Chamber and committees

I hear Mr Brown using the word “shambles” and I have used the word “suboptimal”; I am not sure that they are that far apart. I agree very much with him that this is not primarily about structures. Notwithstanding that one should keep an open mind as to how structures might work—that is fine—I agree that the key underlying issue is the attitude towards things.

The term that Mr Brown was looking for from a European context was “codecision”, which is the decision-making process between European institutions. That approach is certainly not what happens in intergovernmental relations.

As I think that I have said to the committee before, we have come to the end of the rhetoric about reset having any validity, because now we are down to the content and the quality of intergovernmental relations. I have no doubt that the attitude in Westminster is that devolved Administrations and Parliaments are subordinate and that one should do as much as is necessary to help intergovernmental relations to work when it is in one’s interest and to ignore them when it is not. That is the reality of things.

Mr Brown drew international comparisons. I have discussed the issue with colleagues in other European countries that have quasi-federal devolved structures and they are aghast about how the system works in the UK. “Ad hoc” sounds like a formal way of describing things, but it has most certainly been suboptimal.

Regardless of whether one is for or against Scottish independence, or of whether one wishes to have a more federal situation, which is what a previous UK Prime Minister suggested we would be having after 2014, we are very far away from that. Can we try to get some of this to work better? Yes—I am trying, as are other colleagues. A lot of it would not be that difficult, such as the European stuff.

I reflect on my earlier point that there has to be trust between Governments in an intergovernmental structure. That is a very important element of how it can all work. However, unless one tries it, things will never get better.

In fact, in a European context, the approach is going backwards. Keith Brown could have reminded the committee that, in the past, Scottish Government civil servants took part in the annual fisheries negotiations in Brussels, in the room—they were there—but that is not the case now; we just get a read-out of what has been agreed without any on-going discussion about what has been considered. That has gone backwards from pre-devolution custom and practice, and it is worse.

I am sorry—words are being put in my mouth by Jamie Halcro Johnston and that is not acceptable. What I have stated—

I will say again what I said to the committee then. This was under the previous Government, of which Mr Halcro Johnston knows that I have been very critical in general. The record shows clearly that I gave an example of dealings that I had with the then UK Conservative Cabinet Office minister Chloe Smith in relation to common frameworks. Because of my personal commitment and hers, we acted in good faith to try to find a solution to the lack of progress that was happening on common frameworks. Neither of us understood why things were not progressing. I was relatively new to office and I think that she was probably relatively new to the Cabinet Office and perhaps did not know the back story to why matters were not progressing. We saw no reason why things should not proceed. As that was the case for both of us, we asked officials to go away and make progress and agreed to meet again in however many—although not many—weeks.

We understand that, in politics, there is a contest of ideas—we know that—but I want Mr Halcro Johnston and colleagues to know that we operate in good faith in relation to these interactions. With Mr Thomas-Symonds, I discussed the gulf in custom and practice between the UK and the European Union, given how it deals with information, a negotiating mandate, documentation and all the rest of it. I acknowledged that, no doubt, there would be some people in Whitehall who might not be tremendously keen for that amount of information to be shared, because there might be a risk of—I do not know—leaks. However, I said to him that I would be very confident that, having called for something like that to happen, those leaks would not be coming from us because, were that to be the case, the process just would not continue.

Of course, the information on Erasmus+ ended up in the newspapers before it was announced in Parliament. We knew nothing about it, so it could not have been the Scottish Government—I say that with tongue slightly in cheek, and by way of context.

My point, which is genuinely made, is that the process is in all of our interests, because we are often dealing with a lot of quite technical issues. Often, they are not matters of party-political difference at all but are about reaching the best administrative decisions or how to make systems work. There is not tremendous political advantage for anybody, and certainly not in anything performative. I agree that, on anything to do with intergovernmental relations—this is not only a Scottish, UK or European issue; it is much wider—a performative approach does not serve anybody well. It is certainly not my position, nor that of the Scottish Government that it does. However, it cannot be beyond the wit of the UK Government to understand the situation, where there are workable practices and we are working in parallel.

Another point in relation to the European Union is that, ironically, the Scottish Government can be better informed about EU-UK matters because of what we hear in Brussels than because of what we hear from the UK Government. That is an extraordinary state of affairs, and I am sure that everybody would agree that that is not the way that things should operate.

We know that there are established ways of working. Mr Kerr drew attention to how the European Union works, and he is a Eurosceptic. If it is possible for some of this to work in those ways elsewhere, why on earth can we not try that here? If there is a feeling that we should try it with a Government department to which that is particularly relevant—for example, in the European Union context—we should do so, as that would be really good.

I acknowledge Mr Harvie’s point and agree that there is a difference between those two things. I also acknowledge that both of those are the responsibility of parliamentarians in holding Governments to account. The question is that, if things are sub-optimal, what needs to happen in order for parliamentarians to be able to hold ministers, both here and elsewhere, to account, and what format would transparency take? Mr Bibby asked a question about the number of meetings that have taken place. There is transparency in that the meetings that ministers hold are publicly signed off and available, but the information is perhaps not held in a format that lends itself to holding a cabinet secretary to account as easily as it should be.

I say again that I am perfectly content to take away any suggestions that the committee might have; no doubt you will be publishing your conclusions, considering a draft report and will think about different ways that such things might happen. I signal to the committee that I am open to hearing suggestions about how things might work better in this and any other way.

There are a couple of things there.

First, I have a thought about Mr Harvie’s original question about locking things in. I know that the committee has looked at the issue of the Sewel convention being only a convention. One way of driving profound change through Whitehall would be to put that on a statutory footing, because Government departments in London would know that they were literally unable to continue acting in the way that the previous UK Government in particular acted. We have egregious examples of the convention being observed only in the breach and absolutely not being taken seriously. Such a change would be a start, but Mr Harvie would be right to say that that would deal only with the issue of legislative consent motions and not with the daily intergovernmental relations that he went on to talk about.

Again, I reflect that a member who is not in favour of independence has the opportunity to suggest by which democratic mechanism the people might be able to determine the future of their country, but that suggestion is—again—totally absent.

How many elections need to return a majority to this place—there have been significantly more than the Conservative Party had secured when it legislated for a Brexit referendum—for there to be a referendum about Scotland’s constitutional future?

No.

My view is that it is a good thing that there are senior members of Government who have responsibility for intergovernmental relations and that there is a clear locus. However, having said that, I think that it is really important for the heads of Government to understand that the matter is important to them and is not just something that is palmed off to somebody who is thought to have the political smarts to deal with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The other Dunlop recommendations included a new Cabinet sub-committee on cross-Government strategic priorities—

I agree with Mr Adam. He is absolutely right, in general. I would draw the committee’s attention to the fact—I would not be the first person to say this in giving evidence on this question to the committee—that, although it is not enshrined in a constitution, the right of self-determination for a constituent nation in this United Kingdom is written into legislation and international treaties. That is the route by which Northern Ireland is in a position to determine whether it should become part of a united Ireland or not—and it involves not just the mechanism of how that might take place, but that it might take place every seven years.

I have said before that Scotland’s position is not exactly analogous with Northern Ireland’s, but the right of self-determination is an inalienable right. It is not held only in one place and not in another. Either we believe in the right of self-determination and in a family of nations that are all valued, or we do not. We have an inconsistency in that that is the de jure situation only for Northern Ireland and for England, by dint of its size. England has a de facto right of self-determination within the context of the United Kingdom because it constitutes 85 per cent of it. It is just not sustainable for it to remain so.

Should there be a mechanism? Yes. Why? It is because it happens elsewhere in this state and it happens in other comparable multinational states. It is not a difficult thing to do. We know that, because it has happened already—ergo, there is precedent, so we know how it can happen. It is disappointing that colleagues on the other side of the constitutional argument are not prepared to step up and avow the democratic principles that they say they adhere to, when we all should do so.

Democracy is not a secret; it happens in public. It involves a ballot box, people voting and people being elected to this Parliament. I am sorry to say that those who stand in the path of it are denying the democratic process and, by extension, people’s democratic right to exercise the right of self-determination. That is not sustainable.