New customs rules

SIR – Theresa May’s preference for a “new customs partnership” suffers in the eyes of its parliamentary critics from the requirement to continue to collect EU external tariffs at the UK border. After entry, goods imported by British-based companies would be given a rebate for the difference between the EU external tariffs and the UK tariffs agreed as part of trade deals with non-eu countries.

The alternative scheme before the Cabinet, “Max Fac”, appears to this reader to be too undefined to be a basis for negotiation with the EU.

Leaving aside the question of who would pay for the rebate, the customs partnership scheme is unlikely to appeal to EU negotiators because it does not deal with the “rules of origin” question, where non-eu originating goods, which will in effect not have paid the full EU external tariff, would pass tariff-free from the UK into the EU.

However, the solution is not difficult if you follow the standard international principle that import duties on goods are collected by the jurisdictions levying the tariff at the point where they enter their territory. On this principle, after Brexit, non-eu goods entering the UK will pay the UK tariff to the British authorities rather than the EU tariff they pay to the EU now. They will carry a machine-readable bar code certifying this. Goods, or parts of goods, entering the EU from the UK but originating from outside the EU-UK zone, will pay any difference between the UK and EU tariffs to the EU customs, which will continue to collect duties levied on other non-eu goods.

This scheme can be implemented more or less straight away. No new forms or procedures at the ports are required. It also solves the ostensible Irish border problem. If the Irish do not want to collect any tariff differences in their favour at the border, that is up to them and the EU, not up to the British. Professor Stephen Bush

University of Manchester