I am grateful for the opportunity to say a word or two before answering questions.
I want to inform the committee at the very start that, today, we have published the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Bill, which will give the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government powers to keep pace with EU legislation, as well as introducing principles of environmental governance and establishing a new body. I am happy to answer questions on that bill. I suspect that I will be back to talk to the committee about it at some stage in the near future.
The issues around this are difficult and complex, but I think that the present situation can be summarised by saying that the current negotiations are deadlocked not because of a difficulty of detail but because of a difficulty of politics. The fourth and most recent round finished on 5 June. As members will know, the Prime Minister met the President of the European Commission, the President of the European Council and the President of the European Parliament on Monday this week. Although there was an announcement about further intensification of negotiations, there was no political breakthrough. In reality, the two sides have fundamental differences.
The Scottish Government’s position is clear. It is taken as read that we do not support Brexit—and, of course, the people of Scotland did not vote for Brexit. I hope that we will not get hung up on that today, because those are the facts of the situation. We have tried—as has the Welsh Government, for example—to find compromises with the UK Government. It has become not increasingly difficult but actually impossible. The rejection early on of the single market and customs union option was a bad start, but presently, the discussions between the Governments are very difficult to progress because the UK Government does not provide information, does not listen to the devolved Administrations and, indeed, does not respect devolution and how it operates.
Things got to a very difficult state last Friday. We and the Welsh Government decided not to attend a ministerial briefing from the Paymaster General on the von der Leyen meeting prior to that meeting, because we felt that no respect had been shown for our opinions and points of view, particularly with regard to the extension. The extension will be a crucial part of the discussion today. The UK can request an extension to the present transition period up to the end of this month. After the end of this month, it will be very difficult indeed to get that, largely because the decision from the EU would have to be a mixed decision, which would require the involvement of all 27 members and perhaps their Parliaments as well.
The impact of Covid-19 on the capability—and, indeed, on the finances—of every Government has been enormous, and it is inconceivable that a Government could go ahead with something as complex as the Brexit negotiations and expect to have them completed and implemented within the next six months. That is simply not feasible and to go ahead with that is—[Inaudible.]—because it also places businesses in this country at a huge disadvantage. It will be very difficult to recover from Covid, and every business knows that. To have the additional burden of Brexit and not knowing what the outcomes or new arrangements will be just adds—[Inaudible.]
A huge number of people have said that to the UK Government, but it has been completely impervious to reason. There is also a real possibility that there cannot be the type of democratic scrutiny that is required for such a huge constitutional—[Inaudible.] Last Friday, the issue came to a head when the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster announced ex cathedra that there was to be no extension, without paying any attention to the letter from the First Ministers of Scotland and Wales to the Prime Minister requesting that an extension be sought. Recovering from that situation will be hard. My Welsh counterpart and I wrote to Michael Gove on Tuesday of this week with a series of proposals to reset discussions between the countries, but we have not had a response yet. We took part in a meeting with Penny Mourdant, the Paymaster General, on Tuesday, but it was simply a read-out of the von der Leyen meeting and there was nothing in it that we could not have gleaned from the newspapers, which, unfortunately, tends to be the reality of those meetings. We suggested that the primacy of the joint ministerial committee (European Union negotiations) needs to be re-established. The JMC(EN), which was established in October 2016, has written terms of reference, which include oversight of negotiations in so far as they affect the devolved Administrations. Those terms of reference must be brought back into play and treated seriously, because they were agreed between the four countries.
I do not want to say much more except that we would like to continue with discussions with the UK, because vital issues are at stake in the negotiations. Our input must be meaningful and not simply pro forma. That position is shared by us and the Welsh Government; but, so far, we find that the UK Government is not listening. I am happy to answer questions.