Lord Kinnoull:

I thank the members for their series of very good questions. Perhaps I will start with a personal analysis of the sort of work about which we need to think as regards the way in which we interact with each other. There are a number of dimensions to any such relationship, including, in particular, the intergovernmental and interparliamentary dimensions. There are also other dimensions involved. On the interparliamentary side, I have met many of the members' colleagues at the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union, COSAC, over several years and I have always enjoyed very good and fun interaction on all sorts of ideas. That must be replaced because it was a key part of the interparliamentary dimension and there is every chance we will not be invited, or not fully invited, to its meetings in the future. It is simply a matter of trying to analyse what we will lose, working out whether that matters and then replacing it with something else. There is a strong case for a mild increase in the level of engagement at interparliamentary and intergovernmental levels to reflect the closeness of the inevitable relationship between these islands.

Turning to the issue of the land bridge, I was going to ask Lord Wood whether he had any particular views on its importance and on what might be done in order to ensure that, whatever happens, the land bridge continues to operate after the end of the transition period. I am sorry because it is unfair thing to ask of him, but I feel he is probably the best qualified of us to give a view in this regard.