Value Added Tax (Distance Selling and Miscellaneous Amendments No. 2) Regulations 2021 Customs Tariff (Establishment and Suspension of Import Duty) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2021

Richard Thomson Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 General Committees

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I am grateful for the opportunity to give a single transferrable speech, which will speak to both measures. The Scottish National party will not be opposing the instruments either.

To be charitable, the statutory instruments before us fall under the category of legislation that is dull but necessary. Of course, I would rather they were not necessary at all, both because of the fact that we have left the European Union and the manner in which we have left. I have just come from speaking to the urgent question on the Northern Ireland protocol, where I made the point—to universal indifference—that the best way to remove the current friction in our legal trading relationship between Great Britain and Northern Ireland is to reduce the friction that exists within the relationship between Great Britain and the European Union.

The alternative is what we see before us today: an endless complexity of myriad make-do-and-mend measures, which need to be brought in to try and correct the unforeseeable, the oversights and the inevitable errors that creep in. That approach risks confusing everyone, while satisfying few. The two measures in front of us are necessary, and they have the SNP’s support, even if we wish that they did not have to be discussed here today.