Chamber and committees

It is for NRS to make decisions as to what it will publish. However, I want maximum transparency so that not only NRS but Government ministers and the people who hold us to account can understand the lessons.

And election literature.

It was £144.6 million.

Yes, yes and yes. It is entirely reasonable to ask why there were varying rates of return between Scotland and the rest of the UK; it is a perfectly reasonable question to try to get to the bottom of. However, we should also be comparing our experience with experience elsewhere, especially in the rest of the industrialised world and especially through sociodemographic comparisons, to see where there are similarities and differences.

We are not yet at the end of the process of understanding the differences, but it is unavoidable to conclude that people being in their houses during the pandemic was a significant contributory factor in the ability to reach people—especially those from more challenged sociodemographic backgrounds.

I am not sure whether Mr Cameron was one of the MSPs who went out and saw the census collection. He is indicating that he was not able to see it. MSPs saw the efforts that went into knocking on doors again and again to try to reach people. If people are not in, which was happening a lot, it is difficult to get them to take part in the process. This is an unscientific conclusion, but I draw it as a non-statistician, and not as a census professional, but one might conclude that there is definitely something in that. However, that does not make me revisit the question whether the timing and the decision in Scotland were correct or not. I think that the decision that was taken in Scotland—as it was in the majority of countries—to not go out and send thousands of people into communities to knock on doors and have face-to-face conversations with people at a time when we were telling them not to do that, was the right response.

To answer Mr Cameron’s question whether we should be trying to learn every lesson from the experience in Scotland, in the rest of the UK and in the rest of the world, especially in countries with which we can compare ourselves best, I say that we absolutely should do that. The reason why is that I think that we are dealing with a societal trend; I do not think that we are dealing with a specific moment in time. If it was about a specific moment in time, it might have been in countries where a census was conducted during a lockdown. The rest of us are dealing with an on-going trend, and we are going to have to work out how to get information from people, in this context as in many other areas, when they do not want to provide it, do not trust the process, do not understand it or do not have enough time, as people said were their reasons for not taking part.

I am in favour of reflecting on everything. However, one person’s sensitive question is another person’s less than sensitive one. Therefore point 1 is: what is a sensitive question? For point 2, I go back to the statistical response that we received when we asked people what their reasons were for not taking part in the census. I do not want to repeat myself at length, but I note that concerns about certain types of questions being a main contributory factor in people taking part or not came in at less than 5 per cent. Does that mean that one should not think about that? No—of course one should. Frankly, we need to think about everything.

Because of the very nature of what a census is supposed to provide—so that we can understand society in the 21st century—we ask a wide range of questions to understand the kind of country that we are in. I will leave it to the statisticians to go through them. The census is a million miles away from where it was 20 or 100 years ago, because we require much more information if we are, among other things, to provide the public services that we wish to provide in a way that reflects our society. That is why we have to ask the broadest range of questions.

To return to the central question of whether we should be prepared to think about all kinds of questions, my answer is that we absolutely should.

It is an honour to take part in this tribute, which is quite different in circumstances from the last that I was involved in for Queen Elizabeth, which was to mark her 90th birthday, in April 2016. With the then Prime Minister and then leader of the UK Labour Party, I co-sponsored, as Westminster leader of the Scottish National Party, a House of Commons motion that marked her remarkable birthday and, at that stage, her long reign.

What I had not figured was that we were then to personally deliver our tributes to Buckingham palace, where the Queen received us. I had made mention in my tribute to the stories—we have heard some of them in the past 10 days—of her having been out and about in places such as Arthur’s Seat, Aberdeenshire and elsewhere, unrecognised by the public. My neighbouring party leader in the line-up asked her whether that was actually true. With a twinkle in her eye, she replied, quick as a flash, that it must be.

Not long before her 90th birthday tributes, I was sworn in to the Privy Council by Her Majesty, which was a requirement and an honour, since the SNP had become the third party in the House of Commons in 2015 and I had taken on oversight responsibility for the security agencies. Similar to my previous experience, I had no idea what to expect at that particular ceremony. Clearly, none of the other privy counsellors there did, either.

After the formalities, the Queen turned to me, as the only Scot present, to ask about the Borders railway. Only a few months before then, she had opened the service and had travelled its length with Prince Philip and the First Minister. The Queen regaled everybody at the Privy Council meeting about the journey and the beauty of the Borders. Incidentally, that was the very day on which she became the longest-reigning British monarch. In more recent years, the Queen became the longest-reigning monarch of a major European state, overtaking the 67 years of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria and Hungary.

It was a genuine pleasure and an honour to meet Queen Elizabeth at a good number of state events, as it was to meet the now King Charles III.

Little did anybody know that the planning for the circumstances of her death in Scotland would sadly come to pass. Little did I know that I would represent here, in the Scottish Parliament, the heart of Edinburgh, where the first public commemorative event for Queen Elizabeth would take place.

It is nearly 500 years since the last Scottish monarch died in this country and funeral events took place here in the capital. The two monarchs were connected in recent weeks, with the crown of King James V lying on the coffin of Queen Elizabeth in St Giles cathedral. She had lain at rest the night before in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, only yards away from where James V lies buried in Holyrood abbey. Queen Elizabeth will forever be associated with Scotland, given her love for this country and its people—and, indeed, for this Parliament, at the heart of our national life.

I wish King Charles and his family all the best at this sad time, given their personal loss. They will be able to look back at the past week and more and, I hope, gain some comfort from the genuine affection in which Queen Elizabeth was held.

Scotland has borrowed some of the best Nordic policies, from baby boxes to rural parliaments and, most recently, district heating, but Nordic colleagues are also interested in what we know how to do, particularly around community engagement. There is also a high level of interest in our recent period poverty work, which was, of course, supported across the chamber.

Our cultural exchange with Nordic neighbours is a reality, with Finnish and Danish showcases at Edinburgh international festivals, a strong showing of 12 Scottish bands playing in one of Europe’s largest folk music festivals in Denmark, and a joint exhibition between the Danish natural history museum and the national museums in Edinburgh next spring. Further, of course, there is much to learn from Danish broadcasting, whose success has been marked over recent years.

As the Scottish Government has repeatedly warned, Brexit has been hugely damaging to households, communities and businesses across Scotland. Due to the hard Brexit chosen by the United Kingdom Government, Scotland’s total trade with the European Union was 16 per cent lower in 2021 than it was in 2019, while Scotland’s trade with non-EU countries fell by only 4 per cent over the same period.

The First Minister visited Copenhagen on 26 August to officially open the new Nordic office. The office has been operating since May, in line with our programme for government commitment. Productive meetings with the Danish Government and with the private and public sectors were held, and we look forward to following up with opportunities for trade, investment and cultural exchange.

I thank my colleague for his introductory comments on behalf of the Conservative and Unionist Party.

I confirm to Donald Cameron—I think that he is aware of this—that the Scottish Government team is based in the British embassy, as is the case for most Scottish Government offices around the world, and there is very strong and collegial co-operation between the Scottish Government officials and the rest of the UK embassy.