To get a deal, let’s allow EU officials at UK ports

Two years ago, more than 17 million people voted to take back control of our laws, money, borders and trade. It’s now clear that the Prime Minister’s Chequers proposal doesn’t deliver this for the UK, because we would be required to follow the EU’s regulatory rule book, hobbling our ability to do trade deals around the world, still subject to the European Court of Justice.

Chequers doesn’t work for the EU either, because it conflicts with its key aims and objectives. The EU wants to ensure that it is in full control of the single market. So the UK being half in, half out doesn’t work for the EU legal order, with its complicated customs and regulatory checks.

The EU is clear – the UK has two options, stay in the customs union and the single market or agree a free-trade deal like Canada and Japan. With the fall of Chequers, the Government sadly seeks instead a way to stay fully in the customs union and single market by the backdoor, with a vague open-ended commitment.

Yet this does not deliver Brexit. We would be in the EU but without a say – as rule-takers, not rule-makers. Much worse, this will take away any incentive for the EU to negotiate and settle any other arrangement, having positioned the UK in the customs union indefinitely. In effect, the Ireland backstop becomes the frontstop.

A paper by former Northern Ireland secretaries Owen Paterson and Theresa Villiers, along with David Davis and Lord Trimble, showed that there is no need for a hard border or a backstop.

We also need to reassure the EU that their regulatory standards can be upheld and enforced. We can do so by conducting regulatory and customs checks together in a way that respects the single market, by building on systems already in place at the channel ports. The UK has long had arrangements with France under the Le Touquet treaty whereby passports are checked by French officers at Dover and UK officers in Calais. Why? To ensure that border controls are frictionless and avoid delays. These juxtaposed controls and information-sharing have been hugely successful in speeding transport, catching crooks and preventing illegal immigrants sneaking into the UK.

The UK should seek to build on this by agreeing a Le Touquet-plus system with the EU. Any customs or regulatory checks could be made at juxtaposed controls with information-sharing and cooperation between the UK and the Republic of Ireland. This would not simply answer concerns about keeping the Northern Ireland border open – it would also ensure the channel ports continue to provide as frictionless trade as possible. Then, under an advanced free-trade deal, this would answer concerns from industry about keeping supply lines open after Brexit. The Republic of Ireland and the French authorities could make the customs and regulatory checks they need before goods are dispatched over the border, ensuring the sanctity of the single market is preserved in line with the EU’s requirements.

Officials at the channel ports and the Irish border already have a strong and successful record on tackling criminality and lorries are routinely stopped at Dover to be checked for drugs, guns and people trafficking.

Yet it is also important for action to be taken against a person illegally exporting goods to the EU that do not meet EU standards. The answer to this is that UK law already operates to counter activities by UK citizens who break laws overseas. Hence UK citizens who break EU single market rules for exports can be made to face justice in the UK – and we would obviously seek a reciprocal arrangement.

Instead of turning to solutions such as these, the Government has twisted itself into knots trying to stay in the European customs union. For many of us, their obstinate refusal to engage with the backstop proposal begins to make it seem like a convenient smokescreen for something else.

We wonder whether they have succumbed to the heavy-handed demands made just after the 2017 election by some in the automotive industry that the UK remain in the customs union. Were assurances given at the time, which now curtail the Government’s scope for sensible negotiation? That would be a pity, because beyond the threat of shutdowns, there are few “just in time” supply chains that do not already include a substantial amount of components from around the world, including China.

As the recent paper from the Institute of Economic Affairs setting out the case for a Canada-plus-plus deal shows, it is open to the EU and the UK to resolve any such potential disruptions satisfactorily within a free-trade agreement – indeed, Michel Barnier recently said the same to the Brexit select committee.

That’s why we need now to get on and agree the deal that honours the referendum mandate, respects the EU project and enables open and frictionless borders from Northern Ireland to Dover.