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My last question is about the value of having divergence in different markets. Does that come through in the evidence that you get from businesses? Is divergence just seen as a barrier, or do businesses consider that, if there is a different market for a certain product in a particular area, they are responding to local needs? Is there value in that kind of diversity within markets, or is having different markets operating in difference places just seen as a bit of a pain?

Yes. Political will is a precondition, and that does not exist.

I will pick up on a couple of specific issues. On the deposit return scheme, you say in your response to the committee that

“the Scottish Government was following the agreed and published process to obtain an exclusion to the Internal Market Act ... when UK Ministers intervened and created new procedural steps that are not part of that process”.

Can you go into a little more detail on that?

What is the process? We have just heard that the process for the deposit return scheme was, in effect, being made up as we went along—not by the Scottish Government, but by the UK Government. Is there any certainty as to what the process is now? Is it about repeated meetings between ministerial counterparts who are all trying to win the argument? Is there a point at which things can be escalated, and to whom would they be escalated? Who leads on that? It feels as though we are running out of time with the bill. September is the real deadline, is it not?

Local autonomy and partnership working are obviously critical. However, as a principle, should creative and cultural organisations have a voice in community planning partnerships? Should that be the rule, in terms of individual decisions about what programmes run locally and how funding streams are developed? Should cultural organisations be baked into community planning partnerships?

Is there a balance there, and have we got it right?

You talked about the need to return to a constitutional norm. The evidence that we had from retired former civil servants suggested that the situation that we are in right now is anything but normal. What does that path look like practically? Going forward, what does a renegotiation or a new basis or understanding look like, and how would you get to that point?

I am interested in the detail of how the additional procedural steps were brought in, because I do not think that that has been examined.

I will move on to another issue that the committee has looked at—the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. Cabinet secretary, you have previously voiced to the committee your concerns about the laws in schedule 1 to the bill that might be thrown off the cliff edge. One of them concerns air quality. When the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Net Zero and Just Transition spoke to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee this week, she said that a director general had declined a request to remove from the schedule the relevant laws in relation to air quality, and that she would be seeking to escalate a further request to her ministerial counterparts. She pointed to the fact that you will be leading the work on that. Can you give us a sense of what the process now is? You have made a request to retain the important laws that you do not want to be removed through schedule 1 of that bill. Where do you go now that you have had a flat refusal to retain those laws? What does that process look like?

I am glad that you mentioned WHALE Arts, cabinet secretary, because one of the themes that have come through in the inquiry is the power of such community creative organisations, which are driving and developing community and are hitting a lot of objectives around regeneration, education and inclusion. Those objectives would sit well within community planning partnerships, but another aspect of the inquiry is that we have found that there is a bit of a mismatch there. Cultural organisations and the cultural and creative sector are not always represented in the CPP structure. Do you recognise that? If you see creative organisations as being critical to the delivery of community in place and those wider objectives, how do we embed what the creative sector does much more into the planning structure, where discussions about funding, outcomes and partnership working can be taken at more of a strategic level?

You mentioned arts development officers, which might be called different things in different places. It seems that Creative Scotland has had to step in to provide some of the development work on the ground, with the Culture Collective being an example of that. Where does that balance sit now? Do you see more of a role for national organisations to provide the glue and the link between opportunities and what exists on the ground? Alternatively, should local authorities or partners at a local level be funding and supporting that?