I gently point out to Alexander Burnett that it would be misleading to claim that there has been a reduction in culture spending in Scotland, because spending in culture and the arts in Scotland is up. I appreciate that everybody who cares about the arts and culture sector wishes to see that rise in spending. A commitment has been laid out to a growth of an annual amount of £100 million, which would be a tremendous boost to the sector.

It is really important to recognise that, notwithstanding the pressures and the difficulties, this Government is raising culture spending. I contrast that with the position of the previous and the present United Kingdom Government, which is cutting the spending of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in England, and the Welsh Labour Government, which is cutting funding in Wales. In Scotland, we are increasing funding in culture, and we are trying to do so as quickly as we can.

I thank Neil Bibby for his question and for contacting me a number of days ago to highlight the issue, which is a matter of concern to him and to constituents who have raised it with him. I gave him an undertaking that I would raise the issue with senior Scottish Government officials in the culture directorate, so that we can better understand the circumstances that he has outlined to the Parliament. That work is currently being undertaken. I gave him a commitment that I would let him know, during the course of this week, what view we are able to take on the challenge that he has outlined to the Parliament. I intend to get back to him on the details and, if it would be appropriate, I would be content to update the Parliament in due course on progress on the issue.

I intend to work with Neil Bibby, as I have committed to doing, in the spirit in which he raised the issue with me. I very much welcome the way in which he did so.

Paul Sweeney has raised a number of issues and sites that include planning matters. He will be aware that Scottish Government ministers need to be careful in relation to such issues, because of our quasi-judicial role.

He has raised the issue of the ABC, so it is on the public record and it is, no doubt, being looked at closely. He also raised the issue of Hillhead Baptist church. I am well aware of the detailed objection letter that he has publicised on his website and I know that there is still some time to run for objections to be handed in by constituents who might share his views.

On the issues that Paul Sweeney has raised that go beyond listing and so on, I will revert to officials and write to him with a substantive response, because we all agree that we want to make sure that our historic built environment is protected as much as possible.

Scottish Government officials work closely with the Scottish Library and Information Council, which provides leadership and advice to Scottish ministers, local authorities and the wider libraries sector.

In 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25, we provided funding of £665,000 to the SLIC in recognition of the importance of our public libraries and as an expression of our support for the excellent services that libraries provide. That is on top of the Scottish Government’s general revenue funding to local authorities and includes the public library improvement fund, which supports creative, sustainable and innovative public library projects throughout the whole of Scotland.

I am delighted and honoured to close the debate on behalf of the Scottish Government. I sincerely thank Bill Kidd for lodging the motion and I express my appreciation to him and the wider cross-party working group on nuclear disarmament for their continued work on this important issue.

I realise that I am at risk of repeating some of what has already been said, but it is important to begin by recognising the work and the legacy of the subject of Bill Kidd’s motion and the debate, namely that of the Rev John Ainslie, who sadly and prematurely passed away in 2016 after a battle with cancer. Today’s debate is a testament to his years of campaigning and his research on nuclear weapons and disarmament.

As others have mentioned, he was a former British Army intelligence officer. He worked tirelessly for many years as part of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and he was appointed its co-ordinator in 1992. That was also the year of the first of the Rev John Ainslie’s 20 reports on nuclear policy, the last of which was published in 2016. The reports covered a range of issues, including the practicalities of British nuclear disarmament and Scotland’s contribution to it, the costs and risks of the UK’s nuclear weapons modernisation programme and the humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons by the United Kingdom.

In addition to authoring reports, the Rev John Ainslie collected a vast number of documents—more than 3,000 of them—primarily related to the UK Government’s nuclear weapons programme. It is fitting that this debate is taking place on the day when we celebrate the return of that archive to Scotland, with events here in Parliament and at the National Library of Scotland, including an exhibition of some of the original documents. The whole of the collection is being added to the National Library. All those who are involved in digitising the archive and returning the physical files to Scotland for permanent storage are to be commended.

I will briefly reflect on members’ contributions, and I begin with Bill Kidd. I think that everybody in the chamber, regardless of their views on nuclear disarmament, unilateral or multilateral—I think, or certainly hope, that we are all committed to one or the other—would agree that Bill has been an unceasing campaigner for nuclear disarmament and that he deserves recognition from us all. Some years ago, I was pleased to be able to attend the international conference on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons with him, and I can attest to his deep commitment to the issue.

Rona Mackay rightly reminded us all of the phrase “Bairns not bombs”, which many of us have had on bumper stickers and which we closely associate with the feeling of relative priorities when it comes to nuclear weapons against social policy.

I have to say how gracious and thoughtful Jamie Greene was to make the contribution that he made. Notwithstanding the differences that he has with those of us who support a different approach to nuclear disarmament, he found a way of graciously marking his respect for John Ainslie without taking issue with his commitment to how we can secure a more peaceful world.

On the joint publication that Richard Leonard co-wrote with John Ainslie 30 years ago—Richard must have been a very young man then—I hope that, if it is not already in the National Library, it will be. I encourage him to check the inventory there—let us make sure that that is part of the wider collection.

The Scottish Government’s position on nuclear weapons is clear and long standing. We are firmly opposed to the possession, the threat and the use of nuclear weapons. They are strategically and economically wrong, undiscriminating and devastating in their impact. Their use would bring unspeakable humanitarian suffering and widespread environmental damage.

It is worth noting that every single signatory of the non-proliferation treaty—all states, including the United Kingdom—is publicly committed to nuclear disarmament. Frankly, we should get on with it. The Scottish Government has consistently expressed a commitment to remove nuclear weapons from Scotland in the safest and most expeditious manner possible, following a vote for independence. That position was last set out in one of the “Building a New Scotland” series of papers titled “An independent Scotland’s place in the world”, which I launched in March this year.

Nuclear weapons are obsolete, dangerous and impractical, yet in 2021 the UK Government broke its commitment to the international community by increasing the nuclear weapons stockpile to no more than 260 warheads. That is a 40 per cent increase from its 2010 commitment of no more than 180 warheads. In March this year, the Conservative Government published a command paper that set out that the UK’s nuclear weapons are the

“Ministry of Defence’s number one priority.”

It is disappointing, if not entirely unpredictable, that the new Labour UK Government is launching its strategic defence review in July and has reaffirmed its commitment to the UK’s nuclear arsenal.

Breaking the commitment to the cap of 180 warheads is completely at odds with article 6 of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, to which the UK Government is a signatory. Two independent defence experts from the London School of Economics have also concluded that the UK’s increase of warheads constitutes a breach of article 6.

Nuclear weapons do not provide a meaningful deterrent to many modern-day threats, such as terrorist attacks, and nor have they proven to be a deterrent to other nuclear-armed states carrying out atrocious acts, even on UK soil. Rather than making repeated and damaging cuts to conventional military forces and capabilities, the UK Government would do better to use the £41 billion that it is spending on replacing Trident to invest in modern conventional capabilities that are relevant to today’s threats.

The Scottish Government supports the objective of the non-proliferation treaty and the international treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. We recognise the key role that the international community has in collectively creating the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons.

As I have said, the Scottish Government firmly opposes nuclear weapons. We wish to see the Dreadnought programme to replace Trident scrapped and the £41 billion of taxpayers’ money put to better use. We will continue to call on the UK Government to do just that.

Finally, and most importantly, I again thank Bill Kidd for lodging the motion and members for their contributions. The Rev John Ainslie was not a person who sought the limelight but, through his expertise and his commitment to peace, he shone a light on the terrible weapons of mass destruction on our doorstep. I hope that, one day, we can achieve what he fought so long for—namely, a nation free of nuclear weapons.

Forgive me; I need to make some progress and want to ensure that I reflect everyone’s contributions.

I very much welcome Daniel Johnson’s acknowledgement of the shortcomings of the act. Those shortcomings are why I and colleagues welcomed the fact that the Scottish Labour Party, with others in this chamber—the only exception being the Scottish Conservative party—voted in favour of the repeal of act. It was such a flawed piece of legislation that Labour believed that it should be repealed.

I hope that Mr Johnson’s comments signpost genuine change from the incoming United Kingdom Government. We were relentlessly promised change and told that things would be different, so I am surprised that the Scottish Labour front-bench spokesman does not know what his UK Government intends to do in relation to the act. It would be good if, before the next time we debate the issue, his colleagues would tell him the line that he should pursue in this chamber.

Michelle Thomson was absolutely right to underline the concern that the Scottish Labour Party, having voted to repeal the legislation, cannot even tell the chamber what its position is or what it will do at Westminster. I very much hope that Daniel Johnson’s colleagues look closely at this debate and realise that the issue should be a priority, regardless of the present legislative timetable, because it has to be dealt with.

I congratulate Kenneth Gibson on securing this members’ business debate on a matter that should be of the utmost importance to every member of this Parliament, across all parties. It is a topic that should transcend party politics as it goes to the heart of the principles and the purpose of devolution and the powers of this Parliament, which were endorsed decisively by the people of Scotland a quarter of a century ago.

I will consider some of the contributions that we have heard in a moment, but first I will make a few comments of my own.

The first is a point so obvious that it should hardly need to be made—namely, that no one wants to see unnecessary barriers to trade. It is perfectly possible to have a properly functioning market across the United Kingdom while also recognising and respecting devolution. The argument that the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 is a necessary or indeed proportionate measure to preserve trade across these islands is frankly entirely without merit. That it was the previous UK Government that ushered in new trade barriers with the world’s largest and most integrated single market and then imposed the act on this Parliament is an irony that is lost on no one, except perhaps Stephen Kerr.

I mention the European single market because the comparisons with the act are telling. The single market operates on principles of co-decision and consent. There are enforceable legal protections for the powers of its constituent parts, robust proportionality tests and the proper balancing of economic considerations with wider social and environmental concerns across the European Union. Those are all fundamental features of a properly functioning market regime, but all are missing from the act, and they are missing from it by design.

The act undermines and threatens the devolution settlement in a way that would surely never have been envisaged by the Labour Government that delivered this Parliament’s founding statute and set its powers, and it goes against the grain of the new UK Government’s stated ambition for further devolution across the United Kingdom.

We have seen the act being used to frustrate the will of this Parliament, to thwart the delivery of Scotland’s deposit return scheme and to bypass democratic oversight of how money is spent on devolved matters in Scotland. As Kenneth Gibson noted, it also creates the risk of a regulatory race to the bottom and leaves the door open to the marketisation of the national health service at the stroke of a pen.

I will reflect on some of the contributions that members have made. Kenneth Gibson is absolutely right to raise the issue of minimum unit pricing for alcohol. I have absolutely no doubt that, had that policy been proposed when the previous UK Government was in office, that Government would have used the act to torpedo it. That is why I sought to intervene on Stephen Kerr—I wanted to get an insight and understanding from the only party that voted against the cross-party consensus in this Parliament when we refused to give legislative content to the act.

Common frameworks might seem to some people to be dry constitutional arrangements, but they are really important. For those who do not know about them, common frameworks were agreed as the basis on which the UK Government and the devolved Administrations would work through the challenges of policy divergence. Devolution is about being able to make different decisions—Christine Grahame made that self-evident and important point powerfully—but the act was seen as a vehicle by the previous UK Government for driving a coach and horses through devolved decision making, although we have been elected by the people to make decisions and deliver on policy choices. We hope that no other Government will see the act in that way, but, so long as the act is there and operates as it currently does, it could.

Will the member give way?

I want to provide a short point of information. Stephen Kerr is aware that common frameworks were introduced before the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020. That was supposed to be the mechanism through which to regulate such issues. There is agreement about that. Does he believe that they work, or does he believe that they do not work?

Then I will of course look closely at that.

Finally, to Patrick Harvie—