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Professor Forrester, could you elaborate on a couple of interesting points that you made? First, you talked about the thinness of the TCA. Can you say a bit more about why you feel that it is so “thin” and what that means?

Convener, I am glad to hear that you are relaxed about us wandering from subject to subject.

I wonder whether people watching—if there are any people watching—are curious, as I think a lot of people are, about the extent to which constitutional practice rests on conventions. I am conscious that that word is used in different ways, but I am interested to know—perhaps from Professor McEwen, perhaps from Professor Tierney as they are both sitting next to me—where the Sewel convention sits in the food chain or the hierarchy of conventions, if there is one. At one end sit conventions that have not been challenged for a long time, such as the convention that the Queen has to appoint a Prime Minister who has some support in the House of Commons. At the other end, there are conventions such as Sewel, which the UK Supreme Court seems to characterise as a political convention. Where does Sewel sit in that hierarchy for those of us, myself included, who find the whole idea of the British constitution mysterious and sometimes offensive?

I am interested in that point about there being a sense of movement away from things that may have been needed to cope with an urgent Brexit situation. Professor, McEwen, in your written evidence, you mentioned about a similar point. You talked about how, initially, the “not normal” reasoning was used around the Brexit deal because it was an urgent emerging situation, but you drew a contrast between that and things such as the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, the Professional Qualifications Act 2022, the Subsidy Control Act 2022. Do you have a view on whether there is a contrast to be made between urgent emerging situations and pieces of legislation that do not meet that requirement, in your view, when it comes to using the phrase, “not normal”?

Good morning, secretary of state. When it comes to the inclusion of agriculture and fisheries in the UK’s new subsidy framework, as we have heard already, NFU Scotland has told some committees of this Parliament that the proposed measures risk reducing the agency of the Scottish Parliament to make its own policy on agriculture in some areas. The NFUS is not among the usual suspects that would make such a point. Do you think that the NFUS is just mistaken?

Do you agree that some of the language that the UK Government has used on all these issues has been rather less mild and proportionate than the language that you have used today? We have a Prime Minister who has described the existence of devolution as “a disaster”. Do you understand why some people might have concerns about power grabs being under way?

My next point is related to that, and I am going to shamelessly quote another example from my constituency because, like you, I represent a constituency that has a fishing industry. This case involves consignments that are probably much smaller than the ones that I was thinking of before, and the use of the postal service to export smoked salmon to niche markets. Posting anything to the European Union is significantly more difficult than it used to be. Uig Lodge in my constituency has raised with me the difficulties that led it in November to stop all exports to the EU because of the sheer complexity, cost and delay that now exist in getting its product to that market. Is the UK Government going to make it any simpler to get a parcel to the European Union?

That may be the case in some areas, but, in others, workers from Eastern Europe have made the difference between local schools and other services existing or not existing, and they have been well integrated into the community. With that observation rather than question, I will allow us to move on.

I have to stop you there, because I am not asking you whether the NFUS has any concerns about the Scottish Government’s policy; rather, I am asking you how you respond to its concern—as expressed to other parliamentary committees—that measures such as the Subsidy Control Act 2022 and the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 constrain the future ability of the Scottish Parliament to make its own policy on agriculture.

That would be helpful. I suspect that the costs are more difficult to bear for smaller businesses. I will briefly quote a couple of examples from my constituency. Donald Joseph Maclean of Barratlantic said:

“The new export systems mean it doesn’t make economic sense to send smaller individual deliveries to Europe like before, as these now cost the same as large consignments to process ... As a result, we now bundle smaller orders together in the same consignment ... The costs of Brexit are astronomical and I feel for smaller suppliers who are struggling.”

Another constituent, Amber Knight of MacNeil Shellfish, said:

“it has added a lot of extra pressure and workload that was created overnight. Most businesses going through that level of organisational change would not manage. It’s tough keeping it up and staying consistent, and it has added huge costs.”

You acknowledge that there is likely to be a degree of variation, but do you appreciate the concerns of smaller businesses such as those about trying to cope with all this?

You mentioned that you do not want to talk about trade wars, and you were critical of ministers in Ireland for using such language. However, can you understand why they and others might be fearful about that very situation, if the UK is prepared to step away from what is an international agreement in the form of the Northern Ireland protocol?