We must not take these arrangements for granted. Many of our constituents have taken them for granted for decades now and thought, “Oh, well, this is all seamless,” so they would not understand, as the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) said.
It is worth just walking through what happens when we do not have this sort of seamless arrangement. If a country is outside the customs union, this is what happens to goods that are destined for elsewhere. Before departure, people have to complete an export declaration, which is often lodged with a freight forwarding company. At the port of exit, the goods need to be cleared by the authorities, who decide whether inspection is needed. If so, the goods are possibly placed into storage and checked. Then, once they have left and travelled to the port of entry in the destination country, they are presented to the authorities via another declaration process, and potentially placed in storage again. Then there are country-of-entry checks and risk assessments; there is revenue collection; there could be checks for smuggled, unlicensed goods; and there are things such as hygiene, health and safety measures, labelling, consumer protection checks, the administration of quota restrictions, agricultural refunds, and trade defence checks to ensure that things are not being dumped unfairly in the country. All these administrative processes will absolutely add to the export process for goods.