UK Plans for Leaving the EU

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Monday 9th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I assure my hon. Friend that the agreement that we envisage entering into with the remaining states of the EU on security, criminal justice and law enforcement matters will be mutually beneficial, particularly on the sort of data we can exchange across borders to ensure we are able to deal with the many challenges we face, especially those relating to human trafficking and modern slavery, organised crime and, of course, terrorism.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

As the vice-chair of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, I recently visited Jersey with the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell). While there, we discussed the customs union, a customs union and a customs arrangement, but we did not get around to talking about a customs system. The Prime Minister has used various words to describe the border, from somewhere between hard and soft, to now talking about a physical border. Further to the comments by the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) and the Prime Minister’s rather flippant answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff), when will the Prime Minister do the communities on the Irish border the courtesy of visiting them to explain her analysis of the customs system in relation to the Good Friday agreement?

[The Prime Minister]

In relation to that issue, we have looked at the broader question of the customs arrangements and, as I say, we have published a paper that contains proposals for systems that could operate in future. In relation to the Northern Irish border with the Republic of Ireland, we are discussing with the parties in Northern Ireland, the EU and the Irish Government what the future arrangement might look like, but the EU recognises that it is not possible to confirm what that future arrangement will look like until we have looked into some of the wider issues of the future partnership between the UK and the EU.