Leaving the EU: Customs Arrangements

Chuka Umunna Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Hammond]

My right hon. and learned Friend is correct. I think that he has made the point several times in this place and in others that there has been a misunderstanding and a failure to comprehend exactly what the EU Commission is. It is a legal body that takes its instructions from others, and therefore its ability to deviate too much in those negotiations until its instructions are changed means that we have failed to understand how we should have been negotiating initially. Now that the plan is there, I am hopeful that we will see more progress.

[Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to my fellow south Londoner for giving way. I know this is a debate about customs, but my biggest issue with the Prime Minister’s proposals is that they do not cover most of the economy, which is services. On customs, however, I have a couple of questions.

First, does he know of any example of where the EU has allowed a third county to collect customs duties on its behalf? The hon. Gentleman has talked about the importance of the rules. Secondly, although I appreciate his comments welcoming the proposals, they are also based on “to be invented” technology to resolve the Irish border issue. Unless that technology is invented and can work, I do not see how it will be able to resolve that conundrum.

[Stephen Hammond]

I will deal with my fellow south Londoner’s latter point first. I agree with him on technology. There needs to be a system in place. We may move to a technological solution, but, as I said a few moments ago, it is clearly not there at the moment, or it has not been tested on this sort of scale yet.

Secondly, I do not know of any such example, and that will obviously be challenging to the rulebook, but that does not mean that we should not put the proposition forward and therefore I respect what the Government are trying to do in that regard.

As for services, which the hon. Gentleman was clearly talking about and is 80% of the UK’s exports and economy, my hope is—I am not sure whether the Minister will be able to say so today, but it is my hope—that the White Paper may give some hints about how the Government will put in place their enhanced equivalence regime, and the proposals for that, which the Chancellor mentioned in a speech at a different Mansion House event just recently. So I hope that we will hear some news on that in the near future.

Let me go back to the idea of free trade arrangements and free trade agreements. The Treasury Committee had the privilege of going to Washington in April and we met a number of American free trade or trade arrangement negotiators. Everybody I spoke to was excited about doing a deal with the United Kingdom, which is good news. Why were they so excited? Because they told us, frankly and openly, that they can dictate the terms they want, they will get whatever they want and any agreement will give their producers unfettered access to our markets.

We have to be careful, because no one is asking the right question. Of course people want to do deals with us; why would they not want to? The question is this: on what terms of trade will those deals be done? If someone can tell me the answer to that question, I will happily sit down and conclude my remarks now.