Chamber and committees

Thank you and good morning. I am thinking how difficult it must be to take an academic approach to this when so much of it comes down to political will and the politics behind it all. I do not think that intergovernmental relations could be explained without reference to politics. To the public, it is a hot mess. They will not even try to comprehend it because it is not governed by any rationale across the piece.

Going back to devolution, we were told that the Sewel convention would be enshrined in law. People were told that before they voted in the referendum, but it was ditched immediately afterwards. That bad faith has continued since.

The internal market act, which is opposed by the Welsh and Scottish Governments and by this Parliament, has taken further the extent to which the UK Government can involve itself in devolved matters. I will give one recent example. Last week, the UK Government announced a substantial amount of cash that is to go out across the UK through the pride in place initiative. That was not the subject of any consultation with the Scottish Government and it will involve spending in local areas and the establishment of committees or boards across the country. There is no real criteria as to how the money is to be spent, and the initiative does not use the Scottish index of multiple deprivation or any other measure. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has not been consulted and no reference has been made to the grant-aid expenditure formula for local government.

I just wonder about that lack of consultation. Given that a Labour Government was responsible initially for the establishment of devolution, you would have thought that a Labour Government would want to respect devolution. Labour also decried the predecessor levelling up fund, so you would have thought that it would not have announced the initiative. What implications will the fact that it has done so have for the intergovernmental relationship? Does it blow out of the water any idea of a substantive reset, rather than rhetoric sitting alongside actions that do not mirror that rhetoric? I know that that is quite a loaded question, but I am interested to hear any answers on the implications of the pride in place initiative.

I will just come back on that point. If you think back to Brexit, the shared prosperity fund was essentially trying to replace the European funds that came before, but the EU, as a body, quite rightly often wanted to identify itself with those projects, so you saw the big signage.

The point that I am trying to make is that it goes way beyond the idea of the UK Government trying to say, “This is what we’re doing in Scotland,” in order to make itself relevant—which is quite legitimate. Can you imagine what the reaction of Westminster would be if, in Scotland, six months out from a UK general election, we set up a fund and gave individual sitting MSPs a crucial role in deciding how those funds were to be disbursed? I find this an extraordinary thing to have happened in respect of the implications for intergovernmental relations and interparliamentary relations as well.

On your point about the politics, the examples that we have and the submissions that we have received show that in Germany, for example, the procedures and practices seem to have been strong enough to withstand the political ebb and flow. That is my impression anyway. I do not know that from first-hand experience, but they seem to have the policies and processes in place, whereas here they are ad hoc, one sided or absent completely in too many cases for us to be able to say whether there is proper intergovernmental working.

It is worth remembering that the UK Government told the Supreme Court that it viewed the Sewel convention as merely a self-denying ordinance, which undermines much of what people are trying to do to make it a more serious convention. That is just a comment.

I have not thought it through—I must admit that—but I suppose the idea is that, if the committee was recognised by both Parliaments, its recommendations, if not binding, would at least carry weight and would have to be reported to both Parliaments. It would also address the point you make about timing and the fact that we often get an LCM late in the day. A designated committee could help with the timing of it, because it would go straight to considering it, whereas currently the relevant committee of this Parliament has to try to fit a meeting on it into its work programme.

It is just an idea. I will leave it at that, convener.

For your information, I do not know what the Scottish Government’s intentions are, but mine are to write to the Electoral Commission and to the Presiding Officer, because that is a complete interference in the election process in Scotland.

On the general question, do other members of the panel have any views to express?

I have one last question. I may come back in if there is time afterwards, but I know that other members want to come in.

In relation to the Sewel convention, I forget who proposed it, but our papers mention the idea of having a designated committee within this Parliament to look at legislative consent motions. Is there any mileage in the idea of having a joint standing committee between this Parliament and the Westminster Parliament, with members from both sides on it, to try to ease some of the tensions around the Sewel convention? I do not know whether there is a precedent for it.

Mr Thomson talked earlier about the DRS—the law was made, people expected things to happen and then it was struck down. One of the concerns of this committee is the chilling effect that that has had on any proposals that the Government is considering, because people do not know whether or not they will be struck down. That chilling effect is quite profound. It will be interesting to see what impact that has on the parties’ manifestos in the coming election.

I have two questions, but I still expect to take less time than Stephen Kerr did. The first one is for Professor McEwen. In your submission, you make the statement that

“The Westminster parliament, particularly the House of Commons, has less interest in IGR especially at the portfolio level, and has demonstrated less interest than the devolved legislatures in scrutinising the UK Government’s intergovernmental activity.”

That is followed by your statement that

“In my view, transparency and accountability can be best increased by strengthening the requirements upon the Scottish Government to report on its activity in IGR.”

I am all for haranguing the Scottish Government to do more, and it could continually try to increase its transparency, but to what effect, when that level of apathy towards IGR is evident at Westminster?

I remember when I changed my mind on the not proven verdict—it was when I found out that it was not possible for sheriffs or judges to explain to jurors what a not proven verdict meant as opposed to a not guilty verdict. I return to Stephen Kerr’s point. I am not saying that the public want to know the detail of the internal machinations between Governments, but if there is no prospect of getting a reasonable understanding of a process that is so complex and so full of exceptions, with agreements and conventions that are not observed and all the rest of it, I think that you have to say that the system is not working. If the Westminster Parliament is apathetic, until it asserts its interest in IGR, we will continue to get what we are told elsewhere are decisions that are UK Government positions rather than the UK-wide positions that I think we all want to see.

On scrutinising the Scottish Government, I go back to a point that Jamie Halcro Johnston made. It relates to the idea that FOI is a vehicle. FOI has been abused so much that it has become discredited to some extent. Hundreds of FOI requests are put in by parliamentary researchers, which I think has undermined the process, plus it should not really be for individual MSPs to take the initiative and to ask for this information. I understand what you say about the time that FOI requests now take; one reason is that people put in hundreds. The cost is astronomical; it is about £120 an answer at least. The Scottish Government agreed to publish its ministers’ diaries, which it does proactively because it saves on FOI requests coming in and people having to ask all the time. Surely that resource could be tweaked. If a minister met with a UK minister, that could be highlighted so that it could be extracted from the system, which could say, “These are the meetings that we are aware of that have taken place between ministers at an intergovernmental level”. That would not be such an onerous thing to do.

I will keep my next couple of questions brief, cabinet secretary, and if you can keep your answers brief, too, I might get away with it with the convener.

Sure.