AN SNP minister shot down a Tory MP after he attempted to talk about the Alex Salmond trial at a Westminster committee and dismantled his arguments on Brexit being a benefit to trade deals.
Ivan McKee MSP is the Scottish Government's Trade Minister and was appearing on the Scottish Affairs Committee to discuss the UK Government's Shared Prosperity Fund compared to what Scotland lost from EU funding, which the new UK scheme is aimed at replacing.
After McKee had outlined issues Scotland had faced around engaging with Westminster about the fund - noting that efforts to engage with the UK by Holyrood had been "rebuffed and ignored" - Tory MP John Lamont had the first question and decided to bypass the main topic and ask McKee about his colleagues instead.
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Lamont, MP for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, said: "It must be a really difficult time being an SNP minister just now, trying to focus on your job given a former First Minister has been in court over a serious sexual assault allegations, and there's been wall to wall news coverage of the ongoing Scottish Parliament committee investigating the mishandling by the Scottish Government of those sexual assault allegations.
"How are you bearing up Minister McKee?"
McKee responded by saying that he was "absolutely fine" and "focused on the day job", adding: "I would suggest that you do the same and stop trying to distract from the behaviour of the UK Government with regards to trying to ride roughshod over devolution."
He added: "That's what I'm here to talk about, not to talk about the distractions that you maybe want to focus on instead. Get back and do your day job."
Lamont then attempted to ask a further question about whether McKee believes the Scottish Government had failed two female complainants against Salmond but was stopped by the committee chair, SNP MP Pete Wishart.
McKee can then be heard telling Lamont: "You’re embarrassing yourself John you really are."
Wishart reminded Lamont that there was a limited amount of time for the committee to gain information about the Shared Prosperity Fund from Scotland's perspective and to stick to questions on the topic.
After complaining to Wishart that SNP members had asked UK ministers questions about their conduct, Lamont then moved on to ask McKee if he welcomed an agreement between the UK and US to remove tariffs on Scotch whisky for four months, imposed by former president Donald Trump.
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The tariffs saw Scotch whisky exports to the US drop by 35% and the sector was "breathing a sigh of relief" today, according to Scotch Whisky Association chief executive Karen Betts.
McKee added that he "absolutely" welcomed it but added it had taken "far, far longer" than it should have and that it was only for a short period of time.
Lamont then went onto say this deal could only have been achieved thanks to Brexit.
McKee said: "That's absolutely not the case and if you'd done your homework you would know that's the situation. If you look at the WTO [World Trade Organization] ruling on this - [which] names the UK as one of the parties - gives the US, along with three other European countries, the ability to impose those tariffs in any way they see fit across any combination of those countries. That's something the US could have done at any stage.
"If you actually look at the tariffs that are in place by the US when the UK was still part of the EU, there were differential tariffs placed on differential EU countries depending on how the US saw that scenario and they pick and choose where they want to place those tariffs.
"So this is not something that's a consequence of Brexit, this is something that the US could have done in any event anyway ... In actual fact, the UK's in a weaker negotiating position because it is not a party to the counter-tariffs that the EU is able to impose on the US and therefore weakens the negotiating handle of the UK in that regard."
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