New Partnership with the EU

Margaret Ferrier Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

Strictly speaking, my hon. Friend should address that question to the Department for International Trade. One element of its work involves negotiating new deals, but the other involves facilitating access to those markets, particularly for medium-sized businesses—the ones where we underperform—so it will be doing that as well.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)]

The second of the Prime Minister’s Brexit principles is that leaving the EU will mean that our laws will be made in Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. In the spirit of principle 1, which is that the Government will provide certainty wherever they can, will the Secretary of State now provide details to the House of what further devolution—the right powers, as he called them—there will be to the devolved Administrations following our exit from the EU?

[Mr Davis]

First, not a single power will come away from the devolved Administrations—[Interruption.] Yes, but if one were to listen to people sometimes, one might think we were going to strip the Scottish Parliament of powers, which is not true. Secondly, on the hon. Lady’s specific question, I can give the principles but not the details at this stage: my presumption is that we will devolve wherever possible, so long as it does not undermine the UK single market, which is incredibly important to Scotland—about five times more important than the European single market—so long as it preserves the Government’s ability to carry out international negotiations and so long as we can meet international standards. Those are very important. Subject to that, however, I am on her side in terms of devolving.