Search for solutions
PM suggests trusted trader status and electronic checks as he considers 270-page report on possible schemes
BORIS JOHNSON wants to replace the Northern Ireland backstop with new alternative arrangements including mobile examinations on livestock and crops, trusted trader schemes and electronic customs clearance checks.
The Prime Minister said ahead of talks with Angela Merkel that he was looking at measures proposed in a detailed 270-page report drawn up by Greg Hands, a former Tory minister, and Nicky Morgan, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary.
Mr Johnson has made the removal of the backstop – which will keep the UK in a customs union and the single market after Brexit until a solution is found to prevent a hard border – a central part of his plans to take the UK out of the EU by Oct 31.
Mr Johnson said: “We think that there are ways of protecting the integrity of the EU single market without having checks of that kind at the border.”
In a swipe at his predecessor in No10, Mr Johnson, questioned why dif- ferent ideas for the backstop had not been “very actively proposed” when Theresa May was prime minister.
He said: “There are abundant solutions which are proffered, which have already been discussed, I don’t think to be fair they have been very actively proposed over the last three years by the British Government.
“Now is the moment – the onus is on us to produce those solutions, those ideas to show how we can address the issue of the Northern Irish border – and that is what we want to do.”
He added: “We do think that there are alternative arrangements that could readily be used to address the problem of frictionless trade at the Northern Irish border. Whether it is trusted trader schemes or electronic pre-clearing, all of that type of solution and more besides is what we will be wanting to discuss.”
Mr Johnson said that Mr Hands’ and Ms Morgan’s “excellent report” – titled Alternative Arrangements for the Irish Border, published on July 18 – set out “the kind of alternative arrangements that could be contemplated”.
In a joint foreword, the two Tory MPS declared that they had “illuminated a clear path to a negotiated Brexit; it is now up to the UK and EU to walk down it together before it is too late”.
The report said that these new “working alternative arrangements should be fully up and running within three years” by harnessing “existing technologies and customs best practice”.
It concluded that a “one size fits all solution should be avoided” adding that “instead people and traders should be given the maximum possible choice of options”. New “enhanced economic zones” would be set up over borders to offer “potentially valuable solutions which respect the realities of border and cross-border communities”.
“A multi-tier trusted trader programme for large and medium sized companies should be introduced, with exemptions for the smallest companies”, the report, which was drawn up with City lawyers, said.
Checks for food and livestock – so called “sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) checks” – would “be carried out by mobile units away from the border”, it said.
The report also warned that “new technology had a role to support pol
icy, but any technology suggested for deployment in the first instance should already be in use elsewhere”.
That came as Phil Hogan, the EU commissioner for agriculture and rural development, launched a withering attack on Mr Johnson, describing him as an “unelected” Prime Minister who is “gambling” with the peace process.
Mr Hogan, who is Irish, also claimed that a no-deal Brexit would create a “foul atmosphere” and have “serious consequences” for the UK’S chances of striking a future trade deal with the bloc.
Previously, Leo Varadkar, the Irish premier, has repeatedly warned that the return of a hard border in Ireland could lead to violence reminiscent of the Troubles-era.
Mr Varadkar took a copy of The Irish Times to an EU leaders’ dinner last October, with a report about the 1972 bombing of a customs post to illustrate his concerns.
Lord Trimble said Mr Varadkar was wrong to link the restoration of checkpoints on the Irish border with a return to the Troubles,
The peer, who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Good Friday Agreement, told The Daily Telegraph: “It is quite inappropriate for a government to be hinting of violence.”
The mainstream IRA were unlikely to resort to violence if the EU imposed checkpoints, although there was a risk that fringe Republican groups could mount attacks if checks were imposed to get “publicity for themselves”.
Mr Johnson made clear this week that the UK would never put up border checkpoints.
Lord Trimble said: “While you may get some individuals who proceed to try and indicate that there might be violence, there is no likelihood whatsoever of the mainstream Republican organisations – the ones that flowed from the creation of the Provisional IRA – resorting to violence.”
He added: “If there is any infrastructure on the border it will only be as a result of Brussels telling the Irish government that they have got to do it.”
Lord Caine, a senior adviser in the Northern Ireland Office for the past decade until this year, added: “It is highly irresponsible for people to say ‘if we leave without a deal this is somehow going to lead to the security situation that we had in the Seventies and Eighties.
“It is not. But is there the capacity for dissidents to exploit people’s anxieties and concerns? Yes there is.”
He added: “What we should not fall into the trap of assuming is that every time there is a dissident incident it is somehow linked to Brexit. These people were active well before the referendum.”