Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, everyone, and a very warm welcome to the 13th meeting in 2022 of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee.

Our first agenda item is an update on the meeting of the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly that the deputy convener and I attended last week in Brussels. It was the first meeting of the assembly. The agenda was very much a scene-setting one on deciding a way forward and possible future topics. A note of the meeting has been prepared by the clerks and will be distributed to members and published on the Parliament website, so I will not spend too much time talking about it.

There was a very good debate on the Friday afternoon on Ukraine, with a lot of consensus across Europe about the work that is being done by the United Kingdom and the European Union in that respect. There was also a very interesting discussion on energy co-operation and energy security going forward. However, on the first day it was absolutely clear—and I will invite Donald Cameron to say a few words on this as well—that there was a complete impasse between the UK and Europe in relation to the Northern Ireland protocol. As an observer—colleagues from the Welsh Senedd were represented as observers as well—my observation was that the issue dominated the two days and it was very disappointing that there was not a Northern Irish voice in the room. If our Northern Irish colleagues had been there, they would not have had speaking rights at it. Everybody was talking about them but we heard very little about the actual experience of the people who were being talked about.

The assembly meeting was very interesting and I am looking forward to seeing how the assembly develops. I invite Donald Cameron to say a few words.

As I said, a note of the meeting will be published on the website for anyone who has an interest and committee members will have the opportunity to read that.

The convener of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, our colleague Stuart McMillan, who has an interest in what we are doing today, is joining us for the second agenda item. A very warm welcome to you.

We are taking evidence in a round-table format on legislative consent after Brexit. This is the first in a series of round tables that we have planned on post-EU constitutional issues. I am delighted to be joined by Professor Nicola McEwen, who is professor of territorial politics at the University of Edinburgh, and senior research fellow on UK in a changing Europe; Professor Stephen Tierney, who is professor of constitutional theory at the University of Edinburgh; Professor Aileen McHarg, who is professor of public law and human rights at Durham University; Akash Paun, who is senior fellow at the Institute for Government; and Professor Alan Page, who is emeritus professor of public law at the University of Dundee. Also—this is my first time managing a hybrid round table, so bear with me, people—Michael Clancy, who is director of law reform at the Law Society of Scotland, is joining us online.

Our committee adviser, Dr Christopher McCorkindale, who is a senior lecturer in law at the University of Strathclyde, is also here. We have four topics to cover. As always, I am afraid that we must have a sharp close because of First Minister’s question time on a Thursday morning, but we are hoping to have a discussion of around 20 minutes on each of the four topics. I invite Dr McCorkindale to introduce the topics.

Good morning, and welcome to the 12th meeting in 2021 of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. I apologise for the slight delay in starting, which was a result of technical issues with onboarding some of our witnesses. We hope to be joined remotely by one of our committee members, Maurice Golden.

Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. Is the committee content to take item 3 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

I will ask about a group that already experiences a significant amount of discrimination: the Traveller community. We know that there is a large population of Romany Travellers in Ukraine and a proportion of them should come through on the visa programmes. Are the local authorities’ specialist services in that area ready to engage with families that come from that community?

Do the witnesses wish to raise anything with the committee that we have not covered in the questions? I see no indication that anyone wants to come in, which I take as a good thing. I thank them for attending. It has been really helpful.

We move into private session for the final agenda item.

Item 2 is further consideration of the humanitarian impact of the crisis in Ukraine. We are joined remotely by a panel of witnesses: Pat Togher, assistant chief officer, public protection and complex needs, Glasgow city health and social care partnership; Elaine Ritchie, senior service manager, Perth and Kinross Council; Hazel Chisholm, housing policy officer, Highland Council; and Gayle Findlay, policy manager, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. I welcome you all to the meeting.

I will open with a couple of questions, which are probably for Ms Findlay. In your written submission to the committee, you say:

“COSLA is working with the Scottish Government to establish a centralised matching system”,

drawing on the experience from previous resettlement schemes. I would like to know a bit more about that. In addition, you say that you are working regularly with the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers, but that there are “additional issues” that “remain unresolved”. Can you elaborate a little on what those issues are?

Yes, thank you very much. We will now move to questions from the committee.

I invite Maurice Golden, who joins us remotely, to ask his questions.

Before I invite Paul Sweeney to ask his question, I will just give everyone a wee nudge by saying that we are up against our time limit.