Leaving the EU: Customs

Debate between Emma Reynolds and Peter Grant

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Emma Reynolds]

Turkey’s arrangement with the EU was agreed when Turkey was on the path to membership; that is not the arrangement the Labour party is seeking with the EU, and to suggest otherwise is, frankly, ludicrous. We are proposing that we remain in the customs union and have a say over trade agreements done with the rest of the world. That is a more responsible policy than the hard Brexit that Conservative Members are preaching.

The other crucial issue in this debate is the border on the island of Ireland. The Prime Minister has made two contradictory promises: she has promised that there will continue to be an invisible border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, but she has also promised that we will leave the customs union. Anybody who has rationally considered this in the round will come to the same conclusion as I have: it is clearly not possible to do both of those things. That is why both the models being considered by the Government have been rejected by the EU. The Prime Minister can have as many meetings of the Cabinet and the Cabinet Sub-Committee and with Tory Back Benchers as she likes, but that does not change the fact that the EU opposes both of these models and neither of them is tried and tested. If she spent a little less time negotiating with her party and a little more time negotiating with our EU partners, she might have made more progress in the negotiations to date.

[Peter Grant]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Emma Reynolds]

I will not.

Let us briefly consider the two models. Even some Conservative Members seem to be suggesting that the Prime Minister’s preferred option of the customs partnership is illegal, “crazy” and “cretinous”, so she does not even seem to have the backing of her own Members of Parliament. The EU has called it “magical thinking”, and from looking at the detail of the proposal it would appear that we would have to track every import into the UK—the EU tariffs would be different from those with the rest of the world—and collect the relevant tariffs, trusting those who say that the final destination is the EU. If it was not for the EU but stayed in the UK, we would not need to track it. That does not sound like a workable proposal to me. It would be a bureaucratic nightmare.

Then we come to the “max fac” option. The hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Ross Thomson)—it would be nice if he were listening—spoke enthusiastically about Dr Lars Karlsson’s proposals. When the Exiting the European Union Committee took evidence from Dr Karlsson, he admitted that some form of infra- structure—whether CCTV or automatic number plate recognition—would be required on the border. It has already been said that that would go against what has been agreed if we are to retain an invisible border on the island of Ireland.

My last point is that geography matters in trade, and I will leave the House with this point:

“We export more to Ireland than we do to China, almost twice as much to Belgium as we do to India, and nearly three times as much to Sweden as we do to Brazil. It is not realistic to think we could just replace European trade with these new markets.”

Those were the words of the then Home Secretary, now the Prime Minister, in April 2016.