Rules on Duty-Free Goods

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

We will hear from the Lib Dems next and then my noble friend Lord Grocott.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question and I pay tribute to her consistency on this matter. We share many similarities in our observations and analysis of the impact of Brexit. She will know that we are engaged in the EU reset, which will achieve substantial benefits for growth in the UK and for British citizens travelling around the European Union. I urge her to support the reset.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My noble friend, on this Question and a number of others that I have heard him reply on, demonstrates the passion that he feels for the European Union. It is a passion not shared by everyone. Some of us remember that the 40 years when we were in the European Union were not exactly flowing with milk and honey as far as the British economy was concerned.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My noble friend will notice the support he gets from the Liberal Democrat Benches.

Can I have my noble friend’s assurance that we stand very strongly by the Labour Government’s manifesto promise that there will be no question of us rejoining either the customs union or the single market?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am sure my noble friend and I agree on many things, but Brexit is not one of them. I hope that when he talks about our experience in the European Union he will acknowledge the OBR’s calculations that, had we remained in the European Union, by the end of this Parliament the economy would be £100 billion larger than it will be otherwise. That is a significant disbenefit of Brexit. As my noble friend knows, the manifesto stands.