Customs Safety, Security and Economic Operators Registration and Identification (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to support these regulations. Like my noble friend Lady Altmann, I have a couple of questions. In particular, mindful of the fact that the waiver is coming into effect at quite a late stage in the day, and in response to questions from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in preparing its report on the regulations before us today, HMRC replied:

“The NI Protocol requires HMG to implement the Union Customs Code in NI. As a result of this, some movements between GB and NI will attract a Safety & Security requirement, but the full extent of this is the subject of ongoing negotiations between the UK and the EU. Traders will be able to access help from the new Trader Support Service in NI to support them meeting their requirements.”


I want to ask in particular when the Trader Support Service will be up and running. Reference has been made twice in proceedings today to how businesses in Northern Ireland can rely on the Trader Support Service. We on the EU Environment Sub-Committee took evidence on the importance of unfettered movement between Northern Ireland and Great Britain under the Northern Ireland protocol, and it is essential that businesses have the best guidance and support that they can get. I therefore hope that my noble friend Lord Agnew will be able to explain to us today what state the Trader Support Service will be in to give them the best possible advice.

Mindful of the fact that the negotiations are still ongoing, I am rather amused by the adverts that the Government have put out. I know they are meant to be helpful and I think they will be in the long run, but they are inviting businesses to log on to a website to prepare for the new arrangements, and it is incredibly frustrating for them because they do not yet know what those arrangements will be. What is the lead time between the negotiations ending and knowing what the new arrangements will be? It was a source of some disappointment to us on the EU Environment Sub-Committee that, until quite recently, there had been no formal discussions between the Northern Ireland Assembly, businesses, the Westminster Parliament, and, I presume, HMRC. Can the Minister confirm today that that is no longer the case?

Like my noble friend Baroness Altmann, I note that there will be additional burdens and one-off costs. However, paragraph 7 of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee report states that

“it will be a new legal obligation and an additional cost to submitting a customs declaration for import and export purposes”—

and that was the response from HMRC to inquiries from that committee. I understood that there are not meant to be any significant checks so I am slightly surprised to learn that there will be a new legal obligation leading to the additional costs and burdens of completing a customs declaration. Does the Minister have any idea how long it would take to fill in such a customs declaration?

I hark back to the days when I was first elected as a Member of the European Parliament in 1989. For the first three years, we were not in the single market, so for import and export all businesses had to complete about 20 pages or more of customs declarations. As the local MEP, on occasion I was phoned up and asked to intervene—through the good offices of government departments—to make sure that these customs declarations could be completed and dispatched to enable the goods to move. Agri-foods are perishable goods, and it could ruin a whole load if there was a delay of longer than the—I think—four hours pre-arrival for one form of declaration and two hours pre-arrival for both. If these time limits were to be exceeded, it could pose serious problems for the transporters and the logistics for these perishable goods.

I am interested to learn how my noble friend will respond to these few remarks in connection with the regulation he has presented today.