Good morning, panel. You have done so well at answering our questions up till now that I am going to throw in another layer of complexity. It is on a topic that has been mentioned, which is international trade.
One of the reasons listed for having common frameworks in the UK context is to enable the UK Government to do international trade deals. A big part of the UK Government’s narrative in the post-Brexit environment is how wonderful and successful all its international trade deals are going to be. Obviously to some extent there will need to be deals with the EU, but those might be the easiest part, because a lot of that is understood within the current relationships.
I would like the panel to comment on the implications of international trade deals for the common frameworks. The frameworks will be set up at the beginning, but they will clearly be dynamic and will need to evolve, because when the UK Government discusses international trade deals with third-party countries, part of those negotiations will be about what product standards we need to conform to—whether in agriculture, fisheries, environment or whatever—in order to do a deal with those particular countries. Clearly, at that point the UK Government will be coming back and saying, “We are going to have to change the way we do this within the UK in order to do this deal with country X, and so we have to make some changes to what we have agreed in the common framework”. How do you see that mechanism working when it comes to what the devolved Parliaments will be able to do in those situations?
In theory, I suppose that that could extend beyond areas that are currently reserved. We can envision a situation where the UK Government is doing a deal with the US and part of it involves liberalising part of the national health service, which might be easier to do down south than it is here. How does a common framework play into that scenario?
I suppose that section 58 of the Scotland Act 1998, which Professor Gallagher mentioned earlier, raises its ugly head as well, because in that situation there could technically be foreign obligations—that card could be played.
There is quite a bit there, but I would like the panel to comment on how they see that layer of complexity evolving.