THE report on your pages today referred to my questioning of the term "UK Single Market" while chairing a discussion on Brexit at the Festival of Politics in Edinburgh.
This is ticketed, non-party political Question Time-style debate run during recess and not part of parliamentary process.
The role of the chair is to stimulate lively discussion – which is exactly what I was doing.
Your report states that "appeared to think devolution meant the UK had already lost its frictionless economy".
Obviously this is not my view.
READ MORE: Joan McAlpine accused of leaving reality after claiming UK single market doesn't exist
The point is that free trade and a "frictionless economy" operate across the UK now despite very different approaches taken by the UK and Scottish Governments.
We in Scotland now control income tax, have always set property taxes and local business rates and control a wide swathe of other areas such as health, education, local government, economic development, infrastructure investment.
On top of all that we have had our own legal system for centuries.
The term "UK Single Market" has come in to usage recently and is often deployed by Conservative politicians in particular to attack any distinctive policies in Scotland.
It has been used in particular to justify the stalled EU Withdrawal Bill which the Welsh and Scottish First Minster jointly described as a naked power-grab, and an attack on the founding principles of devolution.
If Scotland and Wales can operate a frictionless economy at the moment with the devolved powers they have, there is no reason why that should not continue as powers over environment, fisheries and agriculture come back to Edinburgh – as we have been promised by David Mundell and others.
Indeed, it should continue even if we accrued the additional powers we need to protect people here from Tory policies such as employment law and the living wage. Not that I, or the majority of Scots who voted to remain in the EU wish that to proceed. The real threat to a frictionless economy is the barriers the misguided British nationalists of the Tory party are intent on placing between us and our biggest trading
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