UK and EU Relations

Baroness Humphreys Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Humphreys (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate on the Government’s position papers, and in the short time available I will confine my comments to the paper on future customs arrangements.

As I and other speakers have said in the past, the customs union is vital to Wales: 67% of Welsh exports go to the EU, the Welsh Government have called for “free and unfettered” access to the single market and the customs union—and, of course, my own party has recognised the importance of the two and has called for continued membership of both.

It was with great interest that I read the position paper, and I was struck by how much the Government hope to achieve by the end of March 2019 in order to ensure a “smooth and orderly transition” when, as they hope, we leave the EU. If we are destined to leave the EU on Friday 29 March 2019, it will not have been lost on many in your Lordships’ House that our bright new future outside the EU will begin on Monday 1 April 2019. To some of us, that is a rather apt date to start on this new venture.

In the paper, I found what we might call the “current positon” statements useful, but the proposals for future relationships were vague and gave very little information or detail—relying, I thought, on a certain element of wishful thinking. How, for example, would the idea of a “highly streamlined customs arrangement” work in reality? Given the reputation of previous government IT systems, its dependence on new technology seems unrealistic, and the idea that these systems would be operational in 18 months’ time appears far-fetched. To ensure that the system can deal with the number of declarations associated with leaving the customs union, the Government must guarantee that the customs declaration service system is fully operational by January 2019, so that it can be tested before 1 April.

Those of us on the remain side of the debate were cautioned last week to avoid repeating the same arguments as we have used in the past. But the arguments, concerns and worries we have still persist, because we receive no concrete proposals or answers when we put them forward. The position paper fails to address a number of challenges that the Government face.

There is nothing here to enable me to assure farmers in the Conwy valley, where I live, or farmers in the rest of Wales and the UK, that the markets they have today in the EU will exist on 1 April 2019, or that any clear pathway exists to replace those markets. There is nothing to prepare farmers for increased prices if tariffs are placed on their goods, or for the extra paperwork involved in “taking back control” of our borders.

There is nothing to calm the fears of the design engineer I met on the train yesterday morning that the car industry he works in will suffer a 10% tariff on vehicles and an average 4.5% tariff on components, or that the industry will suffer delays if parts are held up as customs officers check their country of origin.

Where is the forward planning for ports? Holyhead on Anglesey can seem rather remote to those living on mainland Britain, but it is the busiest roll-on-roll-off port in the UK after Dover, dealing with 400,000 trucks a year making their way from all over Europe to Dublin. The National Assembly fears that a hard customs border between Northern Ireland and Ireland will mean chaos in Holyhead, with extra customs checks in operation. Already there are concerns that Dover may have to operate an Operation Stack policy. Will Holyhead have to operate a similar system? Have the cost implications been considered?

In the coming weeks I will be paying a visit to Airbus in Broughton where the wings of the A350 are manufactured. The company relies heavily on the free movement of goods and people and it fears that a hard Brexit, with the inevitable tariffs, will push it out of the UK. I can find nothing in this document that realistically assuages those fears.

Finally, nowhere is there an analysis of the impact of leaving the customs union on various sectors of the UK economy, although I believe that the Government have carried out up to 50 such analyses. When will they be published?