Customs and Borders

Tom Brake Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right, because the lack of certainty makes it extremely difficult for any employer to plan. I have discussed the subject with employers in my constituency, particularly manufacturers, and frankly any business that is involved in cross-border trade in any way is desperately concerned about the lack of certainty. The idea that new arrangements could have to be in place in less than 12 months’ time has an impact on investment; it has an impact on the decisions that employers—businesses—are making right now.

At Dover, 400 lorries an hour rumble on and off the ferries to France. In Ireland, 6,000 lorries and 8,000 vans whizz to and fro across the border, without even braking. From apples to aerospace, from Yorkshire woollens to Scottish salmon, Britain does more than £230 billion of export trade with European countries every year. Those businesses do not get stopped at the border, do not pay tariffs or submit extra forms. They can just sail on through. That is the frictionless trade that so many of our manufacturing jobs depend on.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

In the right hon. Lady’s contacts with business, has she come across any businesses that are currently exporting, or intending to export, to the EU that are looking forward to filling in all the customs forms that will be required once we have left?

[Yvette Cooper]

Funnily enough, I have not, and I doubt that many of us have either, because for those employers—those businesses—this goes much wider than simply what happens at the border. It extends to all the bureaucracy, all the paperwork, and all those additional burdens and costs that they could face outside a customs union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sorry—I should have formally announced a four-minute limit. It is in effect but I should have announced it formally. The right hon. Gentleman has four minutes from now.

[Tom Brake]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). I agree that we need a dose of Brexit reality. In fact, I agree with everything she said. I am sure she will share my concern about the recent figures on the number of EU nurses who have gone off the register, and indeed the number who have left the country, just at a time when we have significant vacancies.

Just as I agree with everything the hon. Lady said, I disagree with everything said by the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), who is no longer in her place. However, at least she had the courage to be here to present that hard Brexit line. Where are the hard Brexiteers on the Conservative Benches? Where is the Foreign Secretary? Where is the Secretary of State for International Development? Where is the Leader of the House? [Interruption.] Oh, there is one. They should be here to hear what they are inflicting on the country. Perhaps the reason they are not here is that they did not want to hear some very well-judged, measured contributions from Members on their own Benches explaining precisely the damage that they are causing.

[Norman Lamb]

I agree with everything my right hon. Friend is saying. Does he share my complete confusion that many of those hard Brexiteers have spent their political lives fighting to cut red tape, yet here they are gratuitously proposing to massively increase red tape? What sense does that have?

[Tom Brake]

Absolutely, and I will come on to that very strong point shortly. The chaos those people have caused is being added to on a daily basis. Today, for instance, we have the Home Secretary refusing to confirm that the UK will come out of the customs union, and on the same day, we have the Foreign Secretary threatening to resign if we do. Well, there you are—what a well-run Cabinet delivering Brexit for us in this chaotic manner.

Why does the customs union matter? Before I touch on that, I should point out that, if people look at the literature circulated during the campaign, they will see that it was about spending Britain’s cash in Britain, it was often about immigration, it was about posters such as Nigel Farage’s poster scaring people with that picture of all those refugees. He did not have a massive poster saying, “What do we want? To come out of the customs union. When do we want it? Now.” Of course that was not a major feature of the campaign. Anyone who suggests otherwise is speaking somewhat remote from the truth.

Why does the customs union matter? Many Members have referred to the Irish border; it is a real pity that the Secretary of State only went to the border for the first time a couple of days ago. It also matters for the Dover border. I understand that “BBC South East Today” has confirmed that, so far, not a single Minister from DExEU has been to the port of Dover. I find it incredible that they have not managed to visit the port of Dover. If they had, they would have been able to see directly the impact of the customs union on our largest port.

I could touch on the impact on BMW and its ability to manufacture cars in Oxford, or indeed the issue of red tape for small businesses. There is also the cost of roughly £30 for every small business that exports to the EU to process electronic paperwork that it does not have to process at the moment.

What have the Government offered in return? What is their solution? Under a customs partnership, the UK would collect duties “on the EU’s behalf” for goods destined for the European Union. Think about what would happen if the EU put the reverse offer to us, whereby the EU collected duties on the UK’s behalf for goods destined for the UK. Would the Brexiteers on the Conservative Benches say, “That’s a brilliant idea. That’s exactly what I want the EU to do for us”? Of course they would not, because it is absolute nonsense to suggest that and they would not possibly support that if the EU suggested it.

The UK has recently been threatened with a nearly £2 billion fine for failing to handle imports at its ports effectively, leading to significant VAT losses in other EU countries. I cannot see the EU queuing up to give us responsibilities for something that we are not handling very well at the moment. As for the highly streamlined customs arrangement, no one has been able to identify the technology for it, and that technology needs to be in place, I suggest, by the end of 2019 to be properly run in and tested.

On the position of the Labour Front-Bench team, I do not know whether seeking a final deal that gives “full access” to European markets and “maintains the benefits” of the single market and the customs union is anything other than having your cake and eating it, but the Liberal Democrats still think we are better off in the European Union, in the single market and in the customs union, and we want to secure a final say on the deal for everyone in the country, to do this democratically.