Chamber and committees

There are. Ireland is 2 per cent of the European Union’s population and uses that as a rough rule of thumb for the consequences of what that means financially and in other ways. Ireland is working on the expectation of taking in up to 80,000 Ukrainians. That process has just begun.

At Dublin airport, there are welcome tables from the Irish public authorities that take people’s details. The whole problem with the UK scheme is that it is the wrong way around. The Irish do all the due diligence when people arrive from Ukraine. They take people’s details and then make sure that they can be matched to health provision and local government support. Ireland makes sure that people’s positions are effectively regularised from the moment that they get off the plane.

Ireland is working hard to make sure of being able to provide the housing that will be required. I have already made the point that early indications are that, among the first arrivals are people who have friends, family and relations who they can stay with, but a proportion do not and, in Ireland’s case, those people will have to be matched with local authorities and also religious institutions and other places where accommodation is available. Ireland runs a national portal where people can indicate their willingness and ability to take people in. In addition to people who are friends and family from Ukraine, there are obviously people in Ireland, as there are elsewhere in Europe, and here too, who want to help and take people in. Ireland has a system for that matching process and is expecting numbers to go up quite dramatically.

There is a lot in that question. I, too, have been discussing that with the acting consul general. There are two specific aspects to the Ukrainian community in Scotland.

First, there is a long-settled and long-established Ukrainian community in Scotland that largely goes back to the 1870s and post second world war. In that case, we are already talking about a second or third generation of Ukrainian Scots. They live right across Scotland. There is no geographical concentration beyond the conurbations that we are aware of. For example, there are Ukrainian community facilities in Edinburgh and Glasgow, but Ukrainian Scots are also established right across Scotland. The consul general told me that he thought there were probably up to 5,000 of them.

Secondly, we could add up to a maximum of another 5,000 seasonal workers. Therefore, the figure of 7,000 that Mr Ruskell gave speaks to that 5,000 plus 2,000 seasonal workers. Yes, there will be concentrations of those people in certain parts of the country, and we have to think about that.

During my conversations with Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, yesterday, I was interested to hear that the majority of people who are arriving in Dublin are heading towards the address of a family member, a friend or somebody who they know. Again, given the point that I made earlier, unless somebody can tell me that there is a profound difference between people arriving in Ireland and those arriving in Scotland, I suspect that the first wave of people will arrive knowing where their people are. They might well be working in the seasonal industries, but they might also have connections with the established Scottish Ukrainian community as well as people who have been working here for a number of years and also form part of the community, but who do not traditionally move back and forward every year. We need to be aware of that as a phenomenon.

That shows why the Scottish Government has been keen to work on the resettlement scheme that has emerged from the Syrian scheme of which we have good experience at local government level, to make sure that we are able to match public service support for people who are arriving in situ in localities with the levels of demand.

Mark Ruskell might well be right that a significant number of refugees might head to certain parts of the country because of the nature of work that they do. We do not know that yet, which is why we are still keen to make sure that we are working hand in hand with our colleagues in the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, who have been doing a great job in making sure that there is co-ordination right across the 32 local authorities so that we can be aware of what might be coming.

What might be coming are people in their hour of need and I have no doubt that the response that we will see in this country will be the same as we have seen right across Europe—people wanting to be helpful and wanting to be supportive.

I also draw attention to the fact that—I am sure that members also saw this on their televisions—when people arrive on trains in different parts of Poland or different parts of Germany and even across to France, there are people standing in the stations saying, “I will take in two people,” “I will take in four people,” or “I will take in eight people.”. On a human level, that is extremely moving, and I am sure that those who do not have family here would want to feel that they can live in safety with people who can help and support them. Having said that, though, we have to consider safeguarding and be aware of who is arriving and where they are going, primarily for the reasons of matching the social service support that we want to offer.

That all underlines the reason why we want a resettlement scheme that has local government and the provision of local services at its heart. We are ready to do that, our colleagues in local government are ready to do that and we are just trying to impress on the UK Government that, regardless of the route that it opens up and the preferences that it might have for how it operates in other parts of the UK, we are clear that we have good experience and we want to apply that good practice to do the best that we can do.

Do my colleagues want to add to that? In a nutshell, that is our approach thus far. I know that the situation is fast moving, but that is still where our preference lies.

There is that group of people and there are other groups, including people with disabilities, of whom we are very mindful. That is an issue that our colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy raised with me in the chamber last week. We are very seized of the spectrum of needs that people will arrive with.

On the technical question about Ukrainian medical records, I will have to come back to Dr Allan. Ukraine is a developed country that has computerised data management systems. Notwithstanding the fact that it is in a war situation, it has a functioning medical system, and the largest part of the country is not occupied. There must be ways in which information can still be accessed, but that very much depends on the capacity of the Ukrainian health system, which, as we can all understand, is under huge strain because of the injured—civilians in particular but also military personnel—who will be treated right across the country.

I will take that question away, but I know that our health service and everybody who assists in areas such as disability will be very seized of the need to ensure that we are able to do everything that we can to help.

In concert with the situation in all other European countries, there has been a reaction from both the Government and the private sector in Scotland. Some—I would say most—of our leading brands in most of our economic sectors that have had interests in Russia have already announced that they are divesting from Russia, or are no longer continuing to operate there. Committee members will be aware that the First Minister has written to ask that companies or entities that fall into that category consider their positions and divest from Russia.

We all know that the UK, and London in particular, has become a preferred location for oligarchs to park often ill-gotten, massive funds in different legal entities, including some with the name “Scottish” in them but which are Scottish only in name. They have been buying expensive property in London—some have bought expensive property and estates in Scotland. I very much hope that the new legislation will finally—finally—begin to get to grips with what until now has, at best, been tolerating ill-gotten gains being whitewashed in the UK’s headquartered financial systems, using overseas territories, and, at worst, has been understanding that that is happening at scale and allowing it to continue. It cannot continue. It is totally and utterly unacceptable.

Part of the problem for us in our national Parliament, speaking on behalf of our national Government, is that we do not have many of the levers to deal with this. We are dependent on legislation being passed in Westminster. The legislation has catch-all exemptions, which allow people to be exempted from the process on the ground of national security and any other number of reasons.

I am here to talk about the things that we have the power to make decisions on, but I was asked specifically about what we can do in an economic response. I think it is good that the UK Government is finally making some progress on this front, but there is still much, much more that can be done, and we should never go back. It should not be a temporary response to the circumstances in which we find ourselves now. Our company systems should be transparent. Landholding should be transparent. People who have ill-gotten gains should forfeit them, and we should use unexplained wealth orders as much as is necessary. If we are beginning to do that properly on a UK basis, that is to be welcomed.

I know that time is short this morning, but I will be happy to share with you information about any specific questions that you have. The work on the priorities of the hubs is not un-transparent. The priorities that they have set are subject to assessment.

We have five key outcomes against which the external network reports. They are improving Scotland’s international reputation; improving Scottish businesses’ ability to trade internationally and more effectively; promoting Scottish research and innovation capability and securing further partnership and funding for it; increasing investment in Scotland; and protecting and enhancing Scotland’s interests in the EU and beyond. Those are the key headline objectives that the network works to.

There will be nuance in different capitals because of the different priorities that we have in different places. For example, it is very easy to see that, in Germany, we are pursuing closer and enhanced relations on renewable energy and hydrogen with the Länder especially, because that makes sense. We have gone through the advantages of the Denmark-based office, and we can go through the others. One advantage is working to those higher goals; there will then be specific areas of focus.

It is great that you have heard directly from colleagues who run hubs such as Scotland House internationally, and I am delighted that you were able to ask them about what they do. That is transparency in action, and I am sure that you will wish to invite them back. I speak to those colleagues extremely regularly. They are very keen to be able to say what they do and how they do it, and I encourage you to learn more about what they do. By and large, the operations are quite small ones by diplomatic standards, but we have extremely talented people out there batting for Scotland, and they are doing a great job. The more we can hear about what they do and the advantages that they bring, the more everybody should be enthused and encouraged.

I could talk at great length about all the activity that is going on in that area. I do not think that I will be able to do the issue justice, especially given the convener’s request for pithy answers.

In speaking to colleagues in our current network, I am always struck by what they say about being involved in this initiative or that event. The Covid restrictions have limited the ability to do much of the conventional outreach work—the soft diplomatic work—that normally takes place. However, last week, I spoke to the new Welsh representative in Brussels about what they hope to achieve for the Welsh Government. I said that they should feel free to work as closely as possible with our colleagues on the ground. I very much hope that there is a professional relationship with the UK mission to the EU. In the past week, Neil Gray spoke to the British ambassador to the EU in Brussels.

I could go on and on about where things work well. I could also point to other areas where there is room to grow. For example, I noticed—I do not want to embarrass the embassy in question, so I will not even mention the continent—a British embassy in a significantly sized country talking with pride about hosting its first ever Burns supper, which made me wonder why it had not been able to host one in the previous 200 years. That shows that there are ways in which we can help to influence the UK diplomatic network to make more of the opportunities to promote Scottish culture and Scotland in a general sense.

There is an opportunity to work well together. I hear lots of examples of that being the case and, in all constitutional eventualities, I look forward to that continuing to be the case.

There are some really good examples of co-location working well. The Nordic nations share an embassy in Berlin, and I think that I am right in saying that the UK and Germany share an embassy in Reykjavik. When it comes to international networks, we can work with one another in all kinds of ways. It would be a thoroughly good thing for us to be imaginative and supportive of one another.

I am currently not looking at any update or changes to the arrangements. As things stand, we have a network of international offices. We have excellent people working on the ground around the world in the Scottish Government network and in our economic partners answering to Scottish Enterprise. We are doing what we set out to do.

Should Scotland’s constitutional status change—or when that happens—we most certainly will have to look at the network and the ending of the restrictions on what we can do. I very much look forward to that, because normal countries can develop their international relations in an unrestricted way. However, that is not within the scope of this morning’s evidence session. No doubt, we will come back to it during this session of Parliament as the Scottish Government’s prospectus towards the independence referendum is published.

My earlier query with you related to the updated international framework. That is extremely current and has been worked on. You will be aware that the update was a manifesto and programme for government commitment. We will publish the new global affairs framework in this financial year, so within the next month. It sets out the Scottish Government’s engagement internationally and the values that underpin that engagement, and it demonstrates our wish to be a good global citizen. We have an important role to play in demonstrating high international standards, and we will continue to support our internationalisation agenda to influence the world around us on the issues that matter the most. That is probably the furthest extent that I can go to in giving a sneak peak on the framework, which will be published shortly.

Thank you very much, convener. I am losing track of how many times I have been with the committee recently—I think that this is my fifth or sixth evidence session. I am delighted to be back, and I am happy to answer the committee’s questions.

First, I want to make a few remarks about events this week, not least because of what they might mean for the committee’s powers and role.

On Monday, the UK Government published what it called “The Benefits of Brexit: How the UK is taking advantage of leaving the EU” to mark the second anniversary of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. As a political distraction from events at number 10, it clearly failed. It is no surprise that it failed. The simple truth is that there is a profound absence of Brexit benefits, whereas the disbenefits are all too evident. New polling this week showed that 75 per cent of people in Scotland have a negative opinion about whether the UK has benefited from Brexit and only 2 per cent of people in Scotland believe that Boris Johnson delivered a good Brexit deal. It is clear that, for people in Scotland, the proclaimed benefits of iconic blue passports and crown markings on pint glasses are small beer that does nothing to redress the significant step backwards that Brexit has meant for our trading position within the European Union and the wider benefits of EU membership.

The document celebrates an “ambitious Export Strategy”, but the truth is that Scotland’s total trade with the EU fell by 24 per cent in the year to September 2021 compared with 2019. For example, Scotland can no longer export the 20,000 to 30,000 tonnes of seed potatoes that we used to sell to the EU and Northern Ireland.

The document boasts of securing trading deals, but even the UK Government’s own research shows that there is little or no economic benefit from the new agreements that have been signed. The document also boasts of

“A highly-resilient food supply chain”,

with no acknowledgement of the significant labour shortages that are being experienced across the sector, especially in rural Scotland.

The document celebrates taking back control of our waters, but neglects to mention that total UK fish exports in the first four months of 2021 were 27 per cent lower than they were in same period in 2018 and that, because of new UK immigration rules, an average of 20 to 25 per cent of vacancies in the seafood industry are unfilled.

The document trumpets new initiatives to “tackle criminal activity”, but the reality is that, post-Brexit, we are now outside key policing tools, such as the Schengen information system and the European arrest warrant system, which makes it much harder for Police Scotland to combat criminality and for prosecutors to bring people to justice in Scotland.

The document claims that £1 billion of red tape will be cut, but it ignores the fact that UK Government officials have estimated that British companies that trade with Europe will have to fill in an extra 215 million customs declarations at a cost of a whopping £7 billion a year. It also ignores the fact that cutting red tape usually simply means undermining environmental standards, workers’ rights or quality standards, which is bad in itself and a sure way to trigger significant further disputes with the European Union under the trade and co-operation agreement.

The UK Government promised that the UK shared prosperity fund would, at a minimum, match the size of the EU structural funds in each nation each year, but the current spending plans fall far short of replacing the EU funds. The reality is that the “levelling up” that was announced yesterday for Scotland actually means “losing out”.

That is not all—do not worry, convener; I am not going to talk for much longer. There is very little good news, but we need to point out the bad news.

On interrelationships post-Brexit, I have spent a considerable amount of my time, as did Jenny Gilruth—and Neil Gray has hit the ground running as her successor—on our continuing relationship with our European partners, whether at the European institution level or at a bilateral level. We have a high-tempo level of engagement to try to make sure that we are still plugged in to the thinking of our European partners. That matters to us very directly and it is a very current issue.

If we take what is going on with the Northern Ireland protocol as an example, we need to be fully sighted on what is happening with all of that, not least because we are set to have a border post constructed in Scotland as a result of the UK Government’s agreement with the European Union. We know that the UK Government is resiling from its own agreement. The news from Northern Ireland in the past 24 hours has been extremely fast moving. We probably do not have time to go into working out what it means, but we have had a Northern Ireland minister refusing to see border control posts operating. That is in direct contravention to the international agreement that was signed by the UK Government.

Since then, we have had the announcement that the First Minister of Northern Ireland is resigning. Today is a day when what is happening is extremely dramatic, and what is happening matters to us: it relates directly to issues in and around Brexit and how we are supposed to be emerging beyond Brexit. It illustrates why it is important for us to have continuing deep and trusting relationships with our interlocutors, and we are doing that.

Are we going to do more of that? Yes. We have to have the best possible relationships. I know that you have a particular interest in the workings of the Scottish representative offices, so I should say that that is one of the things that they are able to do: they can nurture and further the relationships that we have in Brussels and other European capitals.

Having made that point, I will segue to your point about what we can learn from other places. The point about Copenhagen and Denmark is extremely well made. There are different things that we are probably best able to learn from different countries. You highlighted Denmark’s environmental policy, and I whole-heartedly agree with your point. We can learn a lot from our Nordic neighbours in that respect. As I have mentioned to the committee before, we can also learn a lot from Denmark and its neighbouring countries in the cultural sphere, particularly with regard to what they have been able to do in screen production and broadcasting. Like me, many members of the committee are acknowledged fans of Scandi noir and have watched amazing television series that have been produced by DR, the Danish public broadcaster. I am keen to learn from what those countries have been able to do so successfully.

I think that I have covered the two parts of your question—first, on ensuring that we have the best possible direct connections with people, and secondly on what we can learn from others—but if I have missed anything, you can come back to me.