Exiting the European Union

Alan Brown Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

What it certainly tells us is that the business community is not as afraid of this great new opportunity as was claimed before the referendum. I do not want to re-run the arguments of the leave campaign, but let me say that while market movements in stock markets are volatile, small and often reverse themselves, what do not reverse themselves are large inward investments. In the year in which our party committed to give the referendum, we had the largest inward investment in our history.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State who has clearly learned the lessons from the leave campaign because he has said nothing at all today. His statement was 15 minutes of waffle and soundbites about “national consensus”, “interests of the entire nation” and “one nation”, which is completely at odds with the fact that 62% of the electorate in Scotland voted to remain. This does not bode well for meaningful input from the Scottish Government. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm the claim made during the campaign by the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), now the Secretary of State for International Trade, that Scotland would suddenly have control of a whole new raft of powers, including over immigration—or was that a piece of nonsense, too?

[Mr Davis]

I do not think that my right hon. Friend was referring to immigration; I suspect he was referring to fishing. What certainly will be the case is that we will take back control of UK fishing rights.