The paper and the minister’s comprehensive letter say it all, but I wish to make a couple of points.
Obviously, work on human rights is going on in the Parliament and the European and External Relations Committee, which, a few weeks ago, had a private visit from the Westminster Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights. Without betraying too much in the way of confidences, I detected a little bit of frustration in Westminster at the delay in the progress of the United Kingdom Government’s proposals for a British bill of rights. Obviously, in the absence of those proposals and given the timescale before our parliamentary session reaches its conclusion in March, the extent to which the Scottish Parliament can carry out work in relation to human rights through the European and External Relations Committee is fast diminishing. That is certainly an issue.
The minister’s letter talks in particular about the EU migration crisis. It is hard to believe that migration issues in the European Union will not come back on to the European agenda in a very big way in the months ahead. Even if we look back at what was agreed in May last year, we can see that things have moved on considerably.
As for more technical issues, we are awaiting a revised version of the Brussels IIa regulation, which deals with court jurisdiction in matrimonial matters and matters of parental responsibility. That is very much work in progress.
The minister has also highlighted directives that relate to the Paris attacks and foiled terrorism. Again, such issues are highly topical, and I think that issues such as combating terrorism and the control of the acquisition of weapons will remain high on the EU agenda.
The rest of what has been said is really self-explanatory.