Customs (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2022

Craig Mackinlay Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2022 General Committees

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. Perhaps the Minister could explain the benefits of the regulations? I understand that they are technical, and I am sure that the intention is to solve the mischief of the back-door route via the Republic into Northern Ireland and GB, but I will read what it says in the Northern Ireland protocol. In the preamble it is pretty clear that

“Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom and will benefit from participation in the United Kingdom’s independent trade policy”.

Article 4 says very clearly:

“Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom.”

I am sure it comes as no surprise to the Minister that when we see a statutory instrument of this type, which highlights a difference of approach in customs arrangements under section 63 of the CEMA—I have looked it up—then that raises alarm bells when a part of the United Kingdom, accepted in the protocol as fully and absolutely within the customs union of the United Kingdom, is treated separately from the UK as a whole.

Those are my concerns. If the Minister could lay them to rest, I might be in a different situation. However, as things stand, the SI almost exemplifies the difference that we need to be solve, not expand. Such SIs seem to expand and highlight that difference, particularly in the light of the recent court judgment in Northern Ireland and the fact that the Act of Union highlighted a long, long time ago—200 years ago or thereabouts—that there were complete and absolute freedoms to conduct business between any part of our Union, with no differences in tariffs, arrangements or anything else.

However, it would seem that the protocol, with its flaws, is being shown up as rewriting parts of that ancient Act of Union, with which we are all very familiar. Changes to the Act of Union seem to have crept through the back door, and that was not the promise that was given. Such statutory instruments make alarm bells ring in my head that we are not terribly serious about getting a proper solution to the protocol. Instead, we are giving into the inevitable and simply have to lump it, and I say to my respected right hon. and learned Friend that I really do not want to lump it. I have grave concerns about the statutory instrument and the direction in which things are going.