Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he has made an assessment of the liability for errors in drafting technical standards for interoperability that is currently held by the European Commission under a no-deal scenario.

In a no-deal scenario, the UK will be a third country unbound by EU law. UK technical specifications for interoperability will be published by the Secretary of State for Transport, and the European Commission will not hold liability for their content. The UK will also have the flexibility to align with or diverge from new technical standards developed by the EU after exit. We will only diverge where there are clear arguments for doing so and after engaging fully with industry to assess the impact. The Department is currently considering issues relating to liability for UK technical standards and continues to engage closely with stakeholders on this point.