Seòmar agus comataidhean

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

Our first agenda item today is budget scrutiny. On 9 December 2021, the Scottish Government published the Scottish budget for 2022-23. This morning, we will take evidence on the budget in relation to recommendations made in the committee’s pre-budget scrutiny report. I welcome to the committee Angus Robertson, Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture; Scott Wightman, the Scottish Government’s director for external affairs; and Bettina Sizeland, deputy director of culture and historic environment division. I invite the cabinet secretary to make a brief opening statement.

Thank you, cabinet secretary. It certainly seems a happier new year now that we know that indoor events are due to continue in Scotland from next week and we can see the culture sector starting to recover a little.

I will open with a question about the mainstreaming of culture, which was a main thrust of our pre-budget report. In your letter to the committee before Christmas, you said that you were starting “a series of conversations” with your Cabinet colleagues to

“identify areas of joint collaboration ... to inform ... the multi-year Resource Spending Review”.

Can you update us on that and on any outcomes that might be forthcoming?

Our next item is the committee’s inquiry into the United Kingdom internal market. This is the committee’s fourth panel on this topic. The committee will hear from Jonathan Scott, non-executive director and chair, Competition and Markets Authority; Rachel Merelie, senior director, office for the internal market; and Sheila Scobie, director, office for the internal market. I welcome you all to the meeting this morning and thank you very much for providing your written submissions. We will move straight to questions and I remind my colleagues to put an R in the chat if they wish to ask a question.

I will open with a question to Mr Scott. Can you please elaborate on the OIM’s role in providing reports or advice on specific regulatory provisions on the request of a relevant national authority? I am particularly interested in the transparency of this work. Will requests of a national authority or any advice given be made public, or will the parliamentary committees or parliamentary legislators be informed of such advice?

I will ask a supplementary on that, which follows on from my introductory question. If advice was given to the UK Government or the Welsh Assembly, for instance, would the other Governments be made aware of that if it is not in the public domain? Would all Governments be informed of advice that had been given, and when and where it was given?

Good morning, and a very warm welcome to the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. Our first agenda item is our inquiry into the Scottish Government’s international work. Today, we will hear from our fourth panel on the topic. We have with us Mark Majewsky Anderson, director of research and innovation at Glasgow Caledonian University; David Hope-Jones OBE, chief executive of the Scotland Malawi Partnership; and Lewis Ryder-Jones, deputy chief executive of Scotland’s International Development Alliance. Welcome to the meeting, and thank you for your written submissions.

We will move straight to questions, and I will open with a question for Mr Ryder-Jones. In your submission, you state that the Scottish Parliament should scrutinise the Scottish Government’s external affairs spending using

“a Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development ... approach”.

Will you elaborate a little on that? Are there examples of that in action elsewhere?

If we go to Jonathan Scott, I am sure that he will nominate someone.

We will move on to questions from members.

Mr Scott, I will ask a supplementary on that. You said that it is something that the four nations would need to come to an agreement on. The Northern Ireland protocol means that Northern Ireland will stay in step with European regulations and European law. It is a stated wish of the Scottish and the Welsh Governments to implement European law going forward—we call it the keeping pace power in Scotland. Can the UK Government override the wishes of the three other Governments in an area where there is a problem in reaching agreement? What happens when there is stalemate and maybe there are three to one against in implementing European law or a European regulation?

I thank our witnesses very much. I think that we have only scratched the surface of some aspects of our discussion today and we could examine them in much more detail. I was particularly struck by Mark Majewsky Anderson’s comments about the foundations and how we might develop working in Europe. I hope that we will be able to come back to those issues over the course of our inquiry. One of the first projects that I was aware of in this area was Malawi midwives being trained virtually at the University of the West of Scotland. That was many years ago but seeing such projects in action brings home how effective they can be.

I will suspend for a moment to allow the witnesses to change over.

I think that that is the last of the questions from the committee. I suspect that this has been an introductory session with you. The subject area is going to be of interest to the committee as the situation develops and as you start to finalise some of the areas that are in development at the moment. I thank Mr Scott, Ms Merelie and Ms Scobie for their attendance at the committee this morning.