Article 50

Alex Salmond Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP)]

Today is the day that the right hon. Member for Maidenhead has become the first Prime Minister in recent history to have to be reminded that Scotland is a country, not a constituency of England. She refused to reply to the question of whether there had been an economic assessment of the impact of leaving the EU with no deal. Has there been such an assessment? Will she publish it? And if there has not been an assessment, how does the Foreign Secretary know that it is “perfectly okay”?

[The Prime Minister]

I say to the right hon. Gentleman that I am well aware that Scotland is a constituent nation of the United Kingdom. The point is a very simple one and it was made from the Bench behind him earlier: different parts of the United Kingdom voted in different ways. Different constituencies voted in different ways. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland voted in different ways—Wales voted to leave; Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain—but the overall response of the United Kingdom was a vote to leave the European Union, and that is what we are putting into place. I say to the right hon. Gentleman that we are looking at the arrangements that need to be put in place, whatever the impact—whatever the decision that is taken at the end. But crucially, what I am very clear about—I was clear in my letter to President Tusk—is that we should work to get that comprehensive free trade agreement, so that we are not in the position of having no deal but we have a deal that is to the benefit of everybody in the UK, including the people of Scotland.