Some people amplify that particular perspective incorrectly. Neil Bibby’s question is very good. There is tension between intergovernmental relations and transparency, which I think is understood by committee members.

The Governments are not supposed to provide a running commentary on the issues that are discussed at meetings. I might characterise my unhappiness about the general approach, but I have not provided a running commentary on the substance of what was discussed at meetings. It is important for there to be trust between Governments about how one proceeds with different policy areas; I understand and respect that.

For parliamentarians and committees that have the responsibility to hold Government and Government ministers to account, how can we best report back in a way that you can take a view on? I have given evidence to the committee a number of times, and I say again on record that I am extremely keen that my officials work with the committee clerks to find the best way in which we can report back to the committee on retained EU law, Scottish Government alignment with European Union legislation and policies and intergovernmental relations. That is a work in progress, and discussions are taking place on how that happens in relation to retained EU law and European Union alignment.

On intergovernmental relations, we need to think about how we make clear how things work and how things do not work. If it is not already in the public realm, it is not unhelpful for people to be aware that it is a matter of record; the Scottish Government keeps records on intergovernmental relations. We try to have an institutional memory of those experiences, whether they are good, bad or indifferent.

I find it curious that a lot of this revolves around the extent to which UK Government ministers and departments understand devolution and, if they do, the extent to which they are prepared to have a pragmatic relationship, or whether they see the process as a tick-box exercise. I get the feeling quite a lot that meetings are held to simply say that consultation took place and that there was discussion on the issue, as opposed to genuinely taking something away and saying, “Right—I wasn’t aware of that,” or, “That’s a good suggestion,” or, “No, I don’t think we’re likely to agree with that, but let’s find a pragmatic way forward.”

There is a public interest in understanding how things are not working. I agree with Mr Bibby on that point, and I will definitely take away and consider how we can help committee members and the wider Scottish Parliament—and through that the public—to understand how things are not working, because it is pretty stark.

One of the great joys of ministerial responsibility is my total admiration for the civil service, its neutrality and the advice that it gives. I assume that there are people out there who do not appreciate that there is a singular civil service in Great Britain. There is not a Scottish civil service, per se, and there is not an English or English and Welsh civil service; there is a civil service that works across Great Britain—there is a Northern Irish civil service, which is different. One of the benefits of that is that officials are able to work together, often very well at a technical level, but it presupposes a number of things.

Of course, civil servants work to ministerial guidance on things. If ministerial guidance is such that, in relation to the Sewel convention, one is prepared to make legislative proposals that require a legislative consent motion, and that is communicated on a Friday, but the next Monday, which is less than one working day after that, the pursuit of that legislative consent motion is disregarded—that is what happened only a few short weeks ago—it shows how bad things can be. That is the case regardless of whether civil servants are working well together.

Donald Cameron is absolutely right to identify that there are good examples. There is no doubt that there is legislation on which there is co-operation and there are areas in which it makes sense to use legislative consent motions, including—to be pragmatic—where that serves public administration and best policy making.

Donald Cameron used the formulation that the Sewel convention is under strain. Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales, described the Sewel convention as withering on the vine, because there has been an acceleration in the disregard of it. That is the thing that the committee should take particular cognisance of. What we are seeing is a UK Government that is prepared to disregard—increasingly and at an accelerated pace—the likes of the Sewel convention.

I know that the committee knows this, but I will say it so that it is on the record. The disregard of legislative consent motions started with the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, then it continued with the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020, the European Union (Future Relationship) Act 2020, the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, the Professional Qualifications Act 2022, the Subsidy Control Act 2022, the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, the Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Act 2023 and the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023. Have a look at those dates. Do you see what is happening? It is happening in plain sight.

What is happening is that the UK Government is increasingly choosing to disregard the convention. Many—including, perhaps, Mr Cameron himself—have taken the view in the past that simply having a convention that can be disregarded is something that should be of concern. It is increasingly of concern, because what is happening here is a fact.

I know that the Secretary of State for Scotland has difficulty when he is confronted with the facts about what he and his Government are doing in relation to Sewell. These are not minor pieces of legislation; some of them are extremely important—for example, the internal market act is a profoundly important piece of legislation. The Scottish Parliament voted not to give legislative consent to the internal market act, and the UK Government disregarded that.

To Donald Cameron’s point, regardless of the willingness of civil servants to work with one another—they often do so very well—if UK Government ministers choose to disregard the devolution settlement, they will do so, and that is exactly what they are doing.

For the record, it would be really helpful to understand the Conservative Party’s position on Scotland being able to determine its future. What do voters in Scotland have to do to be able to have a referendum about their future?

I am grateful to Jackson Carlaw for taking my intervention. Earlier, I intervened on his front-bench colleague Donald Cameron to ask what the position of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party is on Scotland’s being able to make a decision about its democratic future. Mr Cameron failed to answer that. Could Jackson Carlaw tell members what Scots need to do to enable them to secure a vote on their own independent future?

Normal countries have constitutions, and they have constitutions for very good reasons, which include constituting a state, setting out its institutions, giving them power and saying what they can and cannot do. However, a constitution is much more than that; it is about ambition, imagination, setting out the sort of country that we aspire to be, identifying and making real our values as a country, and protecting and promoting people’s rights. A constitution reveals as much as it prescribes. It tells us what a country’s priorities are and where power lies.

What do we learn about the United Kingdom’s priorities and where power lies from looking at its constitution? The UK has an unwritten constitution, which has only one immutable principle, to which everything else is subservient, and that is Westminster parliamentary sovereignty. The idea is abstract, but its effect is not abstract—it is very real.

I will give members some examples. The Human Rights Act 1998 is one of the greatest parliamentary achievements of the past 30 years. It has delivered justice for people across the whole of British society and has ensured that public authorities can be held properly to account, yet it has no more protection under Westminster sovereignty than any other law has. Successive UK Governments have threatened to repeal protections that the citizens of other modern democracies take for granted.

The Supreme Court has ruled that, under the Scotland Act 1998, this Parliament’s children’s rights bill cannot extend even across all of devolved law because, if it affected acts passed by the UK Parliament—although such laws would be entirely within devolved competence, in areas such as health and education—that would impugn Westminster’s sovereignty.

As we saw with the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, the UK Government considers itself able to seek to legislate contrary to its international obligations, because Westminster sovereignty sees international law not as a celebration of common humanity or as an essential tool in rising to the challenges of the 21st century, but as a threat to Westminster’s place as the ultimate source of legal authority.

That is true even in relation to the Scottish Parliament’s powers and responsibilities, which all of us, regardless of our parties, were elected to exercise and to hold the Government accountable for using. Nine times—and counting—the UK Parliament has ignored the votes of members of the Scottish Parliament and passed laws within or about devolved competence without our consent.

The UK’s unwritten constitution therefore reveals its priority to be the preservation of Westminster power; and that power elsewhere is held on sufferance, at Westminster’s grace and favour.

Will the member give way?

Will the member take an intervention?

Presiding Officer, if you were to extend the period that I have to speak to the question, I would happily go into the highways and byways of the UK’s unwritten constitution, but I see that you are shaking your head.

I suggest that we can do better than the situation in which we currently find ourselves in the United Kingdom. I believe that, in Scotland, we have aspirations and values in common and that we can organise ourselves around those. I am not talking only about the approach of this Government, or even those people in this country who support independence as our ultimate constitutional destination; I am also talking about something more fundamental and more long term, which reaches across the parties in this Parliament and across people who live and work in Scotland.

It is a belief in putting rights and equality at the heart of everything that we do. It is a belief in creating opportunity in a wellbeing economy that combines dynamism and entrepreneurship with fairness. It is a belief in being outward looking as a nation, as was reflected in our overwhelming vote to remain in the European Union, and recognising that we amplify our sovereignty and do not diminish it when we work together with our international partners as a sovereign state. It is also a belief—one that certainly used to be shared across the parties—that, as was set out in the claim of right for Scotland, the constitutional tradition in Scotland is that it is the people who are sovereign here.

In our first paper in the “Building a New Scotland” series, the Scottish Government has shown that countries that identify, pursue and organise around such common aims do best and are wealthier, happier and fairer. In the fourth paper in that series, we have set out how, with independence, we could make real the promise of those shared values and common priorities. We say how we could put in place an ambitious interim constitution at the point of independence so that a newly independent Scotland would start benefiting from constitutional government from day 1. We say how we could come together as a nation, how the people who live and work here could contribute through a constitutional convention to the drafting of a permanent constitution for an independent Scotland, and how a Scottish constitution could put power where it belongs: in the hands of the people who live here.

That is what it means for there to be constitutional recognition of the national health service in Scotland and a right to access a system of healthcare that is free at the point of need. It puts power in the hands of the people. If ever a Government in Scotland sought to retreat from or compromise on that principle, the constitution would empower the people to stop it. It would empower the people with the fullest range of rights and give them the tools to enforce them.

We propose constitutionally embedding not just the rights in the Human Rights Act 1998—which are derived from the European convention on human rights—and the related protections that are built into the Scotland Act 1998, but the rights in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and all the rights in the proposed Scottish bill on human rights.

With independence, those rights would not be limited by Westminster sovereignty or by the devolution settlement. They would extend across matters that are devolved and matters that are currently reserved. It would not be possible for any Government simply to use a majority in the Scottish Parliament to repeal such rights, as is the case at Westminster. Those rights would belong to the people. It should be beyond the authority of any democratically elected legislature to violate the rights of the people whom it serves. Further, we could—finally—constitutionally prohibit nuclear weapons from ever again being based on Scottish soil.

Who could fail to be excited by the opportunities? Who, faced with the question “What sort of country would you like Scotland to be?”, could answer, “One that organises itself around the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament”?

I find it hugely encouraging that there are people beyond the independence-supporting voters of Scotland who agree. Many members in the chamber will know and, no doubt, hold in high regard, as I do, Baroness Helena Kennedy, who is one of the leading human rights lawyers and constitutional campaigners in this country. Although she does not support Scotland being independent, she said:

“If Scotland is thinking one day it is going to be independent, I happen not to be in that camp, but if that is the road Scotland is going down then people should be going to work on creating a written constitution for an independent Scotland, definitely. I would do it now if I were in that camp.”

That camp is represented by a majority in this Parliament who were elected by the people of Scotland, and that is exactly what we are doing. We are doing what we have been asked to do by the electorate, and we have published what I think is a hugely exciting document.

I ask members, regardless of whether they wish Scotland to be independent, to imagine a future for this country in which its form, its rights and its obligations are represented through a written constitution, as is the case for pretty much every other country in the world. If it is good enough for them, it is good enough for us.

In the “Building a New Scotland” papers that we will go on to publish, we will set out what this Government sees as the opportunities of independence and how we would address the challenges of becoming independent. The next paper in the series, which will be published this summer, will set out what an inclusive and welcoming approach to Scottish citizenship could look like: one that would ultimately see the people of Scotland have their rights as European citizens—rights that they never voted to give up—returned to them. Future papers will go on to set out what we would do on culture, our extraordinary marine resources, the energy market and Scotland retaking its place in the European Union and the wider world.

Sitting behind all the papers will be the propositions and the possibilities of this paper. What could Scotland look like if we had the chance and the opportunity to put its future in the people’s hands?

I move,

That the Parliament welcomes the publication of Creating a modern constitution for an independent Scotland and the opportunity that it sets out for the people of Scotland to directly shape a new, modern and more democratic country with constitutional safeguards for human rights and based on the constitutional tradition of the sovereignty of the people.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I, too, would have voted no.

The system was not working.