Customs and Borders

Debate between Baroness Hoey and Helen Goodman

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kate Hoey]

The right hon. and learned Member and other Members have said that, and we have to make a lot of changes in this country to ensure that we can do much better than has been the case inside the European Union, but being outside the EU and the customs union will be almost a catalyst by ensuring that our businesses have that opportunity and freedom to do better than they are doing at the moment.

Those people who pushed for the Norway option during the referendum campaign and even since seem to forget that Norway is outside the customs union and is doing well. In fact, when I went to a conference in Norway recently, the feeling among people there was that they wanted to get out of the European economic area as well. They are looking to us to make a successful transition from the EU and they will probably follow us.

[Helen Goodman]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Kate Hoey]

No, I will not give way to my hon. Friend.

I should like to move on to the issue of the border and Northern Ireland. Under the Tony Blair Government, I was one of those who went over and campaigned for a yes vote. I was very keen to see what happened happen, and I pay tribute to all those who made that happen. There is no doubt that there is an issue relating to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, but the European Union is seizing on divisions to pursue certain demands that are just not necessary. It is certainly using the Irish border as an issue with regard to the customs union. EU officials recently said that they had systematically and forensically annihilated the Prime Minister’s proposals for a loose customs arrangement, but in fact they did not do that—they simply refused to discuss any creative compromise. They talk down every British proposal, and they are being helped by some in this Parliament who talk down everything positive that is said about what might be done. Proposals are talked down and talked down.

People need to remember that there is already a legal border in Northern Ireland for excise, alcohol, tobacco, fuel duty, VAT, immigration, visas, vehicles, dangerous goods and security. Indeed, the primary function of the hard border of the past was to be a security border, not a customs border. People forget that because they want to forget what happened during those long years of troubles. Today all those border functions are enforced without any physical infrastructure, so adding customs declarations and marginally divergent product standards to the long list of functions that the border already implements invisibly does not require a huge, drastic change to the nature of the border.

Even in the most complicated area—agriculture —the director of animal health and welfare at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has already given evidence to Parliament that sanitary and phytosanitary-related risks would not be altered by Brexit from what the authorities are already managing across the border pre-Brexit, and that additional infra- structure at the border would not be needed. There are already cameras—not at the border itself, but further away—and checks are going on all the time. There is intelligence all the time. There is no reason why businesses on both sides of the border that need to move back and forth every day will have any problem.