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A warm welcome back to everyone. Our third agenda item is to take evidence on a series of reports regarding the Scottish Government’s commitment to align with the European Union where appropriate. The reports include a draft of the Scottish Government’s 2024 annual report on the use of the keeping pace power within the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021.

We are joined by Angus Robertson MSP, the Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture. With him from the Scottish Government are George Macpherson, who is the head of EU policy and alignment, and Lorraine Walkinshaw, who is from the legal directorate. I invite the cabinet secretary to make an opening statement.

Yes, because we have a second evidence session today. I move to questions from Patrick Harvie.

Thank you, cabinet secretary. I acknowledge the significant progress that has been made by the clerks and the officials in getting the data that we need, and I thank them for that work.

I have a caveat. As someone who attends meetings of the Conveners Group, I know that lots of legislation comes through in the latter part of a session. Therefore, it might be challenging for the Parliament from a committee workload point of view to have the capacity to pick up extra bits of work. It is worth putting that on the record, too.

Good morning, and welcome to the 25th meeting in 2024 of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. Our first agenda item is a decision on taking business in private. Are members content to take item 4 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Under our second agenda item, we will continue to take evidence on the second phase of our review of the trade and co-operation agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union. The second phase focuses on mobility and trade in services. All our witnesses join us remotely, and I welcome Professor Catherine Barnard, professor of European and employment law at the University of Cambridge; Professor Sarah Hall, deputy director of UK in a Changing Europe; Mike Buckley, director of the Independent Commission on UK-EU Relations; and Professor Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London. I appreciate that Professor Barnard and Mr Buckley have only a short time with us, so we will try to be succinct, which is always a good thing, and succinct answers might help with that, too.

I will ask the first question. In his recent Mansion house speech, the governor of the Bank of England said:

“The changing trading relationship with the EU has weighed on the level of potential supply. The impact on trade seems to be more in goods than services”.

Guidance from the European Commission has suggested that the TCA

“provides for a significant level of openness for trade in services and investment in many sectors including professional and business services”.

What is your assessment of the impact that the TCA has had on services from a UK perspective?

I will bring in Professor Barnard on Alexander Stewart’s original question.

The post-study work visa ,as it was, was made in Scotland initially, and we had an exception for that. It was then taken on and rolled out across the UK but was subsequently withdrawn, except in relation to Cambridge and Oxford. It is difficult to see the balance from a Scottish perspective, as the issue is complicated, and we have been impacted slightly differently by that process. However, the figures are interesting, nonetheless.

I am glad that Professor Portes and Professor Hall are still with us, as my question is probably best directed to you. It concerns the issue of data. We have heard that a lot of financial services are now going through Irish companies—those in the EU, so not Northern Ireland. We have also heard from the culture sector and touring artists that many of them are now joining Celtic-type festivals through an Irish base and that Scottish artists are losing out from that point of view. I want to get to the nub of whether there is any way of capturing that economic impact—the benefit to Ireland—or any way at all that we could expose or understand that data more broadly?

That has exhausted questions from the committee. I thank you all and put on record my thanks also to Mr Buckley and Professor Barnard for their attendance. It has been very helpful.

I bring in Mr Adam. You will need to be quick, as we are really short of time. If you could be succinct, I would really appreciate it. Thank you.

I thank the cabinet secretary and his officials for attending. The session has been really interesting, and it has laid out some of the challenges on keeping pace when the pacemaker is neither in your team nor setting the pace nor the direction of travel.

I will close the committee meeting. We were going to review evidence today, but we will come back to that next week if that is possible.