Lord Kinnoull:

To take the Chairman up on the matter of fisheries, we are a family of committees because it is such a big subject, so we have an environment subcommittee which has written a couple of reports on fish in recent years. Although it has not tackled those particular issues, because it has been working on landing obligations and such, it knows what it is talking about. It is quite busy at present. I will take back what the Chairman said and ask whether it might consider doing some work along those lines. It is a complex area. I thank the Chairman for those thoughts.

In closing, I note two things. The Ireland-Northern Ireland protocol is a pleasing document. It starts with the recitals, which set the scene and tone, and are aspirational statements that I think everyone who is on this call would agree with all round. There are two pages of aspirations and behind those are the hard legal terms of the 20 or so articles over the next few pages. The rest is essentially a list of EU law that will apply in Northern Ireland. Marrying hard legal articles with aspirational statements is something which will need trust. I think that trust has been dented in recent times, particularly with the arrival of Part 5 of the Internal Market Bill, for example. Rebuilding that trust is the sort of thing that interactions such as this will be key to. I will close by saying that we are keen to be part of that process of rebuilding trust and making sure that there is an enhanced dialogue at the interparliamentary level. We have a similar intention to have an enhanced dialogue with the Northern Ireland Assembly and we have good relations with it and its committees, and have joint committee meetings with them.

I thank the committee for welcoming us to its meeting today. I think we have all much enjoyed it and enjoyed the frankness that members have spoken with, as well as the high quality of questioning. I thank the committee and hope to be able to invite members to our committee. We certainly look forward to the time when we see the committee again.