Question to the Department for Exiting the European Union :

To ask Her Majesty's Government how they define the phrase “regulatory alignment”.

The Prime Minister, during her speech in Florence, set out the Government's approach to regulatory alignment. In our negotiations with the EU, the UK starts from a unique position in that we have the same rules and regulations.

The question for the UK in building a new economic partnership with the EU is therefore not how we bring our rules and regulations closer together, but what we do when one of us wants to make changes.

There will be areas where regulation is outside the scope of our trade and economic relations or where we want to achieve the same goals in the same ways. But there will be areas which do affect our economic relations where we and our European partners may have different goals; or where we share the same goals but want to achieve them through different means. Our task is to find a new framework that allows for a close economic partnership but holds these rights and obligations in a new and different balance.