Abolishing tampon tax is just the start of our exciting new freedoms!

AT LAST we are free of the EU regulations juggernaut. We have t aken back control of our national destiny – and that means huge opportunities. And yet, it seems many politicians do not actually want these restored freedoms. Some are fearful of the future without the EU as their security blanket.

Responding to a gloomy Labour MP in the Commons debate on Wednesday, I pointed out that we could finally abolish the Tampon Tax, which she and so many others had campaigned against.

And on New Year’s Day, we did just that: we removed VAT from sanitary products.

A £15 million tax cut to celebrate Brexit might seem a minor detail in the big scheme of things but it shows there are now thousands of new opportunities to change what we don’t like.

To take another example, the EU had forced British governments t o continue charging VAT on energy-saving products. How did that make sense? A green economic recovery should see taxes abolished on a range of things such as home insulation and solar panels, so as to accelerate our journey to ‘net zero’.

David Cameron’s government proposed lowering the rate of corporation tax in Northern Ireland to attract investment but, once again, Brussels placed an obstacle.

In 2006, the European Court of Justice ruled that an attempt by Portugal to set a special low rate of tax in its autonomous region of the Azores was ‘selective assistance’ and so fell foul of state aid rules.

WE HAD to ask Brussels’s permission to make a sensible tax change within our own borders and even then, Northern Ireland was banned from setting a lower rate than the Irish Republic next door.

At last we’re free of this kind of rubbish – free to set competitive tax rates for the poorer parts of the United Kingdom.

We can also create low-tax freeports, secure customs zones located at ports where business can be carried out inside a country’s land border but where different customs rules apply.

We can reduce administrative burdens and tariff controls, provide relief from duties and import taxes and ease tax and planning regulations. All such freedoms were restricted under EU state aid rules.

Today, the Government is consulting on ten initial freeports, one each f or Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and seven for England.

Harwich-Felixstowe, the largest container port in the UK, would be an ideal location. This sort of measure is crucial to help ‘level up’ coastal areas, where there tends to be lower pay and higher social deprivation.

We can also make sure our laws reflect our values. Readers will recall the huge protests about live animal exports in the early 1990s. I proposed a new law to ban live animal exports of this sort but it was in vain because Brussels regarded such a prohibition as ‘an illegal restriction on the free movement of goods’. Today, I’m glad to say we are at last free to end the trade if we choose. And we will.

Much of the doom- mongering we are sadly witnessing promotes the idea that we will inevitably lose out on EU trade.

It is true that trade with EU countries is important but our exports to the EU represent only 13.5 per cent of our total economy, and, in truth, it has declined since the mid-2000s.

Eighty-five per cent of the world’s economy is outside the EU and is growing much faster than the EU’s. Having left the EU, our opportunities for global trade are now so enormous. The Government has already signed more than 60 new free trade deals with non-EU countries. And now we have finally quit the EU, these agreements can come into force.

The fact is that we always were going to strike a trade deal with the EU, even if there had been a period of No Deal scare stories to live through first.

We are the EU’s biggest export market. We buy their cars, their cheese, their shoes, their wines. A No Deal would have been a massive act of self-harm for the EU.

This, combined with steadfast negotiation, meant we now have the Canada-style deal many of us always wanted and which so many others claimed Brussels would never allow.

However, there are still elements of a ‘punishment Brexit’ which we must challenge.

For example, why does the EU insist there should be more checks and paperwork for British lamb imported to the EU than demanded for New Zealand lamb?

Why are chemicals imported from the UK banned until they are separately reregistered with the EU, when these are identical products to those accepted until December 31?

Why is the EU putting restrictions on touring musicians and singers from the UK as though they represent some existential threat to the integrity of the single market?

THE EU will continue to make every and any attempt to limit Britain’s new freedoms by asserting its own interpretation of what the Brexit deal means. The EU, remember, had wanted their court to have the final say over disagreements but Boris Johnson rightly refused that. Now they will try to get their own way by different means.

The Part ners hi p Council is co-chaired by a British Minister and a representative of the EU Commission. It has a large number of specialised committees, covering all the areas of the Brexit agreement. It creates forums for continuous negotiation between the two sides, as the EU institutions previously did.

And then the independent body for settling disputes will be vital.

But we cannot assume the work is over. We must be prepared to assert our side of the argument with vigour if we are to protect our new freedoms.

Parliament must hold their representatives accountable. The EU Scrutiny Committee under Bill Cash should not now be abolished but strengthened to carry out this vital new task.

We must also be ready to transform the way government thinks and operates. Our whole system has been institutionalised by Brussels.

It has been conditioned to accept what Europe says as unchallengeable – to limit our imagination of our future to their template.

We need Ministers and civil servants to think outside the EU box if we are to seize the many new opportunities now open to our reborn United Kingdom.