Lord Cameron ‘cancelled’ meeting with Scottish Government, MSPs told

External Affairs Secretary Angus Robertson said the Foreign Secretary had cancelled a meeting that was due to take place this week.
Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron cancelled a meeting with the Scottish Government to discuss protocols for talks with overseas ministers, MSPs were told (Dan Kitwood/PA)
Katrine Bussey12 December 2023
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Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron has cancelled a meeting with the Scottish Government to discuss arrangements for talks with overseas ministers, MSPs were told.

Scottish External Affairs Secretary Angus Robertson said it was “surprising” that the discussions, scheduled for this week, had been cancelled given the row that has erupted in the wake of First Minister Humza Yousaf’s talks with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Those discussions, which took place while Mr Yousaf was at the Cop28 summit in Dubai but, the lack of a UK Government representative at the meeting, led to Lord Cameron threatening to withhold support for the Scottish Government’s international relations efforts.

The Foreign Secretary had said that the absence of a UK official “contravenes the protocols in our guidance on FCDO support to devolved Government ministers’ overseas visits”, adding that “further breaches” of this would see the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) withdrawing “logistical support”.

He also said the UK Government may “consider the presence of Scottish Government offices in UK Government posts” overseas.

Raising the issue at Holyrood, Conservative MSP Donald Cameron pointed out that the devolution settlement “reserves foreign affairs to the UK Government”.

The Tory MSP said: “By meeting President Erdogan, of all people, to discuss foreign policy, namely the situation in the Middle East, the First Minister acted against both the spirit and letter of an established protocol which requires FCDO official attendance.”

He called on the Scottish External Affairs Secretary to make a “firm commitment that all future Scottish Government meetings with overseas officials will have a representative from the Foreign Office present”.

But Mr Robertson said it was “unfortunate that FCDO officials sometimes do not make themselves available” for such events.

And he said the letter from the UK Foreign Secretary had been “all the more surprising as Lord Cameron had a few days earlier cancelled a meeting we were due to have this week to discuss these issues”.

He went on to insist that the Scottish Government’s “only interest” when meeting overseas ministers was “promoting Scotland’s interests”.

And while Mr Robertson stressed FCDO officials are invited to attend all formal meetings the Scottish Government has overseas, it “is impossible to predict where and when informal meetings will happen during large scale events like Cop28”.

He added that “to threaten Scotland’s interests, on the basis of these discussions, arranged at pace, is ridiculous”.

Mr Robertson said the Scotland Act did not bar Holyrood ministers from meetings overseas, as long as they “do not purport to speak for the United Kingdom or to reach agreements which commit the UK”.

He told MSPs: “I have always been happy to be accompanied by representatives of the UK … whenever I undertake international meetings.

“That is the position of the Scottish Government.”

Mr Yousaf, meanwhile, has already branded Lord Cameron’s letter as being “petty and misguided”.

Speaking on Monday, the First Minister said: “For Lord Cameron to say he’s basically going to stop Scotland’s international engagement because of one meeting, where one FCDO official wasn’t able to attend – because, of course, at events like Cop, diaries can change quite last minute – is really petty, really misguided.”

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