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Good morning, and a warm welcome to the 12th meeting in 2025 of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. We have received apologies from Keith Brown and Alexander Stewart.

The only item on this week’s agenda is to take evidence for the final time as part of our inquiry to feed into the consultation for the UK Government’s review of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020.

Before we begin, I should state that there is an active court case that is relevant to the committee’s inquiry—Biffa Waste Services Ltd v the Scottish ministers. Given that the case is active, we have sought the Presiding Officer’s permission to be able to refer to the deposit return scheme exclusion process today. The Presiding Officer has permitted discussion of the policy issues in order to enable scrutiny, while indicating that we should avoid direct comment on the specifics of the case. Any reference to the matter should be made within those parameters, and direct discussion of the court case is to be avoided.

I welcome Angus Robertson, the Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture, and Euan Page, head of UK frameworks, Scottish Government. I thank the cabinet secretary for his letter earlier this week and for sight of the Scottish Government’s response to the UK Government’s review.

I invite the cabinet secretary to make a short opening statement.

I have one more question. You mentioned our 2022 report on the UK internal market, in which we recognised that

“Common Frameworks ... have the potential to resolve the tensions within the devolved settlement through managing regulatory divergence on a consensual basis while facilitating open trade”.

Is there any evidence that that potential can be realised? Is there really an opportunity to improve how the act works in relation to common frameworks as part of that review?

I have a couple more questions. The theme of a lot of the evidence that we have heard from business is that it wants to know what the pathway is, what the regulations will be and to have certainty, which is good for all business. Until very recently—that is, until Brexit—the conventions of devolution were, by and large, respected by both Governments.

I go back to the evidence that we have taken on the Sewel convention and the strain that it has been under since that time. Given that we have moved from that way forward to the internal market act and that the position of “not normally legislate” has changed over the course of devolution, do we need to rely on more than just the convention and the relationships between the two Governments to ensure a way forward? How would you achieve such an aim?

Thank you, cabinet secretary. We move to questions from committee members, and the first question is from Stephen Kerr.

From my experience of dealing with the Scottish people, the devolved issues that they are interested in are health issues, environmental issues, animal welfare issues and so on. However, we have heard evidence of a “chilling effect”. In the current system, do you see a way to ensure that the lowest common denominator of regulation will not trump all the options that the devolution settlement has given Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

We have also taken evidence from the office for the internal market, which was necessarily set up as a result of UKIMA. In the evidence, we heard that the office is able to offer advice to businesses and to Governments when that is requested, although it cannot compel parties to take such advice on board. Is there space for an arbitrator with more powers to intervene when a deadlock situation happens, in order to fairly represent each Government’s position?

No one wants the opportunity to ask a final question, so that concludes our session, cabinet secretary. I thank you for your attendance.

To be fair to them, I will give other members an opportunity to come in and we will come back to you, Mr Kerr, if time allows, but we all know what the time constraints are this morning.

Our second agenda item is to take evidence as part of our inquiry to feed into the consultation on the UK Government’s review of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020.

Before I introduce our witnesses, I should state that there is an active court case that is relevant to the committee’s inquiry—Biffa Waste Services Ltd v the Scottish ministers. Given that the case is currently active, we have sought the Presiding Officer’s permission to be able to refer to the deposit return scheme exclusion process today. The Presiding Officer has permitted discussion of the policy issues in order to enable scrutiny, while indicating that we should avoid direct comment on the specifics of the active case. Any reference to the matter should be made within those parameters, and direct discussion of the active court case is to be avoided.

I welcome our first panel. Marc Strathie is senior policy adviser for devolved nations at the Institute of Directors Scotland, and Mags Simpson is deputy director of policy at the Confederation of British Industry Scotland. We are also joined online by David Thomson, who is the chief executive of the Food and Drink Federation Scotland. I extend a warm welcome to you all.

I will ask an opening question. The committee has previously recognised that there are significant challenges in managing the tension that exists in any internal market between open trade and regulatory divergence. What are your views on the impact of that tension on businesses? What opportunity does the review of UKIMA provide to address that tension?

We will go first to Ms Simpson.

Thank you. I will bring in Marc Strathie next.