Customs and Borders

Stephen Doughty Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that the EU is the UK’s largest export market for goods, accounting for a total of £145bn of exports and £241bn of imports in 2016; further notes the Government’s expressed aim to secure the freest and most frictionless possible trade in goods between the UK and the EU after 29 March 2019; notes the importance of frictionless trade without tariffs, customs or border checks for manufacturers and businesses across the country who trade with the EU; further notes that the free circulation of goods on the island of Ireland is a consequence of the UK’s and Republic of Ireland’s membership of the EU Customs Union; in addition notes the Government’s commitment to (i), in the UK-EU joint report on progress during phase 1 of the Article 50 negotiations, the maintenance of North-South cooperation and the all-island economy on the island of Ireland, (ii) the Belfast Agreement implemented in the Northern Ireland Act 1998 remaining a fundamental principle of public policy and (iii) the continuation of unfettered access for Northern Ireland's businesses to the whole of the UK internal market; and therefore calls on the Government to include as an objective in negotiations on the future relationship between the UK and the EU the establishment of an effective customs union between the two territories.

This is the first of the debates chosen by the Liaison Committee, and it is on one of the most important issues on which Parliament must decide in the next six months. We did not choose this topic because we all agree—the Liaison Committee includes the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), and hon. Members can imagine the extent of the disagreement that he and I have on many of these issues. We chose this topic because we think it is an incredibly important issue and we are running out of time. The motion is tabled on behalf of 12 Committee Chairs, and it proposes an effective customs union in the interests of our manufacturing industry and of continuing to support peace in Northern Ireland.

We are running out of time. We are running out of time for Parliament to help shape negotiations, based on evidence heard by our Select Committees and discussions between Back Benchers. We are running out of time to hear from the Government about what they are going to do. The Government rightly say that they want frictionless borders and no extra burdens on business; they want to improve trade and to have no hard border in Northern Ireland, including no infrastructure at the border. However, there is still no clarity about what that means for our borders. Many of our Committees have looked in detail at some of the practical challenges, and the Home Affairs Committee has warned about the problems and challenges of bringing in huge border changes at speed, and with a lack of staff in place.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I sit on the Committee chaired by my right hon. Friend, and I wholeheartedly endorse the conclusions we came to regarding our serious worries about Government preparedness. Does she agree that not only is the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland a serious issue that is yet to be resolved, but there is also a question whether there will be a maritime border between Wales and Scotland and the Republic of Ireland? The Home Secretary seemed to suggest that there would be customs officials at Welsh ports, but that is a completely unacceptable situation.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right: there are so many unanswered questions and the clock really is ticking. We secured this debate to try to tease out those questions and get some answers, and to put forward some proposals for this debate. I also put on record apologies from the Chair of the Exiting the European Union Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), but that Committee is taking evidence in Berlin today.

Why put forward an effective customs union as part of the proposals? It means no tariffs on the goods we buy and sell with the European Union. It means no customs checks at the border. It is a crucial part of delivering the frictionless border for trade that the Government have rightly promised. It clearly does not solve all the problems and meet all the challenges that we face, but it is an important part—

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

That goes to the heart of the situation. It is partly about certainty and partly about knowing that businesses can smoothly trade in the way that they have been doing, and that we can build on that trade and not end up with new barriers in place. It is manufacturing where this matters most—manufacturing is still the spine of our economy and so much else depends on it. For so many of our towns, such as those in my constituency and across the north and midlands, manufacturing is still at the heart of the local economy, and it could be hugely jeopardised if we end up with a damaging change to the terms of trade.

[Stephen Doughty]

My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. Unite––the union shop stewards who came to visit me from Rolls-Royce––made exactly that point. They explained the real damage that could be done by this to the aerospace industry in particular and the long and detailed supply chains that stretch across not just the whole of the UK, but the whole of the European Union.

[Yvette Cooper]

That is right. Many of these manufacturing towns and areas may well have voted to leave the European Union, but they will also argue strongly for support for manufacturing jobs within their communities. We should be listening to their voices.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

I really should not, because the Speaker will get extremely annoyed. I must come to a quick conclusion and I wanted to touch on Ireland. I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman, but other people must get in.

It is an utterly ludicrous idea that it would somehow be better if we do things on our own. The countries always cited are the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and they will do deals with us because they all want to sell us foodstuffs. There is not a great deal of trade that we can add between us and New Zealand and Australia, and the Americans are desperately keen to sell us their beef and their chicken. As someone has already said, all trade deals are not done by a sovereign country saying, “Of course we are not binding ourselves to do anything.” They involve the agreeing of market regulations and of the trading rules that will apply. We would not say, “It’s all going to be decided by the British courts.” There would be an international arbitration agreement to which businesses and countries could look if one side started breaking its treaty obligations. The Americans will say, “Give up these European food safety and environmental regulations, and we will trade with you on ours.” If we let in chlorinated chicken, hormone-treated beef and genetically modified crops— personally I am not convinced that they are the health hazards that most people in the country seem to believe they are—that means new barriers with Europe, which will not let those products go straight through, and we will probably lose a large part of our biggest market, for food and agricultural products, which is in Europe.

I have one final point to make on international trade and about where the debate is unrealistic. WTO rules have suddenly been elevated to some mystic world order that means that our new trade agreements will somehow be much better. I wish that were true. This country does abide by WTO rules, but they are nothing like as comprehensive as they ought to be because the Doha round failed. The Americans take no notice of the WTO. The Americans and the Chinese are about to start a trade war, and everything that they are doing is in total breach of WTO rules. We will not get a deal with Donald Trump subject to WTO rules. He will not even appoint judges to the WTO court, because otherwise it might do what is usually its major duty, which is settling disputes between states.

Going back to what the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford said, we want trade with Europe that has no barriers between ourselves and Europe. It will require some ingenuity to find some basis on which we might still be able to do trade deals with other people, but the idea that some marvellous new global future with fantastic new trade deals is about to open up is hopeless. If someone can get the Americans to open up their public procurement to international competition and give up the “Buy America” policy or to open the regulatory barriers that they have put in the way of professional and financial services, they will be a miraculous negotiator, because we could get nowhere when Obama was in power. I do not think that the present Administration are offering us anything; they just want their beef to come here.

Finally, on Ireland—I will be much shorter on this because it is a big question that has been touched on already—it is absolutely critical that we do not break the Good Friday agreement. It is quite obvious that most people on this side of the Irish sea had never thought about Ireland when we were debating during the referendum and when they were propounding their policies. The problem of the Good Friday agreement has been addressed by most Brexiteers by them saying, “Surely that’s all over now? Isn’t it a nuisance? What an irrelevance. Let us break it now, because it no longer matters. It is far more important that we get the kind of hard Brexit that we want.” That is very dangerous.

The Good Friday agreement is one of the major achievements of the British Governments of my time. It was negotiated with the Americans, with the Government of the Republic of Ireland and with every section of opinion in Northern Ireland. It brought an end—almost; it is the end, I hope—to 200 years of the troubles in Ireland after they erupted into violence. When the troubles were under way in the ’70s and ’80s we lost more policemen and soldiers in Ulster than we did in Iraq and Afghanistan put together. The agreement was a splendid achievement for John Major and Tony Blair, so to say, “What an inconvenience. It is getting in the way of our leaving the customs union,” is very dangerous.

I thought that the Government had accepted that. Indeed, I think they have done so formally on two occasions. First, we had the Prime Minister’s Florence speech, which addressed the matter. Talking about the discussions she had had with Europe about Northern Ireland, she said that

“we have both stated explicitly that we will not accept any physical infrastructure at the border.”

That was solemnly agreed. It was the agreed Cabinet policy. The Foreign Secretary made a strange speech before the Florence speech and a statement shortly afterwards that gave the impression that he was trying to undermine the speech, but I am sure he was not. That statement is already agreed Government policy.

Secondly, we finally managed to make progress by finishing the withdrawal agreement, and we published the texts of what had been agreed. As people have said, there are all these other possible solutions involving using congestion charge cameras and things to avoid issues at the border, but I do not think that they will get very far. We have already committed ourselves to the following:

“In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation”,

which I think means pretty well full regulatory convergence. As someone has already said, the chief constable of Ulster has said that we cannot have infrastructure at a new hard border. It would outrage nationalist and republican opinion across the whole island and take us right back to all the problems we had. Symbolism is huge in the politics of Ireland and always has been, and it would be grossly irresponsible to put a hard border in the middle of the island of Ireland again. We have never been on such good terms with the Government of the Republic of Ireland since the Republic was founded.

If we have those arrangements at the Irish border, the same arrangements will of course apply to Holyhead and to Dover. That is what I want to see. We want no new barriers and no customs processes. We want the necessary level of regulatory convergence. Obviously, the easy way to do that is to stay in the customs union and stay in the single market. If not, we will need what I think the Prime Minister described as a “customs procedure”, which will be something that looks remarkably like the single market and the customs union.

The customs union is what today’s business is about, and it would do terrible damage to this country if, for strange ideological reasons in the confused aftermath of a misguided referendum, we were to take such a foolish step as not to replicate the customs union in any future arrangements.

[Stephen Doughty]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I apologise for interrupting this important debate on a topic on which I have strong views, but something has come to my attention in the last few moments. As you will be aware, the Home Secretary endured some strong questioning both this morning and at yesterday’s sittings of the Home Affairs Committee about removal targets. The BBC’s political editor is now reporting that the Home Office in fact intends to scrap the internal removal targets, so I wondered whether you had received notice that the Home Secretary plans to come back to clarify the statement that she made earlier, which was of course a clarification of statements made by her and her officials yesterday and, indeed, by the Prime Minister, who is responsible for this mess starting in the first place.