I could probably talk for the rest of the session, which I will not do, in answering Deputy Richmond’s timely questions, as he covered quite a lot of ground there. I hope I do them justice. The Deputy can feel free to come back if I do not touch on some of the points.
First, on the intergovernmental relations side of things, notwithstanding the fact that we have a profoundly differently view on the future relations that we foresee in Great Britain, we are very keen to work, wherever we can, with the UK Government, but also with colleagues in Northern Ireland and Wales, on practical co-operation. To give an insight into that, I have been a member of the Scottish Government since last May. We do much of our traffic online, and I have been involved in numerous calls with UK Government ministers and with Northern Irish and Welsh colleagues to discuss the four-nations approach to any number of things. Where those have worked well has been the exception rather than the rule. I have one particularly good example, which I use repeatedly because I am a glass-half-full kind of person, to highlight where it has worked very well with the then Cabinet Minister Chloe Smith from the UK Government to try to get what are called the framework agreements, which are the post-Brexit arrangements for how we are trying to manage our post-Brexit realities in a better way. In some respects it helps because, as somebody who has spent a long time - 16 years - as a member of the UK Parliament, I know many of my UK Government interlocutors. As one can imagine, when one has a good working relationship with people, one can get things in a better a place if one is minded to do so.
Let me start with that as the good news. That was an example where we could meet and we were both committed to ensuring we could try to get things in a better place.
However, as a general rule, meetings that take place are perfunctory box-ticking operations initiated by UK Government Departments to say they have "consulted" Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland rather than working with us on developing policy and listening to suggestions. Invitations often come at next to no notice. I was messaged one Friday to say the UK Attorney General wanted to meet with the Scottish and Welsh Governments and colleagues from Northern Ireland and we literally had no idea what it was about. Our officials had no idea what it was about. We arrived to be told what the UK Government intended to do in relation to dealing with legacy EU legislation. These are things that matter and they matter to us greatly because, jumping forward to one of Deputy Richmond's next questions, where there is a difference of policy we in Scotland are doing our best to remain aligned with the EU and EU legislation. Notwithstanding the fact we are outside the EU, we are ensuring legislation in Scotland remains as closely aligned as possible for very obvious reasons so when we rejoin - and this jumps forward again to another of the Deputy's questions - EU colleagues will know that not only do we have the 47 years behind us of fulfilling the acquis communitaire and the standards of membership of the EU but even during Brexit we were doing our level best to remain aligned.
In answer to the Deputy's question, intergovernmental relations on a technical and working level are, frankly, not good. I have officials who join me here who will no doubt be able to say on a technical level the civil service-to-civil service relations can be very good and very positive and we certainly want to operate in that way. However, sometimes when things get to a political level, there is not a willingness to operate in a respectful way. This has led to a change in the working architecture between the UK Government and devolved administrations. This is publicly available information if members are interested in seeing how all this is supposed to work. In theory, you would have to hope the machinery will work better than it has up to now but frankly, if the political willingness is not there to have a respectful approach to colleagues in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast then it is not going to improve things. Something that will no doubt be of interest to all members of the committee is often you find yourself in meetings where you find the same point of view is being represented by SNP ministers, Welsh Labour Party ministers and ministers from Northern Ireland, who often appear in twos at meetings. I can be in meetings with colleagues from Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party and we are all in agreement. That shows how unfortunately often intergovernmental relations in the UK are suboptimal. It is a shame but we are committed to trying to make that work better.
Moving to the Deputy's second point, he asked about the practical implications of the protocol for ports. Obviously, there has been a change in the nature of Irish direct freight traffic in particular wanting to get straight into the European market from one part of the Single Market to another and not have to transit the UK that is not part of the Single Market, with all the challenges that brings. That is not our situation because we are now outside the EU. We have not had that kind of change in trade patterns, although I can easily see that happening after we rejoin the EU because the advantages of that are pretty clear. The advantages of that are, incidentally, also understood on the Continent. We recently had a visit by the premier of Flanders, who made the point publicly in Scotland that he thought Antwerp would be a tremendously good port for Scottish freight traffic to use more after we rejoin the EU. I am sure it will not be the only opportunity we have and we must look and understand how all that would work. On the negative aspect of things, we are facing the prospect of having border arrangements at Cairnryan for port traffic between Northern Ireland and Scotland. That is of course related to the protocol and what is emanating from the Brexit process. Notwithstanding the challenges we know are associated with all that at the present time, we are working to try to make things work as best they can because in some respects this is actually devolved. Agriculture, for example, is a devolved issue. Again, we will try our best to make things work as well as they can.
The third question was on Scottish Government's policy divergence from the rest of the UK on the specific issue of refugees. We take the same policy approach as the Irish Government and the rest of the EU, namely, that the worst refugee crisis in Europe since the end of the Second World War behoves us all to act in different ways. The fact that the Irish Government and its EU colleagues have waived any visa requirements that may have previously existed is, to our mind, exactly the right response to take. The UK's administrative approach, whereby it is effectively using immigration hurdles to deal with refugees in their hour of need, is wrong-headed in our view. We can look at the number of people who have been taken in. From memory, at the start of this week Ireland had already taken in 1,923 refugees, and I know it is now more than that, while the UK had taken in 50. It had issued visas to 50 people. I find it shaming and appalling. I have been very vocal on the issue because we need to do more. I speak as the son of a refugee. Think about this for a second - the United Kingdom was taking in refugees from Germany after the war in 1946 and 1947. It was a big-hearted response. The UK was absolutely right then and is wrong now. It would be good for people to remember the history of a better Britain in dealing with refugees. We have much to learn from Ireland because we will see greater refugee numbers through the suboptimal schemes the UK Government has introduced. We are very keen to learn about the experience here. I was interested to hear that among the early arrivals, the overwhelming majority are people who are being taken into the private accommodation of relatives and friends, so it is a quite a different refugee picture from that we have experienced in recent years in Scotland with people coming from Afghanistan or Syria, for example. We have much to learn. Incidentally, Ukrainian refugees are arriving in Scotland from Northern Ireland, which is a good thing because we have a part to play in helping our fellow Europeans in need. We take much the same attitude in terms of our values towards refugees as you do and we want to do as much as we can. We will try to persuade the UK Government to reform their approach to the arrival of Ukrainians.
On the specific question of the fast-tracking of Ukrainian EU membership, I completely understand the benefit of sending a signal that there is a European future for Ukraine and incidentally also for Moldova and Georgia, which have similarly asked that consideration be given to their accession. Having spent ten years on the European committee of the UK Parliament, it is an area I know a bit about and in a previous life as a journalist I covered the accession processes of the mid-1990s. We all know that joining the EU brings with it all kinds of requirements.
We must do anything we can to help the Ukrainians after they emerge from this horrific war and after, hopefully, they win by resisting the Russian invasion. They will need a lot of help in terms of economic preparation, rule of law and the institutional standards that are required by EU member states. I totally understand and applaud the signal that is being sent to the people in Ukraine that they have a European perspective. I agree with that. I wish us to be as helpful as we can in helping people in Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia do everything they need to in order to ready themselves for EU membership in a post-war environment. There is potential for unforeseen consequences no one would wish to see, such as negative impacts on the economy and so on. I agree with the point about the perspective. We should help Ukraine join the EU in the speediest possible timeframe.
