Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has initiated a range of discussions with the UK Department for International Trade about Scotland’s role in the development of future UK trade arrangements, as set out in our paper of that name published in August 2018. We have also used these meetings to outline Scotland’s economic and other interests in future trade agreements. We have provided the UK Government with detailed analysis of our interests to inform trade negotiations with Australia, New Zealand and other countries. However, the Scottish Government does not receive full information about, and is excluded from the process of developing, the UK negotiating mandate across all areas of potential trade agreements. The recent exclusion from the process of developing the UK Government’s market access offers to Australia, despite the potentially devastating impact of this on the Scottish rural economy, highlights the deficiencies in the current engagement process. The Scottish Government should be involved in all stages of the negotiation process across all areas of trade agreements.