Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2019-02-04
Topic: Foreign Trade
Andrew Lansley (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, what connects this group of amendments is that they are European Research Group’s amendments in the Commons that were accepted by the Government. I do not think they should be treated by my noble friends on the Front Bench as if they all had the same merit or otherwise The single UK customs territory, which is now Section 55 in the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act, specifies that there should not be a separate customs territory between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Frankly, I cannot see the circumstances in which this House or the other place would find this acceptable. That being the case, I cannot see any merit in this House seeking to ask the other place to think again about that issue. I do not think anybody in the other place is proposing to revisit it, so my suggestion is that we do not go down the path of thinking that Amendment 79 has merit I do not disagree about Amendment 80. I listened with care, but I would not like to try to explain it to somebody else and I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is right about that I support Amendment 77, because I cannot see any good grounds for why legislation should require the Government to seek new primary legislation to have a customs union of any character with the European Union in the future. If, for example, we want to have a customs union with the United States of America, it could be done by an Order in Council. There is no basis for a distinction of that kind, other than the politics of the moment, and legislation should not be governed by the politics of the moment. If there is a proper process for the scrutiny and approval of a customs union, it should be set out in legislation and apply to any other country with which we establish a customs union and not discriminate and impose additional requirements specifically in relation to the European Union That just leaves Amendment 78. I confess I saw this being slightly of the moment, in that it was intended to entrench into statute the provisions in the Chequers White Paper relating to reciprocity in the collection of import duties on behalf of the European Union by the United Kingdom. But as I understood the White Paper, it did not necessarily mean that the European Union would collect import duties on our behalf. There was some suspicion on the part of our colleagues in another place that the negotiations might lead to such an eventuality, and that we would collect duties for the European Union but they would not collect duties for us, so they put this into the legislation. Frankly, that is not where the negotiations are now. We are either in a customs union or we are not; I do not think we are going to be in some sort of asymmetric customs arrangement of that kind. Nobody is debating that presently Amendments 77 and 80 have merit. I hope they are not going to be pressed at this point, but my noble friends should certainly think carefully about amending them when we come to Report to enable the other place to think again We discussed the customs union last Wednesday. That was the day before an interesting report was produced, principally by German economists at the Ifo Institute. I was encouraged by it, not least because I agree with it. It basically said that, to break the deadlock, both sides have to move from their red lines. In the United Kingdom’s case, that means no longer excluding the possibility of being in a customs union with the EU. In the European Union’s case, it means not treating such an arrangement necessarily to mean that the United Kingdom has to remain a member of the existing customs union or the Customs Union Code. They therefore propose the establishment of a European customs association, in which both the United Kingdom and the member states of the European Union would have voting rights. As a consequence, in the event that the European Commission operated as the representative of the European customs association, it would do so based on a mandate in which the United Kingdom continued to exercise the same kind of authority it presently exercises on the European Union’s customs arrangements This customs union would extend only as far as the present custom union applies inside the European Union. The document Hard Brexit Ahead: Breaking the Deadlock contains precisely the kind of discussion we have been having. It is not about whether we are in the customs union; it is what a customs union between the United Kingdom and the European Union might look like in the future It is doubly encouraging to see that not only put forward but put forward by prominent German economists. I hope that Ministers will continue to look at that in the time available before they have to come back and talk once more to the other place about what the next meaningful vote should be on.