- Davis, the Brexit secretary, said that the government wanted the whole of the UK to have “regulatory alignment” with the EU after Brexit. Effectively he was conceded something that Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, proposed only this morning. Davis made the point most explicitly in response to a question from the pro-remain Conservative MP Antoinette Sandbach, who asked for the “regulatory alignment” condition in the Brexit deal almost signed yesterday to apply to the whole of the UK. Davis replied:
The presumption of the discussion was that everything we talked about applied to the whole United Kingdom. I re-iterate: alignment isn’t harmonisation, it isn’t having exactly the same rules. It is sometimes having mutually recognised rules, mutually recognised inspection, all of that sort of thing as well. And that is what we are aiming for.
Davis repeatedly said that regulatory alignment would not involve the UK harmonising its rules with the EU. And he claimed that what he was saying about regulatory alignment had been set out by Theresa May in her Florence speech (see
1pm), although his words today seemed to go much further.
Later, in response to a question from Labour’s
Stephen Timms, Davis said the UK would only be seeking “regulatory alignment” with the UK in the event of a trade deal. He implied that, if there were no trade deal, the UK would consider itself free to diverge.
This is an area where there does seem to be a difference between what is proposed for Northern Ireland and for the rest of the UK because the key sentence in the draft that emerged yesterday talked about Northern Ireland maintaining regulatory alignment with the UK “in the absence of agreed solutions” - ie, in the event of no trade deal. It was a safety net clause, and that safety net only applied to Northern Ireland.