Scottish Affairs Committee
14 July 2026
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Committee House of Commons
00:02 - 00:54
Speaker 2
Welcome to the Scottish Affairs Committee. We're very happy to welcome the Secretary of State, Douglas Alexander, and his deputy, Kirsty McNeill, and of course Baroness Smith, who is our AGS. Thank you all for coming along this afternoon. We're looking forward to having this conversation with you. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot about Ms. Mettam, who now is the director at the Scotland Office.
You're very welcome. Thank you. If I can ask firstly on the issue of intergovernmental relations, Secretary of State, the Council of Nations and Regions was a flagship UK government commitment as part of the resetting of relations, but I understand it's only met twice since the 2024 general election. Is there a reason for that, and has it lived up to the expectations we had of it?
00:54 - 02:18
Speaker 5
Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the warmth of your welcome to myself and to colleagues. My understanding is under the 2020 review of intergovernmental relations, the anticipation was that it would meet at least twice yearly. If I can maybe contextualize those two meetings that happened, under that review in 2022, there was agreement as to three tiers of intergovernmental contact in a more structured way, the observation being that some of the original architecture had not yielded the frequency and structure of contacts that had been anticipated. Tier one level engagement at the portfolio level is done through the interministerial groups. The middle tier, which is used to discuss cross-cutting issues that cannot be discussed exclusively at portfolio levels, is run through the interministerial standing committees.
And the top tier, which is obviously led by the Prime Minister, contact with first ministers and others. Again, to give you context to the committee, there have been 16 interministerial groups since July of 2024. There have been six interministerial standing committees since the general election. I attended one just last month. And the Prime Minister and heads of the devolved governments meeting has met twice, as you suggest, in line with that annual commitment in the 2022 review.
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