EU Exit: End of Transition Period — House of Lords, 2020-07-15
Topic: Foreign Trade
Sarah Ludford (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the Government are seeking to put an upbeat gloss on the plans for 1 January, under the strapline, "The UK’s new start: let’s get going", but getting going anywhere is set to be a very big challenge for both people and businesses. Individuals will lose their free movement, free roaming, free healthcare and freedom to take a pet on holiday abroad at short notice. The Government claim that leaving the EU single market and customs union means that we will, "regain our political and economic independence." It is in fact going to feel like "out of control" rather than "taking back control" In the other place on Monday Mr Gove promised "a free flow of freight"—[Official Report, Commons, 13/7/20; col. 1275.] but nothing could be further from the truth. The UK will be moving from a highly integrated relationship with the EU to one in which trading with it becomes much more difficult. There will be customs forms, physical checks, new VAT rules, plant and animal health requirements, export declarations, a lorry park, and a vast new IT system—always a terrifying prospect. This is going to hit businesses struggling with the disruption and economic hit of Covid; perhaps they might just be getting their heads above water by December, at which point they will get hit by the Exocet of masses of expensive new red tape The Government have left it until 24 weeks before the end of transition to produce this plan. What have they actually done for the last four years? One sensible move would, of course, have been to extend the transition period, so as to avoid distraction from the pressing issue of dealing with the pandemic, but Brexit ideology, as always, trumped good sense. The complexity facing businesses can be judged by the fact that this government document comprises a dense 200 pages. As the Trade Secretary rightly highlighted in her striking letter of last week, the controls, IT systems and lorry parks will not be ready by the end of the year. This is the real reason they are being phased in over six months. Are we seriously to believe they will be ready by July next year Ms Truss urged "it is essential that my department has a clear view of operation delivery plans, timescales and risks going forward." This suggests that the Trade Secretary has not been fully involved in plans for imports and exports. Can the Minister explain this extraordinary state of affairs? Ms Truss also pointed out that if, as predicted, the dual-tariff system is not in place for 1 January "this may call into question NI’s place in the UK’s customs territory". What substantive reassurances can the Minister give us—and, more to the point, the people of Northern Ireland —on this point This Brexit burden will force companies to fill in an extra 215 million customs declarations every year, which Mr Gove’s document acknowledged were "complicated". The cost for them is estimated at between £7 billion and £13 billion a year; this is on top of huge costs for the public sector. So this is where "our money back" will be going—not on the NHS, but on bureaucracy. Many firms will face the expense of hiring customs agents to complete new border formalities on their behalf. It is estimated that 50,000 of these will be needed, a figure that dwarfs the number of officials in the demonised European Commission The Trade Secretary, in her letter to Messrs Gove and Sunak, was worried about tariffs being dodged and asked for "assurances that we are able to deliver full controls at these ports"— that is, EU-facing ports— "by July 2021 and that plans are in place from January to mitigate the risk of goods being circumvented from ports implementing full controls." What she is talking about, of course, is the risk of smuggling and fraud; this is an astonishing admission, so what is the answer to how these risks will be addressed It is clear for all to see that the promises of "frictionless trade" and "an oven-ready deal" were mere empty slogans. We are seeing what my honourable friend in the other place, Stephen Farry MP, called "the brutal reality of Brexit".—[Official Report, Commons, 13/7/20; col. 1279.] It is no comfort at all for some of us to say, "We told you so."