Jonathan Djanogly questions legal experts in a sitting of the Select Committee on Exiting the European Union.
Oral evidence: The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, HC 373
Tuesday 17 October 2017 Q102
Mr Djanogly: I come back to Ms Dunlop’s concerns that the laws applying in different parts of the UK could diverge to a greater extent than at present, undermine the UK’s internal market and complicate trade deals and talks with other companies. We have heard in evidence so far, I think I am fair in saying, that existing EU practice is for these things to be sorted out when there are problems. In terms of existing devolved practice, when we have problems these issues get sorted out. Ms Dunlop gave three instances where that had not happened. Standing back, are we slightly overegging the legalities of this? Will it not just happen as it has been happening in Europe and on a devolved basis so far? If there are individual issues coming out of existing practice in Europe and in existing devolved practice, are those not the types of issues we should be concentrating on, rather than the scattergun approach we have been talking about this morning?
Laura Dunlop: There is of course a key difference. You are saying that within the EU at the moment these problems are sorted out, and so far in in the devolution packages difficulties have been sorted out. For clarification, the three instances I mentioned were all occasions where the courts held that ECHR was not being complied with, so they were human rights concerns rather than reserved or devolved concerns. The big difference is that, in the European Union, each member state has a participant in the negotiations. In our prototype framework—whatever our internal market is destined to look like—at the moment, there is one party in the discussions that is wearing two hats, and that is the UK Government, who are also required to speak for England. That is a significant difficulty, in my view.