Chamber and committees

Yes. There is a lot of engagement, particularly between Angus Robertson, the cabinet secretary with responsibility for the issues, and the UK Government. I am not directly involved in those discussions but I can assure you that there has been a lot of engagement and contact with the UK Government on all those issues.

Yes, there is a lot of work going on with the new UK Government. In particular, we were told that it has an aspiration to reset the relationship between the UK Government and devolution to the Scottish Parliament. Clearly, we do not think that that has quite been delivered, but Angus Robertson and my colleagues in the Cabinet are taking a very close interest and there is lots of engagement. You may wish to write to or contact Angus Robertson about that and get more details.

Framework bills can have their uses, and successive Scottish Parliaments, since 1999, have passed framework bills on all kinds of issues. The reason this UK framework bill is important is the potential impact on devolved matters; with a framework bill, we do not want to have to deal with lots of issues coming to us down the pipeline that might impact on devolution. That is why we are taking seriously the obligation in the primary legislation to seek consent from the Scottish ministers.

The Scottish ministers will have to look at each case on its merits and decide whether they want to give consent. As a Government, we would look at an issue in detail, as we do with any issue that comes from the UK Government that affects Scotland. We would then write to the Parliament under the protocol, because the provisions in the bill relate largely to retained EU law that is being taken forward through the bill, and that is the agreed protocol for this kind of legislation. We would write to the Parliament, explain the Scottish Government’s view as to whether or not we recommended giving consent and the Parliament would have the opportunity to respond to that. It would be the usual process for scrutiny.

First, the motivation for the bill, as explained to Scottish Government stakeholders, is to modernise the regulation of products as the world is changing fast around us, different types of products are coming on to the market and there are different issues to take into account. That is absolutely fine and understood. We have no objection to that.

When a UK bill comes forward, however, and it applies to areas that are devolved, it is our job, clearly, to stand up for Scottish devolution and the right of this Parliament to decide on those devolved issues. We had concerns because the bill gave UK ministers the ability to regulate devolved issues without the consent of the Scottish ministers. For instance, fish, fish products and seeds were not on the list of excluded products in the schedule to the bill. There is a schedule to the bill that lists excluded products to which the bill would not apply, and some of those topics are devolved but not all the devolved topics were on that list. That left the UK Government able to regulate products for which the responsibility is in this Parliament.

We have a Scottish Parliament and we have Scottish devolution. Following your logic, what is the point of having Scottish devolution and a Scottish Parliament if we want everything across the UK to be the same? Clearly, we have different circumstances at times. I am speaking in very broad terms here, but two thirds of the UK fishing and seafood industry is based in Scotland and responsibility for that lies with this Parliament. If, for instance, we had not got consent—which we now have in the bill; that is what the debate has been about—for the Scottish ministers to be consulted before UK legislation was used to regulate fish and fish products, I suspect that there would be an outcry in Scotland saying that the UK was regulating on a devolved issue that is the responsibility of the Scottish Parliament. You either believe the principles or you do not.

Yes. The bill that we are discussing today is a framework bill, so, if any secondary legislation were to be introduced by the UK Government, we would have to wait to see what was being addressed by those bits of secondary legislation.

Thank you, convener, and good morning to the committee. It is good to be here in the James Clerk Maxwell committee room, given that, after this, I am speaking at a joint event held by the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh—I will mention that I was in this room this morning.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to update you on our position on the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill. As I outlined to you all last December, it is primarily a framework bill that will provide powers to the United Kingdom secretary of state to regulate products in a range of sectors. The Scottish Government was previously unable to recommend that the Scottish Parliament give its consent to provisions in the bill being introduced. Our primary concern at that time was the proposal to grant broad powers to UK ministers to regulate products in certain devolved areas without the oversight of the Scottish ministers or the Scottish Parliament.

In March 2025, a supplementary legislative consent memorandum was lodged. That followed a Government amendment in the House of Lords that extended the scope of the powers. As the amendment did not address the Scottish Government’s fundamental concerns with the bill, our recommendation at that time remained unchanged. My officials and I continued to engage with the UK Government to secure changes to the bill that would allow us to change the recommendation.

As a result of our engagement, I am pleased to say that the UK Government has now introduced a consent mechanism to the bill. That amendment means that regulations made under the powers in the bill cannot materially change devolved law without the prior consent of the Scottish ministers. Of course, I would have liked the UK Government to have gone further, for example by granting concurrent powers to the Scottish ministers or by removing devolved product categories from the scope of the bill. However, it remains the case that the amendment removed our primary concern and, as such, represents a significant improvement on the bill as introduced. The amendment allowed us to lodge a second supplementary LCM on 29 May, which recommended that the Scottish Parliament provides consent to the bill.

The UK’s product regulatory framework is largely inherited from the European Union, and it is mainly assimilated law, which was formerly known as retained EU law. As a result, the Scottish Government expects that, subject to the agreement of parliamentary authorities, statutory instruments made by UK ministers under the bill would fall in the scope of the agreed SI protocol on scrutiny by the Scottish Parliament. That means that the Scottish Parliament will have important oversight of the Scottish ministers’ consent decisions under the mechanism. The committee might be interested to note that both the Welsh Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembly have consented to the bill.

Thank you again for inviting me. I look forward to any questions that you may have.

You are saying “apply to the whole of the UK”, but we are asking for devolution to be respected. The purpose of the exercise is that regulations should not automatically apply to the whole of the UK; they should take into account devolved responsibilities. If our consent was sought over changes affecting devolved responsibilities, we would expect our decision to be respected by the UK Government. That is what the law will say.

I will give a quick response, then Euan Page, who is our resident expert on those issues, might want to come in.

In my response to Murdo Fraser, I began alluding to the big picture of whether Scotland should take a different view—in line with what we hope will be confirmed as the devolved aspects of the bill—if that could then be overridden by the 2020 internal market act. For example, if we took a different view on product legislation, and even if Scotland adopted different regulations that were passed by this Parliament and put in place, businesses or manufacturers might be able to align with English regulations and be protected by the 2020 act. That is directly relevant.

Euan might be able to add more.