary process at Westminster and has not yet been finalised. We are absolutely aware that we are going to have to react to that legislation in its final form. It is going to be a serious administrative challenge. We are going to have to build in appropriate mechanisms for the reasons that Mark Ruskell has outlined, to make sure that there is co-ordination between Government ministers. As I have said during this evidence session, the important role of the Parliament is then in understanding the process.

We are, of course, not talking about the introduction of new legislation in the sense of novel legal requirements. We are talking about the maintenance of existing European Union law, but Mark Ruskell is absolutely right to point to the mechanism by which we can ensure that Government goes through what will be a new process to ensure that we retain the laws and safeguards that we wish because we want to remain aligned and, as a consequence, how we are best able to integrate that process into the wider parliamentary programme and, in particular, the committee’s role in scrutinising my work and that of colleagues in this policy area.

First, welcome to the committee, Mr Bibby. You might not be aware but, in previous evidence sessions, I have said to the committee—and I am happy to say again today—that I am open to ensuring that we have the best reporting requirements that are commensurate with proposals that the Government is dealing with. Having sat for 10 years on the European Scrutiny Committee, I understand the importance of the work and want your committee to be able to fulfil its obligations.

What is important from my point of view is that we are in the process of updating our approach of reporting to the committee in relation to European Union alignment. The two things—retained EU law and European Union alignment—are areas in which we can integrate the process.

As has been the case until now, I am still perfectly content for committee officials and Scottish Government officials to work together on how we can do that best, because I totally appreciate the needs, interests, concerns and expectations of committee members, and I understand that they want to have the most up-to-date information that they can about such issues.

This is a work in progress, and I am perfectly content to have suggestions from Mr Bibby, any other committee member or the committee as a whole about how we can best update you.

The best co-operation that we have had was with members of the House of Lords who are concerned about the UK Government’s proposals, because—as is often the case with ping-pong scenarios—proposals are made at quite short notice and the ability to influence how they are debated and voted on in the House of Lords is often quite an immediate issue.

I certainly never got the impression that the UK Government had the interests of devolved Administrations as a high priority in the process. If it had, it would not have proposed the legislation as it was drafted. It also intended to carry on regardless of legislative consent being withheld on the unamended bill.

The UK Government has gone on to make its concessions in relation to what is known as the cliff edge—the throwing all the babies out with the bath water approach—which was what it intended to do in the first place, and it turned the process on its head by listing pieces of legislation that it wishes to see fall off the statute book. That was a late change, and we were not consulted on it. I am sure that the UK Government would probably say that the Scottish Government’s views and opposition to its original approach had already been articulated. I have seen correspondence that says that the UK Government has partly acted on the concerns of the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government in relation to the REUL bill.

On how the UK Government moved on to the next step of the process, we were informed on a Friday about the changes in relation to seeking legislative consent. Then, on the Monday, the UK Government confirmed from the dispatch box in the House of Lords that it would carry on regardless. That drives a coach and horses through how the Sewel convention is supposed to work. How on earth is the Scottish Parliament, whether it be committees or plenary, or the Scottish Government supposed to have time to consider a proposal about legislative consent from the UK Government over a weekend when no notice was given that it would carry on regardless on the Monday?

None of that speaks to devolved custom or practice operating in any meaningful and respectful sense. On the one hand, it is an improvement that the REUL bill will not sunset a great amount of legislation in the way that was originally planned, but, on the other hand, we know that the UK Government still plans to take more than 500 pieces of legislation off the statute book by the end of this year.

Scottish Government experts have been able to identify nine pieces of legislation that still have an impact in Scotland, but there is little prospect of us having the ability to have those pieces of legislation taken out of the updated REUL bill.

I am delighted to rejoin the committee for the third time. Forgive me, I am not sure at what point I dropped off. I will just give a short reprise of what I was saying to Mark Ruskell’s question.

My first reflection was that we are very actively considering how we will progress within Government the best understanding of what measures need to be taken to remain aligned with European Union legislation.

The second part of Mr Ruskell’s question was on the risk of the UK Government using the UK Internal Market Act 2020 to block the aspirations of the Scottish Government and Parliament to remain aligned with European Union legislation. He asked whether that was a significant fear that I share, to which the answer was yes, it absolutely is, because, if we look at the UK Government’s recent approach on a range of issues, from the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill to the deposit return scheme, we can see that it is prepared to consider a range of ways in which it can frustrate, block, delay and undermine progress in devolved areas of responsibility.

As the committee will be aware, a significant proportion of retained EU law does not fall neatly into a basket of devolved and reserved areas, so if those are pieces of legislation for which there is shared responsibility in a UK legislative setting, the question is whether I am confident that the UK Government would act in best faith so that Scotland could remain aligned with European Union standards while the UK sought to diverge from them. I have to say that I have grave concerns that the UK Government plans to develop and continue its interventionist approach in devolved areas. That will make it more difficult for us to retain the higher standard of European Union legislation and safeguards that we intend to pursue. However, pursue it we will.