CHIEF EU Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt appeared in front of MPs at the Home Affairs Committee.

Among those questioning him was Tory MP Douglas Ross.

WATCH: Top EU official says it’s a FACT Scotland could easily join the EU

Verhofstadt has in the past signalled that Scotland would be able to rejoin the EU as an independent state. Ross's attempts to press him on the subject didn't do much for the Unionist case.

Below is a transcript of their discussion.

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Douglas Ross: 50% of the committee in front of you today are Scottish. Can I ask: is your memory of what you’ve said about Scotland better this afternoon than it was this morning?

Guy Verhofstadt: What do you mean?

DR: Well, this morning you said you couldn’t remember tweeting about the possibility of Scotland, should it ever become independent, rejoining the European Union.

GV: I’ve said we are not involved in the constitutional discussion.

​DR: But you didn’t say that in February 2017, when you said it was a perfectly acceptable possibility; you didn’t say that on the 24th of June 2016 when you tweeted that ‘it’s wrong that Scotland may be taken out of the EU when it voted to stay, happy to discuss with Nicola Sturgeon’.

​DR: You were happy to discuss that with Nicola Sturgeon but you then said today that you’d never ask a negotiator or co-ordinator for the European Parliament to intervene in the institutional set-up of any countries involved in this.

GV: Exactly.

​DR: So in those discussions that you had with Nicola Sturgeon you didn’t feel you were intervening in any way?

GV: If Nicola Sturgeon wants to discuss with me…

​DR: That tweet I was quoting was you saying you’d be happy to discuss. 

GV: Well I did. I got this meeting with her, where she explained that a majority of Scottish people are not in favour of leaving the European Union, and that she hopes for a solution where the outcome of the referendum can be in accordance with the wish to stay in the single market and customs union, because that’s the main proposal from the paper that the Scottish authorities have published.

GV: That’s still an option if from a British side they want to go in that direction, and we can find solutions for the freedom of movement for people that could work. What I have said on several occasions is that I will not intervene in the constitutional order – we Europeans have not intervened in the constitutional order of Britain, saying ‘oh yeah, solve your problems by exploding your United Kingdom’.

​DR: I like your language about exploding the United Kingdom if we were to vote for independence, but you did say in September 2016 that 'if Scotland decides to leave the UK to be an independent state and they decide to be part of the EU I think there is no big obstacle to do that'. Do you still support that?

GV: That’s a fact. That’s a simple fact.

​DR: You don’t think that’s an obstacle for them to simply rejoin?

GV: I think the problem isn’t that. The problem is how we can find a close relationship between the UK and the EU, and during that discussion we will not do anything that is an interference in the constitutional order of the UK. We are going to avoid that. That’s not our task.