Leaving the EU: Customs Arrangements — [Mr Gary Streeter in the Chair]

Part of Backbench Business – in Westminster Hall at 2:30 pm on 10 July 2018.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Stephen Hammond Stephen Hammond Conservative, Wimbledon 2:30, 10 July 2018

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the example that she gives—the car industry. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has given us clear evidence on this, as well, in terms of the extra bureaucracy. It estimates that 180,000 exporters will now need to make a customs declaration for the first time, having not needed to do so previously. That is in addition to the 141,000 exporters that currently make a declaration for trade outside the EU. That extra bureaucracy is roughly in the small amount of £4 billion a year. Anyone who thinks that is a price worth paying, with the cost being put on industry, should think again.

Some have said that this is a price worth paying to pursue free trade agreements with new markets—markets that will bring us huge new rewards; but the supply chains that will be impacted by these new barriers cannot simply be removed from the EU market and integrated into a new market. The supply chains that will be impacted by those new barriers cannot simply be removed from the EU market and integrated into a new one—they have taken decades to build up and are facilitated by free trade in the EU. By most conventional expectations, it would take further decades for EU exporters to embed themselves in new markets and new supply chains.

The extra requirements would also require physical infrastructure at borders to deal with customs processes. Currently, few checks are required on EU goods at ports, so ports have customs infrastructure in place to deal with non-EU imports only. Given that less than 1% of the lorries arriving through the port of Dover or the channel tunnel require customs checks, there is very little infrastructure, and there is no reason for there to be more.

That is also true on the other side. When representatives from the port of Calais came to speak to the Treasury Committee, they made the point that they have so far made no investment in infrastructure. Whether they will be able to deal with the new customs arrangements by the end of the implementation period without more infrastructure being put in place, or indeed without substantial delays at the port, is not only open to question, but evidence to the Select Committee proved it to be so.

The port of Dover estimates that even a two-minute delay in customs processing would lead to a 17-mile queue from Dover. Even short delays would have an impact on the just-in-time production lines that my hon. Friend Antoinette Sandbach mentioned, with costs compounding each time a component crosses from the EU to the UK or vice versa. As I said earlier, in the car process, that usually happens between three and four times.