Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 18 July 2018.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:50, 18 July 2018

The Member makes two important points, really. First of all, he puts his finger on one of the ways in which those people who advocated Brexit misled the public in the arguments that they put. Because they always portray European Union state aid rules as some sort of straitjacket that prevents us from doing the good things that we would like to do. Germany has eight times the intensity of state aids of the United Kingdom and operates entirely within the European Union rulebook. So, the idea that, somehow, we were trapped into something that forced us to do things that we wouldn't have wanted to do, turns out, on examination, to be nothing like the truth.

I'm happy to provide the assurance that Steffan Lewis looked for in his second question. If there is—and I agree with him that there is very likely to be—the need for a framework operating across the internal market of the United Kingdom, we will not sign up to something imposed on us. We will expect to be at the table, we will expect to be part of those discussions, and we will expect to be in a position where the outcome is agreed between the component parts of the United Kingdom, not the result of one part alone.