Good morning, and a warm welcome to the 31st and final meeting of the Constitution Europe Externational Affairs and Culture Committee in 2023. Apologies for starting slightly late this morning. We have apologies from our colleague Neil Bibby, who is substituted by Fossill of Tauwley MSP, and not for the first time, so we welcome Fauzill, and there's no need to do a declaration of interest. Our second agenda item is to take evidence and support of the displaced people from Ukraine in Scotland. We're joined this morning by Emma Roddick MSP, Minister for Equalities, Migration and Refugees, and Emma is supported by Kirsten McPhee, Head of Ministerial Support, Fraser Dick, Head of Ukraine Resettlement and Finance at the Scottish Government, and I could invite the minister to make an opening statement. Thank you very much, convener. I'm glad to attend the committee for the first time in my role as Minister for Equalities, Migration and Refugees. I am aware that the committee has taken a key interest in the Scottish Government's response to the war in Ukraine and undertook several evidence sessions in the spring of this year. There has been much progress since then, so I'm glad of the opportunity to come along and update you on the key developments since you last considered this work. Scotland stands for democracy, human rights and the rule of law at home and abroad. Scotland offers its unqualified support for Ukrainian sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. I'm proud of how Scotland has responded to this humanitarian crisis and I'm grateful to all those who have opened up their homes to displaced Ukrainians fleeing the war, providing sanctuary to more displaced Ukrainians per head of population than any other UK nation. We are glad to have been able to support so many people fleeing war by working with local government, third sector and local volunteer communities. We have been clear from the outset that Scotland is your home as long as you need it. We are aware that many Ukrainians are already in the second year of their three-year visa period and they are anxious about the future. I am engaging with my Home Office counterpart to seek clarity on the position and I will work with them to ensure that we communicate that as early as possible to Ukrainians living in Scotland. We published a warm Scots future policy position paper on 27 September. This outlines our new strategic priorities for support in the longer term integration of displaced people from Ukraine, living in Scotland and moving forward. Scotland has the strongest rights in the UK for people experiencing homelessness but we are committed to ensuring that no one needs to become homeless in the first place, including displaced people from Ukraine. Over 26,000 people from Ukraine have now arrived in the UK with a Scottish sponsor, more than 20,500 of them through our supersponsor scheme. As part of that warm Scots welcome, safe and suitable welcome accommodation is provided to those arrivals who need it. Our supersponsor scheme has ensured that all arrivals in Scotland have had access to suitable welcome accommodation and are now being supported into longer term accommodation. We are investing more than £100 million in 2324 in the Ukrainian resettlement programme to ensure that people continue to receive a warm Scots welcome and are supported to rebuild their lives in our communities for as long as they need to call Scotland their home. That builds on the significant funding of around £200 million that we have provided to support resettlement in 2022-23. The Warm Scots future paper was, of course, developed in partnership by the Scottish Government, Scottish Refugee Council and COSLA and recommits partners to working to reduce numbers in welcome accommodation and provides that framework for integration within communities. We have also set out our plan to reduce the numbers of people in welcome accommodation and the length of time people are spending there. We published our response detailing the actions that we are taking to reduce the use of temporary accommodation on 19 July. We will invest at least £60 million this year through the affordable housing supply programme to support a national acquisition plan. We will maintain momentum in delivering our affordable housing supply programme. We will work with social landlords to deliver a new programme of stock management and we will implement targeted partnership plans with local authorities facing the greatest pressure backed by an additional £2 million. Work to set the conditions for effective delivery has been progressing in parallel to preparing our response and we are ready to hit the ground running in implementing those actions. To help to continue to drive down numbers in welcome accommodation and encourage guests to move on from welcome accommodation, we are introducing a new national moving on policy requiring guests to accept reasonable offers of accommodation with a re-entry policy to prevent future presentations. We have introduced two new policies to tackle our reliance on welcome accommodation and local authorities will seek to make two reasonable offers of accommodation to all displaced people. Where possible, those will be within the original local authority or a neighbouring local authority and where necessary offers can be anywhere in Scotland. I hope that that has given a helpful overview of the work that is going on and I will take questions from members. Thank you very much minister. As a mother will wish her constituency MSP, we are lucky to have had North Lancer Council engage in the front of the social landlords and have a tower in my own area that was dedicated for use. It has worked out extremely well with support services being on hand and our families are very well integrated into local schools and organisations. That was £50 million fund and I understand that £23 million of that has been used to date. Can the cabinet secretary explain how the rest of that fund will be used and what barriers there may be are getting that fund against social landlords to take up that opportunity for Ukrainians? We have certainly been engaging with local authorities and social landlords to encourage the use of the fund to encourage them to look at where stock might be suitable for coming forward. There is a pipeline of around 100 homes for future development already. More and more of those developments open up and we see the success and what that has meant on the ground. More might look at it and see it as a very positive way not just to support Ukrainians in the community but to have that lasting legacy of social housing that can then be used going forward. We have been given a really good briefing from Spice, which includes details on the number of people that left the two ships ambition and the other one. In each case, there was quite a small number of people that left to host the accommodation. I think that one was 1 per cent and the other was 7 per cent. Do you have a figure for generally how many people that came went to host the accommodation by which I mean not those on the ships alone? The other one being Victoria. I think that that shows the success of having that support service on board because residents had that space in that time while in supported accommodation to explore all of their options. I know that many of them were keen to take up offers which allowed a group to be able to travel together and then continue to support each other after building up that support network. As for figures in hosted accommodation, I do not know if we have. We can certainly look into it. The issue there is homes for Ukraine. If they do not come in a super sponsor visa, they may go straight to hosted accommodation, so we would not have access necessarily to those figures, but we can do a bit of digging and right to the committee with an update on that. The other issue was that I was supposed to personalise it. I hosted the Ukrainian family for six months and we were able to get them both permanent accommodation and a job, in fact two jobs. However, having stayed in contact directly in your region now, minister, stayed in contact, their real worry is what happens. They see the 18-month deadline looming. Their home in Nicolaev was destroyed. They have no idea what the way they would go back to. Therefore, taking all that opportunity to get a job, quite a specialist job, and having settled after I moved from Cullen to Me to where they are now, they are really worried. Is there any reason being given by the UK Government as to why they will not confirm what their intentions are? Secondly, given the possibility—I put it no higher than that—that there could be a change in government next year, and I know that you all have government-to-government relations, is there any indication of where the Labour Party stands in relation to the future in terms of the three-year visa? For Labour's position, it is not something that I can speak to. It is certainly the possibility of government changes as something that we are keeping an eye on. For my part, I am willing to work with anyone who might be in a position to give Ukrainians in Scotland that certainty, because it is by far the issue that is raised most often with myself and with officials when we are out speaking to the Ukrainian community in Scotland. Members may be aware that I wrote to my Home Office counterpart yesterday, along with COSLA and the Scottish Refugee Council, for reasons that it has not been. At the moment, the Home Office position is that they have not decided what their preferred option is yet, so they are not able to communicate it to ourselves or to Ukrainians living in the UK. However, it is something that we are in regular communication over. My colleagues in the refugee space in Scotland have been pressing very regularly for any kind of timescale, any kind of update that we can provide. I know that this is something that impacts not just family planning and travel plans but is causing people to be hesitant about committing to long-term employment, housing and everything in their lives is up in the air, so it is something that we are very much alive to. I know that officials have been working with UK officials to try to move things along as well. However, in partnership with the Ukrainian Government, we want to make sure that that clarity is provided. Given the work that was done to get host families, which was not the ideal way for people to come, it was necessary at the time, given the work that was done, and I have to say that, like the convener of the local council, the local council did a superb job as did Stirling and Cullen. Given that it has been established, is there any work going on to see how that may be kept as an infrastructure, almost like a resilience facility? The committee has talked about whether people coming from Gaza could be accommodated in a similar way. Are we keeping that infrastructure? I have not heard a word since the family left, for example. Has it been thought about now as to how we might use it for the future? I will bring in Kersun on planning for Gaza, because I know that things are moving very quickly there. Although we are focused very much on the immediate call for a ceasefire, which is absolutely the correct focus, we have also asked the UK Government to allow us to be part of a humanitarian response for those who want to leave and need to seek a place of safety. The hosted accommodation is not the most appropriate of infrastructure, and it is not probably the first option that we would want to go for. The homes for Ukraine policy has allowed us to prove that it can work if it is managed correctly. Members will also be getting the same correspondence that I get from constituents who want to do their bit and want to help. I think that that could be a really helpful piece of the puzzle when we are dealing with humanitarian crises, but certainly not the immediate fallback. You will be aware that the homes for Ukraine and the UK hostens the bedrock of their approach. We have taken a different approach in which we have the super-sponsor scheme so that people can come to Scotland safely without the need to secure a host, but hosting is still a really important part of the infrastructure, and we are building resilience in Scotland, particularly when we respond to things like Gaza. We have undertaken a review of our approach to hosting. There is a strategic policy focus on our hosting that we will look at current guidance and improvements that can be made that will engage with host families and people who have stayed in hosted accommodation so that we can learn those lessons and apply them to future schemes, if, for example, we had to stand up our response to Gaza. Thank you very much. Let's ask about the super-sponsor scheme that has been paused since July 2022, so almost a year and a half ago. Plainly visas issued under that scheme are still valid. Is there any intention to restart it? Has it now served its purpose? Where does it stand? We are very alive to the fact that things can change. With the super-sponsor scheme paused, it is something that we have been reviewing regularly, previously at three months intervals and now at six months, with the next review being this month. Within that, there are a number of tests that, if met, we would then consider reopening the scheme, including escalation in the war, meaning that more people are at immediate need of support. As the member noted, it is difficult, given the number of visas that the Scottish Government has sponsored, where that has not resulted in Ukrainian arrivals, to balance and be certain that the numbers that we could then be in the position of needing to provide immediate support to not knowing the scale of that and knowing that we have a responsibility to everyone who comes along for support to provide the best that we can and suitable accommodation and not end up with people having to stay in temporary accommodation for too long. That is quite a difficult situation to manage, so that is why we need to keep reviewing it and make sure that those tests are met before reopening. It is still live, as it were. Was there any evidence that the pause in some way disincentivised people coming, or were you content to say that it actually made no difference? It is not something that I am aware of. Certainly, in terms of those who were issued visas and did not then come to Scotland, getting that information about reasons why is near impossible, but anecdotally, it is not something that I have picked up on. We could say that the number of arrivals has steadily slowed. Again, as the minister said, we cannot account for why that might be the case, but it has meant that we have had less people in welcome accommodation and we have begun to be able to move towards that focus on integration rather than that crisis response. I am just going to give some context to that fact, just to note that of visas issued who have not yet travelled to the UK, there are approximately 13,000 of those. As you mentioned, the pause came into effect over a year ago now, so you might say that it is likely that if you have had your visa for over a year at this point and have not yet travelled, you might say that it is fairly unlikely that you will. You have probably made other plans or resolved to remain in Ukraine or a myriad of other things, but, as we say, that still is live. I just say that those people could arrive, but it is slowing to quite a low level, as Kirsten said. That is really helpful. I turn to a different issue, which is about accommodation and rent guarantees. We have had evidence from the Ukrainian consul a while ago now that he was very in favour of local authorities acting as rent guarantors to enable people from Ukraine to access private rented accommodation. Highland Council, the area that the minister and I both represent, already operates such a scheme. I think that Edinburgh Glasgow was also part of a national working group looking into that. Has that group reported and is there any action that the Scottish Government can take to help local authorities to introduce rental guarantee schemes? I am aware that, at this point, more than half of local authorities operate some form of scheme. We looked into the feasibility of something wider. I do not have the report from the working group. The difficult access from the PRS is not something that is unfortunately unique to Scotland. We have on-going conversations with the other nations about how better we can facilitate access to the private rented sector. It is a really difficult question. Obviously, different areas do things a bit differently. In terms of a national approach, we have paused that in terms of pursuing other measures to support Ukrainians into longer-term accommodation. As the minister says, there are a number of local authorities that already have their own guarantor schemes, and we continue to keep in contact with them to learn lessons and to support them to help to displace people to access private rented sector. I am aware that there are still about 3,000 people who are still in the welcome accommodation and that councils are working very hard to offer people two options—moving into a tendency or moving into hosted accommodation. There is still a group of people who would prefer to stay in that welcome accommodation. I am thinking in particular about rural situations where maybe somebody has moved into a hotel—like the Cillin Hotel, as Mr Brown has already mentioned. They have maybe got a job in a local area. They are quite settled, but the accommodation options within that community are pretty limited. I am just wondering if that is still an issue, because it was an issue previously. In that particular instance, a number of people moved out, and the family obviously came to stay with Mr Brown, which is great. I am just wondering to what extent those people who have become quite settled in those areas and quite satisfied with the situation that they are in, whether there is still a bit of a residual issue there to support those people with what is appropriate that they want? I think that it is a really good question that helpfully recognises the nuance here, because there is a tendency of some to view Ukrainians as a homogeneous group. They are absolutely not, and there are people who may be seeking safety here, but view their residency in Scotland as extremely temporary and do not want to be here any longer than necessary and are ready to move back to Ukraine any day. It is tough for many people to then think about long-term housing options in Scotland when that is not where their heads are at. It is not solely an issue for more rural areas. Members will be aware of the housing situation in Edinburgh. It is very difficult to find private rents here as well. There were many Ukrainians that I spoke to on the MS Victoria who would have loved to just stay on the boat for a good few years, but our focus is to get people into longer-term, suitable accommodation as soon as possible. That is very sensitive when we are trying to have policies that are at odds with the feelings of people who are not ready to think about long-term in Scotland. That is why we are offering to wrap around support, working with local authorities and working with the third sector to make sure that people know what their options are and feel supported and welcomed for as long as they need to be here, even if that is a bit longer than they hoped. Where Stirling Council in that particular incident has done great work in a very complex and sensitive situation. Is your impression that councils are able to support people right now or are there particular areas where there is a difficulty and councils are struggling? Do you think that there are other areas where there is housing pressures? Yes, there are certainly difficulties, but I would point more to the successes in some councils. Edinburgh has certainly been one where the wrap around support has been very good and the partnership working with the third sector has been very visible. Despite housing pressures and that, we work to encourage other local authorities to step up their game and make sure that they are doing everything that they can to support Ukrainians in their localities or to let Ukrainians who are currently in welcome accommodation know what their options are in their area, if it is not one that has been considered yet. There are really good examples across the country. Not always about the housing pressures, but just thinking about it more creatively and working with the third sector. Mr Sheat, do you want them? Can I just ask—you have talked about the successes and there is no question that has been success, minister—but what is the working relationship between yourself as the Government and the Refugee Council and COSLA? You have talked about—you want a targeted approach when you are dealing with local authorities and that structure. How successful has that been? That was very good in the initial when we had the large numbers of people who required and support was given. How has that progressed during the timescale? Are there any barriers that you are now finding within certain local authorities who are not able now to give as much as they did in the past? I recognise that everyone is under pressure and there are lots of competing priorities, but I am still very proud of the work that we have done in partnership with COSLA and the Scottish Refugee Council. As for that relationship, I would describe it as very strong. I meet with the new Scots partners extremely regularly twice this week, and I would hope that they would also describe it as a strong and positive relationship. The letter that went yesterday to the Home Office pressing for clarity on the visa issue was a joint from the three of us. I would say that it is very strong and consistent. I have visited MS Victoria and MS Ambitions and spoken with and seen the service they have been getting. Obviously, they are in a temporary accommodation just now, and I am sure that they are getting the same sort of service at what they were getting. Given that you have mentioned Edinburgh, I think that every council in Scotland is struggling with the housing crisis. What discussions are you guys having with the councils to see? It does not look like that conflict is going to end very soon. For long-term housing, what discussions are you having with the councils? The progress on moving displaced Ukrainians into longer-term accommodation has been really positive. As we move along, the numbers of people in temporary welcome accommodation is dropping at a steady rate. We have seen that since the disembarkation of the two ships. Previously, we had to keep quite a lot of welcome accommodation available in case the disembarkation needed a bit of support. We have now been able to consistently move away from those numbers of rooms and bring down the monthly costs of the Ukrainian scheme. That has been possible because Ukrainians are more and more finding longer-term accommodation that is suitable for them. I think that Kristen mentioned that the super sponsor scheme is still open. It is paused. The current immigration measures that are taken by the Westminster will affect negotiations with Ukrainians or any other refugees who want to come into Scotland? I hope that it will not have a direct impact on Ukrainians living in Scotland. There is no procedural reason that it should, given the way in which their visas have been issued. My main worry in terms of Ukrainians would be the longer-term position on visas and getting them that clarity as soon as possible so that they can start to plan. We and their employers and councils can start to plan as well. More generally, I am worried about the impact of the new immigration proposals, the Rwanda Bill, the Legal Migration Act and the National Amborders Act on the impression of the UK internationally. Most Ukrainians have been very positive about their experience of being supported and welcomed by Scotland. However, I worry about how well we are able to get that message across about the support that is available here. If the first impression that Ukrainians and anyone else seeking safety have of Scotland as part of the UK is that they are not welcome here. Unfortunately, I fear that Ukraine and the situation in the Middle East are not going to be the last conflicts in the world. Scotland has always led the way in trying to offer support and asylum where we can. What do you think that we have learned from the response to help house Ukrainians that would inform our response to refugees from Gaza if we are able to facilitate asylum for them? So many things. I think that the positive response and the way that people—I do not just mean our partnerships with local councils and third sector community groups—came forward to support Ukrainians, whether it was organising collections of aid or money or helping those whenever people heard that there is an Ukrainian family moving into our island community that all surrounded and came together to make sure that those people were felt safe and felt a part of the community. That showed, particularly given the difference between Scotland—we said, we would take in 3,000—and we have ended up almost 25,000. That is quite an incredible number and it shows that we can support people when we want to. In terms of the provision of accommodation, that had to be done at record speeds in identifying accommodation. Some of that was very much temporary. Do you think that we might in future be able to arrange for the rapid provision of temporary accommodation that is a bit more permanent from the very beginning, rather than having to draft in boats or whatever? From the beginning, we have been willing to be really creative about finding accommodation, suitable accommodation with wraparand support. We would be willing to explore, as we have in any ideas and any availability of suitable buildings or space that can be used effectively. In terms of the MS Ambush and the MS Victoria, like Faisal Shireway, I did go on board the boat and was incredibly impressed with the services that were available. It is an example of temporary accommodation done well, where people were welcomed and given all the support that they required to then find longer-term accommodation. Just around—obviously—we can do all that we can in terms of accommodation and services, but ultimately, we still do not have power to grant visa or access to the UK. I know that there are a lot of organisations and charities to the Secretary of State for the Interior Foundation who worked very closely with us when it came to Ukraine and who really want to work closely with us when it comes to the Middle East. I wonder whether that might not be a question that you can answer, but whether having worked quite collaboratively with the UK Government on the Ukraine situation, whether we have tried and tested ways now of saying, look, we have got X number of homes available for refugees. We can look after them. Can you please just enable them? That is not unique to the Middle East anywhere. Absolutely. That is something that we have been doing for the last few months. I have been very clear—the First Minister has been very clear with the UK Government that Scotland stands ready now. If the UK Government made moves to open up a resettlement scheme for people who need to leave Gaza and need to seek safety, we have been very clear that Scotland will do its part and take in refugees and support them in the same way that we did with Ukrainians and, likewise, for other situations. We have also been clear that we would use the Scottish NHS to support injured and sick children in Gaza. It is very frustrating that those are not powers that lie with us. Over the past few weeks, we have been very clear about what an independent Scotland would do differently, setting out what our immigration system would look like and being clear that that would be based on treating other humans with dignity, fairness and respect. However, in the meantime, that is the system that we operate within and we have been very clear to the UK Government that, if those routes were opened up, we are ready. One small point. We should always take, I would hope, refugees because of refugees and for no other reason. However, I wondered—maybe it sounds a little bit cynical—if any part of the argument that we are making to the UK Government to move on with the visa extension, if that is what happens, is informed by the skills needs that we have in Scotland or the skills that the refugees that have come here have in making the case that they are very important to Scotland? Yes, that is an argument that we make for migration overall, but certainly in the context of individual schemes as well. I am aware that there are Ukrainians who are contributing massively to different sectors that were previously really struggling to recruit. When I was on the MS Victoria at that time, 85 per cent were in employment of some kind, so I think that shows that we have a cohort here who not only need our support but are so very willing and able to work and very often in sectors that are struggling at the moment to recruit domestically. That is definitely a point that has been made to the UK Government, both in terms of Ukraine and for wider migration needs. Does anyone else want to come in? I think that we have exhausted questions from the committee. Just on that note, you used the phrase earlier on that we can welcome people when we want to. I am going to mention my constituency, because in my lifetime we have had Vietnamese people, Chilean refugees, Nigerian, Congolese, Syrian and the UK settlement, so we are well used to doing that. However, I am struck that the committee took evidence from the cabinet secretary in the roughly the same timescale on Ukraine, and we had him in on Gaza as well. However, in the Ukrainian session, we were already talking about how to bring people in the phase that everything was in motion. Is there any indication, do you have any explanation, as to why the process for Gaza is so much slower than the immediate response to the situation in Ukraine? I would be guessing at the details of what the UK Government's position is. From our perspective, one of the difficulties is that, while there are people displaced internally within Gaza, they are not classed as refugees, while they are still in that place. That is perhaps a difficulty. The struggle that many have had to cross any border at this point has made it a lot harder for neighbouring countries to provide the support that Poland was able to Ukraine. I think that that is exhausted at our session with you this morning. Thank you for your first attendance. I am sure that it will be the last, but we are very glad to see you this morning. We are going to suspend now. Thank you and a warm welcome back to the 35th meeting of the Constitutional, European, External Affairs and Culture Committee in 2023. I have a question to put to the committee first of all, and that is the decision to take business in private. Are members content to take item 4 in private? Yes. Thank you very much. We now move to our next agenda item, which is to take evidence in the committee's inquiry into the Scottish Government's national outcomes indicators relating to international policy. We are joined remotely this morning by Catriona—Catrina Catriona, you can maybe confirm that—head of Beijing office, Catriona Feldinger, head of the Copenhagen office and Christopher Thomson, head of Washington DC office, Scottish Government. Thank you all for taking the time to join us this morning, and hopefully all the technology will work for us. I wonder if I could open with a question about the annual report, which was published on Monday. It outlines three main pillars of work and seeks to connect those with national outcomes and the network outcomes. In terms of the national indicators, the level below the outcomes in the national performance framework, no indicator has been developed specifically for international network. Do you think that that is something that needs to be worked on? If so, how would it be measured? If I could go to Ms Radcliffe first. Great to know, just to confirm that it is Catriona, not Catriona, for the rest of the morning. Thank you for inviting me and my colleagues in Washington and Copenhagen to the session this morning. We all look forward to speaking to you about the work that we do overseas. In answer to the question, in terms of overseas in the Scottish Government offices, we submit annually monitoring and evaluation returns, so through those returns we try and provide as much quantitative and qualitative evidence across all areas of work that we cover is possible. Although I would be honest and say in terms of diplomatic work and international work, it is not always easy to find the quantitative evidence to back up the work that we do and we deliver overseas. I also know that there isn't, as you say, a specific indicator for international work at the moment. I believe that that is being developed and reviewed by colleagues back in headquarters. They want to better align the data that we capture through the annual reporting as the committee requested. Just finally to note that the annual report that was published on Monday is the first time that we have published the report and the first time that we have published the monitoring and evaluation information publicly. I hope that that is a step in the right direction. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, convener. It is good to see that the technology is working, so happy days. I will add to what Katrina has said. I think that one of the main purpose of essentially all diplomatic and international work overseas is to make sure that your home government has the best information possible on which to take decisions. I think that if you were to look at what indicators it would be possible to develop around that for having an international network, you are inevitably, as Katrina says, into the qualitative territory because we could count the number of people that we are meeting, and that would tell us nothing about the quality of it or whether it is actually furthering the aims that the government has. I think that where we can and where we do hold ourselves to account internally is around the quality of the conversations that we are having, the seniority of the interlocutors that we are, that we are able to meet, and also the nature of the relationship between those relationships and the work that we are trying to promote overseas. We have a mandate, each of the international offices specifically, and we also have a series of missions that the Scottish Government is running at until certainly the end of this Parliament, as well as the national indicators. We actually have quite a lot of guidance on what it is that we are here to achieve. The next trick down is to figure out how we turn that into what we see as the business plans, where we have traction in the areas that we work in and making sure that we are targeting as many high value interlocutors and networks in those specific areas. That really is the trick. How you quite develop that into a national indicator, it is very difficult, as Katrina says, to do that in a quantitative method, but hopefully in the annual report what you are seeing is us beginning to really do that at a qualitative level. I trained as a statistician so I can say this with some confidence that the plural of anecdotes is not data until you have enough of them and then it starts to help. Christopher Thompson, please. Sorry, just making sure that the technology works. Good morning, convener, and thanks for having us. I would just echo what Cat and Cat have both said. We do a huge amount of work to make sure that we hold ourselves to account in what we do overseas, but it is very difficult to draw straight lines between diplomatic work and outcomes. I know that colleagues are working really hard on that, and that is common across all Governments. That is not something that is peculiar to the Scottish Government. It is something that we all wrangle with. Am I struggling for volume? I am asking them to switch the sound out. We can hear you, but it is straighter a little bit, but they have switched it up now. Thank you. I am also trying not to speak too loudly to weak my wife up because it is 5.30 in the morning here in D.C. I sympathise and apologise again. Worse things have happened. We know what outcomes we are trying to contribute to in terms of globally competitive, entrepreneurial and sustainable economy. We know particularly on open, connected and positive contribution. Other things as well in terms of culture, in terms of thriving and innovative businesses, we know what we are doing and what we are setting out to do. We also know that our colleagues at home are working really hard to figure out exactly how we measure that and fit it into the national performance framework. It does not mean that we are not doing that work just now. I do not think that I have got much to add because I think that Cat and Cat captured it quite succinctly. Thank you very much. If I could just ask another question around the national indicators. There are a number that do apply to Scotland international policy in terms of reputation and international exporting. The committee is recently back from a visit to Belfast and Dublin in our inquiry work. We met the Irish officials in Dublin working in the international office, and they mentioned that they were just about to open their 131st mission in the world. It is a slightly different scale to what Scotland has at the moment, but it indicated that soft power was often the way to open up the other issues of trade and the other conversations that are happening. What was the focus of your work and how you balanced those two areas, how you used soft power? Christopher, you are on screen if you could go first again, thanks. I couldn't agree more with the Irish counterparts that soft power is a big part of it. I work in collaboration with SDI, our international trade body, and we set joint objectives during the year. We have a joint business plan, and last time I checked we had about 140 different activities during the year. It is about using the in that you have to then be able to talk about what Scotland does, particularly in the US, when people imagine Scotland, and we use the word imagine deliberately, they think of Braveheart or Outlander, or these versions of Scotland that are rooted in the past, and what we do. There is a lot of love for that. There is a lot of love for whisky and tartan and traditional versions of Scotland. What we do through soft power is bring people into conversations and then say, but did you know? For example, in the US, because we have a huge relationship with the space sector, Scotland produces more small satellites than anywhere else outside the US. Once you start having those conversations, you start talking about where Scotland is now, and you start having conversations that lead us to trade investment and modern versions of Scotland, rather than just traditional versions of Scotland, and as an example of that recently, we had a reception on Capitol Hill for staffers and members in collaboration with the Scotch-Wisky Association and the Sild Spirits Council of the US, the SWA's counterpart. They wanted to talk about tariffs on whisky, but when we were in the room, we happened to be talking to a bunch of Floridian chiefs of staff from Congress and talking about space, and as an upshot of that, we have our meeting schedule for January, where we're going to be talking to a delegation from Florida and the Science, Space and Technology Committee in the House of Representatives to talk about Scotland's space sector and what we can do to collaborate and work more closely with them. So that little bit of soft power, bringing them in with that version of Scotland that people are familiar with and comfortable with, and then beginning to talk to them about something more substantive is something that we spend our entire year doing, and we see benefits from it, and we're working to do more of that through the year. Thank you. Catrine, would you like to come in on this? Yeah, sure, thank you. I think in addition to Chris stating that we use soft power quite a lot as conversation openers, essentially. We have an incredible brand to work with. It's got incredibly high brand recognition, and it's also really well-liked. We had a survey recently in Denmark that showed that 91 per cent of respondents had a favourable view of Scotland. That's an incredible figure, and I would love to say that. That means that we're doing really well, but to be honest, we opened 18 months ago, so actually I think that's just the baseline there. I think the other thing that we can do with it is quite often soft power is actually more than soft power. A lot of the work that we do on cultural space, for example, absolutely opens the doors to partnerships and to conversations, but it can also have very, very real impacts. We are doing a project next year with the Nordic Council of Ministers and with the Nordic Council of Composers, where they have an annual classical music festival. Next year it will be held for the first time ever as a joint production with a country in the Ficts, Scotland. It's coming to Glasgow, get your tickets, but also what that allows us to do is actually to support them in doing artist and composer exchanges. At the end of all of that, you've got to remember that for the Scottish artists that take part in this, the Nordics are a market of 27 million people with a GDP the size of Russia's before the war started, so it's massive. The ability to connect the soft power and this impression of the vibrancy, particularly on the modernity of Scotland, which connects really well with the Nordic countries, with actual real measurable outputs in terms of culture in to see a major event like that or Scottish artists getting booked to play across the Nordic countries is really, really powerful. soft power plays a massive part in the work that we do here in China. We focus our work across three pillars on climate and biodiversity and what we call our people-to-people link. That covers education, culture, tourism and social policy and also trade and investment, and the soft power cuts across all of those three pillars. I think maybe just to give you an added dimension to add to what Kristen Cotrin were talking about is the value of using tools like social media to reach a wider audience here. China's population of 1.425 billion, how do you even begin to try and engage and deliver on our people-to-people links with such a vast country? One of the best tools that we have here to do that is through our official social media channels. We have three channels that we use here. One is Weibo, which is like the Twitter equivalent back home. Another is WeChat, which we use for slightly longer articles. The third is something called Little Red Book, which is a bit like Instagram. This is still a drop in the ocean compared to the size of the population of China, but on our official Weibo account we have 250,000 followers. On WeChat we have 13,000 followers. The Little Red Book we've just opened, we have 11,000 followers. Whatever we do, we can multiply the audience by posting on those channels and sharing what we do. A recent example is the Cabinet Secretary, Mr Robertson's visit to China. He came from the 23rd to 28 November. It was a six-day visit across three cities. The first ministerial visit to China from the Scottish Government since 2019 and post-pandemic, so it was really important for us to use that visit to maximum benefit and to reach as many people as possible. We posted on our social media channels every day at the end of the visit to update people on what he'd been doing, what he'd been saying, who he'd been meeting, and to share the Scottish Government values and what we do here. He did a vlog to round up everything that he did over those six days. That vlog alone received over 220,000 views. It's just a wee example of a different type of soft power, but it's something that's really powerful in terms of how we engage out here in China. Can I just clarify? Was that 220,000 views within China or globally? Sorry, within China. Thank you. I'm going to move to questions from the committee and move first to Ms Forbes. Thanks very much. I'm delighted that you could join us particularly at that unearthly hour of 5am. My first question is that each of you will obviously be working towards the Scottish Government overall objectives for Scotland, but equally I imagine that you have short-term objectives for each of the offices. I wondered starting with Cat in terms of your objectives for the first 18 months of the Copenhagen office, what have been your immediate objectives and do you feel like you're making progress on those objectives? I suppose to Catriona and Christopher in terms of your own short-term objectives for the office. What will feel like an achievement and an accomplishment when it comes to perhaps moving on or considering next steps? Does Cat want Copenhagen office? Cat from Copenhagen also? I'm getting confused with the Catrines and Catriona. You can if you like stick with calling me Cat and Catriona because you can be Catriona for today. That's absolutely fine. Ms Forbes, nice to see you again. I think the short answer is anytime you take on what is essentially a bit of a startup within Government territory, the first set of objectives are about getting that right. So how do you land and market and make a reasonably sized impact but one that's also kind of right sized in that if you give yourself so much follow-up work to do that you actually fail in doing that then you're not really doing yourself any long-term favours. So we had some short-term objectives for the first year about having a couple of high profile visits that helped us generate some press and attention around the fact that we had landed essentially in the Nordics. We had a couple of quite internal-facing objectives actually about getting the team right for the kinds of things that we thought that the Nordics might be interested in talking to us about and making sure that we have the right skill sets, the right policy backgrounds to be able to do that. And then we had a big set of objectives about getting the relationship with our host British embassies right. So uniquely I think in the network we have the task of working with either 3, 5 or 8 depending on how you cut the Nordics and Baltics network that the UK Government runs and so making sure that we have enough time span essentially to get the relationship right with each of those teams understanding what their priorities are in the single country that they're in and how we can sort of work with that and augment it has been a really really big part of the work for the first 18 months. I also think it's a part of the work that's paid off really really well because we're now at a stage where with those embassies we're starting to have annual organised events so Burns and Andrews starting to roll out across different countries in terms of a nice high profile cultural event. We have a really good understanding of what their priorities are and we therefore have a really good understanding of where Scotland has something unique to offer to for example Sweden or Norway and we can therefore brief the British Embassy make sure that they are drawing us into conversations and for only three people in the Nordic region that actually gives us quite a big bang for our box. So that's been a really deliberate part of the strategy. I would say we've had a good measure of success as I say on that one but also on the press. The press is pretty interested in the fact that we consistently look to the Nordics as a model for policy for Scotland and that keeps us going with making sure that we are making new friends across comms as well. We had former First Minister out of course that's always going to be quite high profile but we've also had Patrick Harvey, we have had Miss Martin and for all of those we've had some some really nice high profile hits which have got us inquiries from people that we wouldn't necessarily have thought to get in touch with. Thank you. Actually it's a really nice question to get to be able to answer so thank you for asking it. I think first of all in terms of short term goals I started in this role last July in 2022 when China was in the middle of the pandemic and they still had their zero dynamic Covid policy. That changed in December 2022 so in terms of the goals this year I think our office had a very clear purpose and that was to re-engage and to reinvigorate the links with China post pandemic and across the three pillars that I referred to before and that would bring benefits to Scotland. Nothing too complicated that was our overall purpose. The first six months we focused on getting out and about ourselves around China and also engaging with local government which is really important for us and to serve the whole of government approach that we have as the Scottish Government. We travelled to several places to Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Kunming as an office and then the second half of the year for us was all about getting external visitors in engaging at that senior level so we had a visit from the director of external affairs in the Scottish Government a couple of months ago and then followed by Mr Robertson in November. Really for us this year has been about re-engaging and reinvigorating the links. In terms of what would success look like for me at the end of this posting I'm a career diplomat. I've been a diplomat for over 20 years. This role with the Scottish Government has been great because it means I can join up the experience of being a diplomat with my Scottish background so success for me would be by the end of my tenure actually having delivered something of value and benefit to Scotland. That's not always easy to do. If I would pick out one thing and just to give again a bit of an extra dimension something we've been working on this year under the social policy part of the people to people pillar is sharing how the Scottish Government approaches his policy on alleviating poverty and particularly alleviating period poverty. We shared updates on our social media last year about this and it actually got really good traction in China and generated a lot of debate so we followed up on that this year by working with a local NGO to try and bring more of a spotlight to the issue. Also when Mr Robertson was out that was an element of his visit program as well to talk about the issue so if I can build on that over the rest of my time here and with my team and try and make a difference in that area then I think to me that would be a sign of success and progress. Thank you. Thank you. Christopher. Sorry I had to wait to click a button to unmute. Hopefully you can hear me. Thank you for the question Ms Forbes. We have six in-year objectives here in the US office. Some of them as we touched on are not entirely measurable about trying to enhance reputation but most of them actually have measurements against them and we have three in-year sort of ongoing deliverables as well so we have things that we measure that we want to be better at but given the nature of the relationship between the US and Scotland to paraphrase a presidential campaign it's the economy stupid for us. There's a lot of work we do in trading investment. I think the annual report highlights the investment that's come into Preswick through Mangata which is a US investment that colleagues and I have been working on for a number of years. These things for me are hugely beneficial looking at what the difference of that can make to people's lives in Scotland seeing jobs come in and I'm very hopeful that we're going to see a fairly chunky announcement in the new year once we've got that confirmed with another inward investor. These things for us make a real difference and ministerial visits and diplomatic work really support that. I have had conversations with our SDI colleagues who have told me that some investments have only come about because doors have been opened by Scottish ministers visiting the country with us and they get access to people that they would never get before so you begin to have conversations that you'd never have. For example this year through the visit of Mr Arthur talking predominantly about community wealth building we were able to meet with the lieutenant governor of Illinois and that might not sound like an incredibly exciting thing but Illinois is the 17th biggest economy in the world and the lieutenant governor brought her directors for economic development and investment into the room that meant I could be in the room that meant our trading investment specialists could be in the room and conversations have then developed from that which we are hopeful will lead to Scottish companies exporting and engaging in the US and US companies investing in Scotland so these are these are big focuses for us but we also look at what we can do in terms of culture and our diaspora as well. I've been engaged with diaspora and cultural organisations which have received huge amounts of grant funding and scholarship funding through the US and whilst I can't always draw a straight line and says that directly because of me one this week I directly came because of an introduction we made in the US putting tens of thousands of pounds into cultural organisations in Scotland. These are the things I feel really good about this is what success is like for us and yeah there's lots and lots more we can do the US is a country of 330 million people right now my office is three people so there's there's definitely more that we can do but there are brilliant ones that we've had so far and yeah it's a it's a mix of things that you can't measure and things that you can measure but I think going back to what Kat said at the start some of it's just about the stuff that you know is doing good and that's what we spend our year doing. Thank you Ms Forbes. Thanks very much for that. I mean I think obviously I wouldn't draw you to comment on political matters but I think it's really interesting how Scotland maximises the brand that Kat talked about there because in a sense there's an advantage which you may not have for elsewhere and secondly it's fascinating to see people relate to Scotland as an entity in and of itself rather than just necessarily being subsumed within the wider United Kingdom. If there was one area you would like to see the cross-party committee here really focus on in terms of an opportunity for Scotland in the coming year what would it be? I mean Chris Tafora has talked really about the economy and trade and investment is there anything else to add to that it's almost one sentence really of where you think we should lend our cross-party support to the work that you're doing? I would say culture and diaspora are hugely important for us and making sure that the awareness of Scotland our brand is what Scotland is now across the world a lot of people in the US think Scotland is then and they think backwards and we should be thinking forwards and we should be engaging with culture and diaspora in the US to really talk about what Scotland does now. Thank you. In a sentence I think on higher education and supporting the links on higher education 25% of all international students at higher education institutions in Scotland are from China that's about 20,000 students per year who then travel back to China and bring that positive experience of studying in Scotland and then sort of become many ambassadors and so cultivating those links with higher education supporting higher education and the students who the international students who come I think is a really positive step forward. Thank you. In a sentence you're getting sort of three of the big priorities for all of the offices here so you've got diaspora you've got higher education I'm going to add the third one which is around energy the focus we have in Scotland on delivering around Scotland but also on hydrogen on CCUS on essentially what the energy networks are going to look like for the future are so dependent on the decisions being made in the rest of Europe and around the North Sea in terms of what will the markets look like what will off-take look like where the supply chain is coming from we're going to do 28 gigawatts but the North Sea alone is going to do 300 gigawatts the opportunity for Scotland to be in the middle of shaping the conditions for its own success in that space are going to be absolutely enormous but but also something that we really really need to seize on and that would be probably where I would like to see some some real cross-party activity. Thank you. That's great. I'm really grateful for that. Thank you. Mr Cameron. Thank you convener and good morning to the panel. Thank you for being with us today. I had one short question to Christopher on something he's just said about culture and the diaspora. We've done quite a lot of work in the last few weeks and more generally about Scotland's heritage and one of the items that came up in the last few weeks was using the diaspora or Scotland's international connections, if I could put it like that, to potentially help to create funding or create opportunities for projects here in Scotland and whether that's helping safeguard a ruined castle or keeping a traditional music group going or whatever it might be. I'd welcome just any further thoughts you had about how we can leverage international connections towards that endeavour. Thank you very much for the question, deputy convener. I think that there is a huge amount of potential there, particularly in the US for Scotland, where touching on what Katrina said, there's a lot of alumni of Scottish universities in the US. Apart from the heritage diaspora, you've got an affinity diaspora for people who love Scotland because they've spent time there. So there's a slightly untapped market in the US for this. I think that we can learn from what our friends in Ireland do. They have a brilliant outreach to their diaspora. They have things like the Ireland funds, where they're collecting money to fund on to projects in Ireland. I think there's good stuff going. If you look at what is happening with the National Trust for Scotland, they have a USA Foundation, which is the Registrar of Charity in the US. They run fundraisers, they engage with people throughout the US. Their outreach is fantastic and they pull quite a lot of money back to Scotland to help with heritage projects for buildings and the built environment in Scotland. So there are some really good examples already happening. I think we can do better. I think the university and alumni connection is something that we can work on. Nailing things like the affinity that people have for the Edinburgh festival and the fringe, the tattoo, these things draw people in. It's about us figuring out how best to work with our partners in Scotland to effectively monetise that. People in America are not shy about that. Fundraising in America is an industry. The tax codes are written to promote philanthropic giving. These are things that we should be tapping into. I do think that there's much more that we can do there and we're working really hard to try and figure out exactly how we do that. Again, with a small office of three people, we can't do everything for everyone. It's a little bit about pointing people in their right direction, holding their hand and letting them get out into the market across the US. That's a really interesting answer. It's just my personal view, but I think there is a lot to be done here. It's a really interesting area where the international officers can contribute. Can I move to the question of the location of Scotland's international offices? I should hasten to add that I'm not asking you to justify the location of where you're working from or in any way question where you're working from. However, I think that this has come up in the committee before. It's really a question of, are we in the right places? We're not in South America. We have a very limited presence in Africa. There are lots of reasons to be in South America, for instance trade, lots of reasons to be in Africa. I just wanted your general view, if you can give it, about where we are internationally and where you would like to see us be if we're not there already in the context of a difficult financial picture. Resources are limited, obviously, but I welcome your general observations on that, if I could start perhaps with Katrina. The Scottish Government office in China opened way back in 2005, so I think that we were one of the earlier openings, although SDI had a presence here earlier than us going back to 2003. I believe that the network grew in recent years. It's a really good question. Coming from the background that I have, I see value in having offices in a number of places overseas. I guess the question is about budget and affordability and where you can actually open offices. I understand there's a commitment to open an office in Warsaw within this Government. I don't know of any other plans. Given my background, before I came to China, I was actually in New Delhi, so India being a place of multiple opportunities, but, as you say, it's very difficult to pinpoint, I guess the question is how big is the budget and then work from that. Of course, it would be great to have many more offices overseas. Sorry, I realise that's hedging the question a bit. It's a difficult question. The point that several of you have made is that you have relatively small offices with two or three people in them. There is a question as to how far that can go given the size of the country that you're based in. I wonder if Katrina or Christopher have anything to add, Katrina? Thank you very much, Deputy convener. My background, before I joined external affairs and flitted off to Copenhagen, was in our international trade and investment directorate for the Scottish Government. In that context, I was part of developing the evidence base for all three of the international economy plans. I think that process of really interrogating what it was that we were trying to do and therefore what the evidence was telling us in terms of where we ought to have people located, resources located was really powerful and it's something I'm very keen to take with me over into the external affairs side of Scottish Government. I think where we ought to be is kind of one of those questions that every single government on the planet struggles with and I think you could justify just about anywhere but I think the trick is to make a decision about what it is that you want to achieve. Are you going into a location because you want to have international development connections because it's pure diplomacy, because it's trade and investment? Therefore, what kind of resources do you want to have? One of the really fascinating things about being based in the Nordics is that we're not the only ones that operate on a regional basis here. Ireland, to an extent, New Zealand, Iceland and the pharaohs run their relationship with every country in which they're not based through Copenhagen. There's lots of models that we can explore about how do we get at some of those opportunities. I guess particularly for me that the thing that I would like us to bear in mind in doing this is looking at what the gap is so we can go into a market that's already very very well developed with relatively limited resources and probably not have huge impact or we could be going in and trying to open something from a kind of a closed-door perspective. We probably also wouldn't be that impactful in that scenario. So where is the kind of the sweet spot? I don't actually have the evidence in front of me at some stage, but I do think that it's something that we need to look at really seriously. And Christopher? Yeah, I mean I would echo what both my colleagues have said and the selfishly sitting here in the US, I'd love to have more resource in the US.  I, you know, cats given a bit about her back, well both cats have given a bit about their background and my background is economic development. So I see the opportunities that we can't get to because we just don't have enough people. I see what my FCDO colleagues who are on platform with me at the embassy are able to do and the outreach that they're able to get across the economy, but across culture and across sort of soft diplomacy as well. So I would be all for having more resources, but the question goes back to how limited are the resources and what else could you be spending that money on? It's a cost-benefit analysis to be done. SDIs do a lot of great work where we don't have diplomatic missions in countries, but there are definitely things that we can add and augment to what SDIs already offer. Thank you for that. Thank you, Cymru. Thank you, Mr Ryskell. I'll say with that theme actually and ask you, perhaps with cats, just about the priorities of the European Union, because something that I sort of picked up with a number of committee visits we've done recently is that there's an increasing focus with the European Union on the accession states on the east. So I wanted to just get your thoughts on that in terms of responding to the agenda of the EU and integrating and working with the EU where you think that that sort of frontier of deeper engagement is and how potentially a Warsaw office could feed into that. So I'll maybe just go to cats with that one just now. Thank you very much. It's a great set of questions, really. I think some of the questions have their answers at home in Scotland. A lot of the work that we're doing on alignment and retention of EU law and tracking, effectively, still where the EU is going, even though we are outside it, I think is really important for understanding where it, as an organisation or as a series of organisations, is moving to. If our intention is to stay aligned and friendly to it, then we need to first of all be aware of where it's going. The second part of that answer in terms of how we engage with some of those potential candidate countries, I think some of the work that we've done around Ukraine and particularly Ukrainian refugees, but also engaging with some of our Baltic neighbours around what that picture looks like, is really important. Again, at all times seeking to understand where are these sets of organisations moving to and therefore where do we need to stand in order to remain relevant to them. I think one of the challenges that we're seeing, and this is maybe where some of the Nordic part of the answer to this comes in, is that there's no doubt at all that all European Union member states see each other as the primary force. Where they focus their resources on international engagement, they will focus it first of all on each other, second of all on larger global blocs, and only then on others. We have to work really, really hard to have something relevant that offers into that wider European connection. I mentioned energy, that isn't just from the economic opportunity, it's also from energy security. The offer that Scotland has to make Europe on that is actually really, really critical for its industrial future, and I think framing it in those terms probably gets us into more rooms, so that's something that we're starting to explore. Then I think part of that sort of brand awareness that Scotland is open, Scotland still wants to be a part of this, is actually really important as well. We still get a very, very friendly welcome and I think it's incredibly important that we maintain that over the next decade, essentially, to make sure that Europe is still aware that Scotland does want to align. There's a lot of global instability, geopolitical instability, essentially wanting to be part of something stable, I think, sends a really strong message. Can I pick up one thread of that then? Looking at the international network strategy, there's quite a strong focus on hydrogen that brings in a number of different offices, Scotland House in Brussels, Team in China, France, Germany, and I imagine Copenhagen in that mix as well. I'm interested to know how that work is co-ordinated practically, because it could look a bit desperate in terms of looking at particular economic opportunities in different countries, but who's leading that work? Is that cabinet secretary with energy responsibility here? How is that work on hydrogen being aligned with the direction of travel of the UK Government as well on hydrogen? I think that we could just get a sense of that. I could go back to Kat on that. I could bring in Katrina as well, because I know that the China Office has been involved in that, but I maybe could stick with Kat just now and then we can bring in others. Yeah, I'm happy to start. It is an energy policy lead and therefore an energy ministry lead, ministerial lead as well. I will say that all of the offices across Europe are absolutely engaged in this, and I suspect across our global network, but with different roles. The office in Berlin has done absolutely amazing work in driving out German partners for off-take, essentially. Where will hydrogen be sold to in the future who will have a need of using it? The Nordics has a slightly different proposition. Here, we're working with countries that, like Scotland, will have the ability to supply hydrogen, so what we are looking for is making sure that we are working with those Nordic partners on what the supply chain looks like to build out the renewable energy that's going to generate it, what the regulations around it might look like. We can inadvertently end up influencing EU regulations via the Nordics by having some of those conversations, and I think that's quite important. You also asked about how we work with the UK Government. In this UK, A was allowed back in to the North Sea Energy Cooperation Agreement last year. That was really positive. Scotland already had some really good, on-going conversations with Denmark and Norway around what energy looked like in this space, and what we've done is actually deliberately joined forces here. The fundamental is that the UK needs Scotland to achieve its net zero targets in order for it to achieve its own, and all of us on that European security level actually need this to happen, as well as on an economic level. Here is an area where it just serves us to work as a block and to make sure that everybody understands where everybody else is going, and that's what we're trying to do. Our offer back to energy colleagues and to the energy minister and CABSEC is that we basically work on behalf of the energy team here. There is a really, really close co-ordination in the background. We've recently added a thematic lead to that so that we have somebody travelling across Europe and essentially helping us to co-ordinate that work. It's absolutely mission critical. Can I ring Katrina then, given the Chinese Beijing office perspective on it? Yes, thank you. Maybe I can give a specific example just to illustrate how we work together and with our energy team colleagues back home. This is around the issue of Grangemouth, the future of Grangemouth. A meeting that Mr Robertson had when he was here in China was with Petrochina, one of the partners of the joint venture in Grangemouth. What do I want to say about this? I wanted to explain that on that issue it's not a lead for us as a Scottish Government office, it's not a lead for the cabinet secretary, but because we've got very close links with our energy colleagues back home and with Mr Gray who covers that, has responsibility for that area. It means that we can work quickly on the ground here when we need to raise issues with, in this case, Petrochina. Having those links meant that when Mr Robertson was out here and there was an announcement the same week by the joint venture company on Petrochina, it meant that we could go in on the ground, have face-to-face meeting about that particular issue. We got up-to-date briefing from our energy colleagues overnight in a matter of hours. We were able to feed back the results of the meeting that Mr Robertson had with the president of Petrochina on the ground here. Those links being out here on the ground and being able to link up with colleagues back home really quickly are really important pressing issues for Scotland, I think, makes a big difference. The other dimension you asked about working with the UK government. On that particular issue, we invited along to the meeting a UK government official from the British Embassy to join us because it was so important to give that joined up view on that particular issue. A wee bit more background, if I step back, is working with our colleagues back home in the Scottish Government and UK Government here. We had a meeting with the chair of China National Petroleum Corporation, the NPC, in the summer, which the Embassy invited me along to because one of the issues that was going to be discussed was the range math. All of that joined upness really helps us on the ground and, hopefully, a joined up approach that will have longer-term benefits. My question is in line with my colleagues, Donald Cameron and Mark. How do we measure the impact of international offices on trade in comparison with places where we do not have international offices, such as Bangladesh or Brazil, in terms of measurable outcomes? I am looking at Katrina. That is a really good question. I think that, even though we sit in our offices, me and Beijing, Katrina and Copenhagen, Chrison and Washington, we do not always have those stats and data to hand. We rely on reports from others in terms of what the latest information is on exports. For example, on China, two weeks ago, we were saying that China was, if I get this right, I think China was Scotland's 13th largest export. Actually, just in the last week or at the end of November, we had updated statistics that said China is Scotland's sixth largest export market, excluding oil and gas. We do not sit and generate from our offices, but rely on reports, external reports, to give us that information. I guess that is the same for places where we do not have offices or representation. It is a reliance on those external reports and data and analysis. Of course, you have to have somebody there working and actually analysing them and deciding what to do next with that information. Katrina, Christopher, do you want to turn to us? Thank you for the question, Mr Troudry. I think that it is a really interesting question, because it goes to the heart of why we are in market as diplomats. There are SDI teams around the world where we do not have diplomatic representation. I get the statistics are not something that I have to hand, but if you asked my SDI colleagues in the US, are they happier with us in-country supporting them or happier without us being there, I would very, very much hope that they would say they are much happier with us here and that we give them a boost to the trade and investment work that they do. As for other offices and whether that would be helpful in markets like the subcontinent or other places in the world, I would very much hope that that would be the case, but it is a little bit of speculation whether that would be a good thing or not. I very much hope that having any further offices would augment and add to what our colleagues in SDI are already doing, and most of which is fantastic work. It is almost impossible to measure what you do not know or what is not happening. I think, as Chris says, it would be really nice if we could see us moving into, like we've just moved into the Nordic, so they're already really strong export markets and already really strong inward investors into Scotland. It would be nice to think that over the first period of the office being open, we would see an uptick in that, but again with three people covering all of these countries, that might be a slightly unrealistic kind of causal relationship to draw from it. I do think where we're really maturing as a network, and that isn't just in the Nordics, is, as Chris says, that ability to mix diplomacy and trade. Quite often the two open doors for each other. We had a really good experience working with SDI and also with UK Government around Wind Europe over the past year, where the fact that we were able to field senior officials, as well as trade specialists, to speak to major investors like Vestas, like Copenhagen infrastructure partners, like MERSC, that makes a difference. You have a different quality of conversation with them, and we have subsequently seen an uptick in the follow-up conversations from those companies in what's happening in Scotland. I would never, I think, put us in a position where I would say that three people are responsible for delivering a massive uptick in trade and investment. I would say, again, you can measure some of this qualitatively and hopefully over time we'll be able to see it quantitatively as well. May I ask, do you believe there is a need for the location of Scottish Government international office to be reviewed? I think it's something we should always have under review, to be honest. And we always have done. As I said, I came into this from international trade and investment. We went through a process of working with SDI to check whether they were in the right locations. I think we always need to be alive to the kinds of companies we're trying to help export, the kinds of international investors that we're trying to land into the economy and make sure that we're in the right places for that. For my personal opinion at the moment, I think those markets where we can blend the diplomatic and the trade are probably the ones where we will get the most value, but that's not to say that you can't run ahead a little bit, particularly with some of the trade functions. And it's also not to say that we can't and shouldn't. We absolutely should be leaning on the much, much bigger UKG resources. So, DBT have, Cat, I've lost count, but I think it's like 200 nod people in Beijing and resources that we can only dream about. The more aware we can make them of exciting and interesting things that are happening in the Scottish economy, the more they're willing to use it and the more we can have benefit even when we're not there. Alexander? It's been a very interesting discussion this morning, and I thank you for your participation.  But you have to manage trade and industry, culture, education, innovation, energy. The list is endless, and you're trying to do that with the capacity issues that you've identified this morning. So, what becomes the priority for you in ensuring that you capture the market that you want to? Yes, we'd like to have you doing all of that, but that's not possible with the people and the resources that you have. So how do you square that circle to ensure that you are trying to capture as much of those areas as you can? But what priority do you think is specific to the location that you are in, that is your biggest market or the one that you want to develop the most or the one that has the most potential? Because, as I said, you cannot cover it all, but I think that you're trying to do that, and you have co-operation from UK embassies and others who you can pull on. But what is your main priority for each of you within your own location? Yes, thank you. You're right. We can't do everything. When I talk about the three pillars of work that we focus on, we have to drill down under each of those and decide what is our priority for the coming 12 months and sometimes longer over the next few years in order to try to achieve our objectives. I think one important thing is right at the start of the business planning exercise. So my colleagues have referred to how we work with others, including SDI. We now, each of our offices, have a joint business plan with SDI. So I think that helps us drill down under the pillar of trade and investment to which are the things that will be most useful for us to focus on over the 12 months. I think for the other areas for me and thinking about just the huge size of China and the opportunity and the different local governments, this year we did a bit of work about which local governments we wanted to focus attention on if you like and resource on. We'd love to engage with every single province and local government in China, but we have to work through them. One example is Kunming, for example. We did a lot of work with Kunming in the lead up to COP 15, so this year we focused on trying to build through that link, and that was one of the reasons for Mr Robertson visiting Kunming, as well as Beijing and Shanghai when he was out. So there are various ways to cut it, but I think that that initial business planning process is key and also bringing in stakeholders at that point to make sure that we're delivering not what we think we ought to be delivering, but actually what brings real value back to colleagues in headquarters and can really help deliver the objectives and goals at the centre. But you're right, working with partners is absolutely essential. We couldn't achieve what we want to achieve and the benefits for Scotland by working alone, so those links are vital to us in being able to deliver. Catrine, what do you think is your main priority in Copenhagen or what do you see as the main priority? Yeah, it's almost like a layer of civs, isn't it? How do we use our mandate as an international office to contribute towards Scottish Government's missions in a way that has traction in the countries that we're working in and in a way that also has a kind of a client or somebody that is interested in working with us back in Scotland? So we have, as Cat has described, we have essentially three long-term goals and those are around energy in the North Sea, they're around learning from the Nordic consensus model of democracy and the things that we can bring back to running good public services in Scotland and they're around really using Scotland's brand to promote culture and particularly cultural exports within any given year and within any given country. We then are kind of chopping and changing to what we think has most traction essentially, so with Norway at the moment it's very definitely CCUS, so that's where the focus is. With Denmark on energy it's much broader and so keeping those conversations going in parallel essentially is actually part of where we put the effort. Because we only have those three, what we also have is a kind of an opportunist rule that we only do our business planning for 75% of our resources and that gives us a little bit of flexibility when something else pops up that just looks absolutely amazing that we can therefore go chasing. I think it's actually worth highlighting some of the people and some of the behaviours that you have sitting in the offices overseas, there's a whole bunch of us basically that are wildly curious and wildly opportunistic but at the same time actually have a good measure of kind of governance and structure around it because otherwise you're right to the thing does fall apart. Christopher, I mean America has so much to offer you've already said that on so many levels. Thank you for the question Mr Ture and I think part of your question contained part of the answer it is horses for courses for different offices. My colleagues sitting in European offices will have much greater focuses on clean energy and things like that. We're never going to export energy to the US, energy security is national security for the US so when we talk about energy we talk about investment into Scotland rather than selling to other countries and being located in the country as Cat touched on allows you to have your finger on the pulse, allows you to be entrepreneurial and say actually what's going on just now is slightly different from what we planned a year ago so you can shift and those business plans that both my colleagues referred to are not just unjointly with the SDI when our business plans are created we're going out to departments across the Scottish government, we're going to our agencies and saying what are your priorities, how can we help you by being in country, how can we help deliver for Scottish Enterprise, how can we help deliver for Creative Scotland and Screen Scotland when we're in country and I mentioned that we've got our six sort of big pillars that we have in country or as part of our business plan all of them feed for me into trade investment and into money and jobs going back into Scotland that's how I justify my existence that's what I get up in the morning for and trying to do everything as you alluded to is why I sound like this today because we are running about with small resources doing as much as we possibly can but that business planning I think is absolutely key to it, it's done with partners in Scotland, it's done with partners in country and it's also coordinated centrally through DEXA and through colleagues so we're not just going about picking the things that we think are going to be good in country it all contributes to enlarge our whole under the three priorities that we get from ministers in our priority mandate. And a final question from Mr Brain. Yes thanks very much, Ms Forbes said earlier on that she didn't want to get to comments on political events but you do work in a political environment and from the time that I was in government relating to external affairs STI and so on things have changed this is probably the worst I can remember and I would cite the letters from Alasdair Jack and from David Cameron which are a cross between a juvenile huff and some control freakery which really do set the context for the environment in which you need to work. Now my memory is that despite that the civil servants both in the Scottish government and the UK government did manage to work pretty effectively together and I'd just be interested to hear whether that is still the case, whether it's a constructive relationship and also whether there's a difference in areas where the Scottish office is located within a UK embassy and those where it's not. There may not be any interest in this, that seems to make a difference but it shows us for a comment on how the civil service work together between the different administrations and if I can start with Christopher. Thank you very much for the question Mr Brown and it's a chance for me to post because the recent Scottish Affairs Committee report in the House of Commons actually highlighted the work done in the US as an example of partnership between the Scottish and the UK government. I'm really pleased to be able to say that the relationships we have opposed here in the US are fantastic. I got on really well with the ambassador, with the deputy ambassador and with the colleagues from the UK government. Things can happen at home in the political sphere which will have an impact on what we do. As officials our job is to get the work done. We have our priorities, we have what we do, we don't get involved in politics and we are in regular communication with our colleagues. I'm based in the British Embassy in DC. I have a slot at our all staff meeting for all the US on a Monday morning and I talk about what our priorities are and what we do and as a result of that I'm able to then broadcast messages about what Scotland is interested in, what we're good at and what we're looking to do across the entire UK network in the US and I frequently get feedback from colleagues in the UK government saying actually what you said was really interesting, how can we work together? For me it's really positive. The politics we watch and try to stay as far away from as possible but we work really well together with those colleagues. So it's not something that you'll find me complaining about. I don't have to wear a hard hat to work and we don't have any fights about it in the office. It's genuinely very positive. Thanks, I acknowledge your work you do but just say that you can try and mirror the success we had in Canada by getting Haggess reinstated as an import to the US, aren't you good as well? I suppose just to echo Chris, I think we need to be a little bit cautious about taking what is played out in the media quite often as the reality on the ground. The reality of the relationships we have with the British embassies across the Nordics and Baltics is actually really good. We landed really well, we've established ourselves really well, we are seen as part of the embassy team, we've also worked really hard to establish a series of joint events and joint working groups so that we are all aware of each other's priorities and are able to make ourselves relevant to each other. Of course we are all aware of the context that we operate in and of course we have conversations about how best to manage that essentially but as Chris says, our job is to manage that and so far it's going very well. Thank you. I would echo what Chris and Catrine have said, it's the same here in Beijing and across the China network, so with the British embassy and also their consulates general. We have a really good relationship, really good working relationship, it's very collaborative, we coordinate on some events and activities together. Like Chris, I join the regular Monday morning meeting which helps me stay connected. I'm part of the China Board of Management. I have regular meetings and catch up, catch ups, catch ups. Meetings with the deputy head of mission. When I first arrived last summer, one of the first things that I remember doing was actually a joint vlog with the ambassador at the Highland Games in Beijing to promote Scotland, so we do have a very good working relationship on the ground which I think is so important operating out here and I really appreciate that close collaboration that we have. Thank you. That comes to the end of our time. Thank you all so much for what has been a very informative and useful discussion with the committee, particularly for those who have had an early start. Christopher, you mentioned your enthusiasm for your job, you used the phrase, it was what gets you up in the morning, well you've certainly demonstrated that today. As it is our last meeting, I wish everyone the very best for the festive season and the context of our international visitors and our discussion earlier on Peace on Earth.