Taxation (Post-transition Period) Bill

Lord Bruce of Bennachie Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 16th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the Bill is welcome for the practical measures it contains, but more for the notwithstanding clauses that have been omitted and were previously threatened. In a way, it is another tortuous step along the way to deliver the easy Brexit that the Government, or their Brexit-controlling cabal, promised. I well remember the Prime Minister during the election, in a draughty-looking warehouse in or near Birmingham, promise that there would be no new paperwork or charges between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In fact, the “oven-ready deal” proved anything but. The only oven-ready thing about it is that it was stuffed.

Having agreed the deal that Theresa May negotiated, we then got the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, with its law-breaking clauses now dropped. Why? It was because the EU-UK joint committee met and agreed a way forward. This was always the way it should have been resolved, without the threat of breaking international law or resorting to the latest ploy of gunboat diplomacy. I just wonder how hard the Government are working to alienate everybody that we need to have on side for trade, co-operation, security and all the other things that a respecting nation needs.

Arch-Brexiteers in the Commons tried to reinstate this approach yesterday. It appears that they are still deluded in the belief that sovereignty is an absolute. It can be only if the country puts itself in solitary confinement—an uncomfortable place for a trading nation with a historically massive balance of payments deficit. Facing reality, the Government have now agreed, as they always had to, that at-risk goods will be properly monitored, that Northern Ireland will conform to EU rules on, as a case of detail, aviation fuel duty, and that the rest of the UK will follow suit for “consistency”. Is this a taste of things to come? I suspect it is. Similarly, there is agreement on aspects of VAT, but can the Minister explain the implications for online sales under £15 in Northern Ireland? Do Northern Ireland residents have to pay VAT on online purchases when GB residents do not?

Can we now hope for the dawn of pragmatic common sense and an acceptance of reality? The Prime Minister advocated cakeism, and it appears that Michael Gove believes that it is being delivered, but for Northern Ireland. He seems to be supported by the Foreign Secretary. We have been told that Northern Ireland is in a wonderful position, effectively being in the UK and the single market. This is an enviable position that the majority of businesses in Great Britain wish to be part of, but they cannot be.

The rest of us—the 99.8% of the economy that does not depend on catching fish—want to know where the dust will settle. Even in fishing, the catchers and processors have conflicting interests. If we want to continue trading profitably with the EU, which takes nearly 50% of our exports, we have to accept that there will be EU rules and we will need to accept those rules if we want to secure access. That has always been the case for third countries. We will no longer have a say in shaping those rules but, as the EU states have pooled their sovereignty to make the rules, we can reject them only at a price. We have the right to choose, but there is a price to pay.

Ironically, we are choosing to trade under WTO rules. We have far less influence over these than when we were members of the EU. Indeed, the WTO is a pretty dysfunctional organisation in dealing with disputes among its members. The Government are urging businesses to prepare to end transition in 15 days’ time. Ministers claim that they are trying to provide certainty, but the opposite is the case: how can people prepare for the unknown against a background of promises that it would all be quick and easy? This Bill is necessary, but more legislation is required. We still do not know under which terms, if any, we will leave the EU, and businesses are expected to adapt to unknown rules and regulations, which the Government cannot explain, which are complicated and for which they will probably have to pay for expert advice.

I was astonished, the day after the Prime Minister claimed that there would be no new rules, regulations or paperwork, to go on to the government website and see that its advice was to contact HMRC to get a registration, to take advice on customs requirements and to consider whether you need to employ customs staff or a customs agent. The contradiction was there for all to see on the very day that the Prime Minister made his absurd claim, which everybody knew was unsustainable.

The Bill is necessary. Thankfully, it is limited compared to what it would have been, but it is symptomatic of the bungling incompetence that characterises the Government in delivering an ideological ambition that is deeply damaging to the interests of this country and has left the world looking on in astonishment at how the UK took leave of its senses.