Britain pushes for seamless Brexit

BRITAIN needed a seamless Brexit transition to support jobs and investment by ensuring a new customs arrangement with the European Union that avoids bureaucratic delays to trade, finance minister Philip Hammond said yesterday.

Hammond said Brexit meant that Britain would leave the EU’s single market and the bloc’s customs union, but he wanted an exit that would support jobs and investment.

“When I talk about a Brexit that supports British jobs, British investment and British business I mean a Brexit that avoids those cliff edges,” Hammond said in an interview with BBC television.

He said such a Brexit would mean “that we segue seamlessly from the customs union that we are in at the moment to a new arrangement in the future that will continue to allow British goods to flow not just without tariffs, because actually tariffs are a relatively small part of the problem, but without delays and bureaucracy.”

On the budget, Hammond said he was “not deaf” to signs of weariness among voters about the country’s near decadelong grip on public spending which had come under renewed criticism after a deadly fire in a London tower block.

Asked whether he would push ahead with planned cuts of £3-billion (about R50billion) for funding of local authorities, Hammond said he would look again at the government’s proposals in the light of the general election result when he announces his next budget in November.

Hammond said he already had wriggle room in his existing tax and spending plans and stressed he would not abandon the overall thrust of the ruling Conservative Party’s approach to fixing the public finances.

The government is seeking to turn Britain’s budget deficit, which was equivalent to 2.5% of gross domestic product in the last financial year, into a surplus by the mid2020s.

“We heard a message last week in the general election. We need to look at how we deal with the challenges that we face in the economy,” Hammond said.

“And I understand that people are weary after years of hard work to rebuild the economy from the great crash of 2008-09 But we have to live within our means.

“And more borrowing which seems to be Jeremy Corbyn’s answer is not the solution.”

Opposition Labour party leader Corbyn attacked the government’s tight controls on spending ahead of the election which saw Prime Minister Theresa May lose her parliamentary majority. — Reuters