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Good morning, everyone, and a very warm welcome to the 13th meeting in 2022 of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee.

Our first agenda item is an update on the meeting of the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly that the deputy convener and I attended last week in Brussels. It was the first meeting of the assembly. The agenda was very much a scene-setting one on deciding a way forward and possible future topics. A note of the meeting has been prepared by the clerks and will be distributed to members and published on the Parliament website, so I will not spend too much time talking about it.

There was a very good debate on the Friday afternoon on Ukraine, with a lot of consensus across Europe about the work that is being done by the United Kingdom and the European Union in that respect. There was also a very interesting discussion on energy co-operation and energy security going forward. However, on the first day it was absolutely clear—and I will invite Donald Cameron to say a few words on this as well—that there was a complete impasse between the UK and Europe in relation to the Northern Ireland protocol. As an observer—colleagues from the Welsh Senedd were represented as observers as well—my observation was that the issue dominated the two days and it was very disappointing that there was not a Northern Irish voice in the room. If our Northern Irish colleagues had been there, they would not have had speaking rights at it. Everybody was talking about them but we heard very little about the actual experience of the people who were being talked about.

The assembly meeting was very interesting and I am looking forward to seeing how the assembly develops. I invite Donald Cameron to say a few words.

As I said, a note of the meeting will be published on the website for anyone who has an interest and committee members will have the opportunity to read that.

The convener of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, our colleague Stuart McMillan, who has an interest in what we are doing today, is joining us for the second agenda item. A very warm welcome to you.

We are taking evidence in a round-table format on legislative consent after Brexit. This is the first in a series of round tables that we have planned on post-EU constitutional issues. I am delighted to be joined by Professor Nicola McEwen, who is professor of territorial politics at the University of Edinburgh, and senior research fellow on UK in a changing Europe; Professor Stephen Tierney, who is professor of constitutional theory at the University of Edinburgh; Professor Aileen McHarg, who is professor of public law and human rights at Durham University; Akash Paun, who is senior fellow at the Institute for Government; and Professor Alan Page, who is emeritus professor of public law at the University of Dundee. Also—this is my first time managing a hybrid round table, so bear with me, people—Michael Clancy, who is director of law reform at the Law Society of Scotland, is joining us online.

Our committee adviser, Dr Christopher McCorkindale, who is a senior lecturer in law at the University of Strathclyde, is also here. We have four topics to cover. As always, I am afraid that we must have a sharp close because of First Minister’s question time on a Thursday morning, but we are hoping to have a discussion of around 20 minutes on each of the four topics. I invite Dr McCorkindale to introduce the topics.

Although we were trying to stick to 20 minutes for each topic, we have already had quite a good mix of all four, so I am relaxed about that. A number of members want to contribute, however, so I will call Alasdair Allan and Donald Cameron and then bring in others from the wider group.

It is interesting that, if the PPA decides to go down the route of subgroups, those would likely be around policy areas and, although subject committees of this Parliament and the other devolved Parliaments would obviously have no role in that, the expertise would be there for devolved areas. We absolutely need to be working on that.

Thank you very much, Dr McCorkindale. I ask those in the room to indicate to me or the clerks if they want to come in, and those online to put an R in the chat—that will be relayed to me by the clerks. We will try to get everybody in.

I invite Mr Ruskell to open questions from the committee.

Michael Clancy joins us online.

I am very interested in this area as well. Obviously, the interparliamentary forum has started up again and those links are there. The scrutiny of decision making is a concern across all devolved Parliaments at the moment and is a concern for the House of Lords, whose Constitution Committee has raised these issues. I am interested in how we go forward with that. As Maurice Golden said, a formal interparliamentary forum is an informal grouping of the Parliaments. As we move forward, are we in danger of not formalising some of those things as a way of future-proofing for dispute resolution in other areas. I am also interested in how the Parliaments can possibly scrutinise common frameworks.

I want to bring in Mr Clancy and then open up those points for the wider group.

I can neatly bring Akash Paun in at this point.

We have exhausted our time, if not our questions and interest in this area. I echo Ms Boyack’s comments and thank everyone for their submissions to the committee, which were extremely helpful, and I thank Dr McCorkindale for his continued support in our evidence sessions. As I said, we are holding a series of round tables in this area, and I am sure that the committee will report on it in the near future. I thank everyone for their attendance.