My Lords, I am moving this amendment on behalf of my noble friend Lord Bradshaw, who could not be here tonight, but the amendment is also in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria It is slightly different from some of the previous ones we have debated today. It suggests that, if no agreement is reached with the European Union on frontier controls and all the other things in the amendment, the Government’s negotiating objectives should be on the basis that the UK will seek to remain fully in the single market, which I and many other noble Lords see as an alternative to the hard or cliff-edge Brexit, or whatever we like to call it. The first Division that we won a few days ago on Report was on the customs union. That was a good start, but I invite the House to go a little further. Although the customs union is good, quite a lot of problems would still be attached to it, particularly on the jobs and frontier control issues.
On the economy, we read every day of fears of job losses, the economy going down, and of worries from many companies, large and small, about the effect of
Brexit. I suppose that the motor car manufacturers are some of the most frightened. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders believes that that there will be a £4.5 billion additional cost in tariffs, let alone all the other bureaucracy I shall come on to, and the RICS reckons that there will be the loss of 200,000 construction jobs if we are not in the single market.
Many noble Lords will have read the recent leaked government analysis of the drop in the economy if we go for a hard Brexit—in the north-east a 16% drop, and in the West Midlands a 13% drop—whereas in the UK overall there would be a 1.5% drop if we remained in the single market and an 8% drop if we ended up on WTO terms. It is worth my saying before the Minister does that the Government do not recognise these figures, but we all get used to the Government not recognising the figures they do not like. We will see what happens.
On the issue of frontier controls, 38 cross-border agencies are involved. With some of them the checks have to be done at frontiers—I include the Northern Ireland-Republic land frontiers in these remarks—and the paperwork, even with a customs union, can be pretty horrendous. We could spend hours debating customs, food standards, food legislation, and the need for pallets to be disinfected when they come into the European Union. Seed potatoes cannot be taken from inside to outside, so I do not know what will happen if a farm straddles the border in Ireland and the seed potatoes in one half cannot be taken into the other half, which sounds interesting. Other issues, among many, include animal and plant health, rabies, foot and mouth and pharmaceuticals.
Just to give one example, there is a transporter that moves goods for Morrisons from here to Gibraltar. Every lorry has to be checked for the point of origin of the goods, each having its own document, before the Spanish authorities will permit the vehicle to leave the UK on its route to Gibraltar. Heaven only knows how that will improve when we have left.
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It is also worth reminding noble Lords that one of the most heavily used frontiers at the moment on the eastern side of the European Union is with Turkey. A shanty town has built up around it and the average queue is three days. Three days would take the traffic jam from Dover probably half way round the M25 and back again.
The other problem, which some noble Lords may have read about in the Sunday Times business section this weekend, is to do with rules of origin. I will not bore the House with the detail, but the article covered a whole page and it was absolutely frightening. Rules of origin have to be established for any manufactured goods going in or out of the EU, which some goods do several times. The paperwork that that creates is absolutely amazing.
The other issue at the frontiers is the traffic jams that will happen in Kent. We have customs checks on, I believe, about 5% of the 10,000 trucks that go across each day—90% of which are foreign registered, which we discussed recently in another Bill. If this changes, checks will have to be carried out on about 95% of trucks. Again, I do not see how that will happen, and I
believe that, true to form, there have already been some suggestions from customs to say that we should not check anyone and just let them go through. I cannot believe that that is a sensible solution.
There is, however, a solution to all this: stay in the single market. I will run through very briefly the benefits of that for goods, services, investment and the free movement of people, which are the issues that we are talking about. We have debated here before the free movement of people. Legislation is not needed to limit it, as we see in Belgium at the moment. It would probably involve people having to have identity cards, but that has already been suggested and most of us have some form of identification which, while not an identity card in name, could easily be one.
The issue of goods is very important because, in the single market, you can retain the common specification, the rules of origin that I mentioned, and standards, which are so important in the areas of food and the environment. Again, we have debated already the importance of services to UK industry, particularly the financial sector, and that investment is good for the City and for the recipients of EU funds.
The key is to avoid these awful queues and the checks and bureaucracy that would go alongside them, not just at the frontier but in every factory, warehouse and anywhere else that goods were being prepared to go across the frontier. This will add cost and complexity.
I still believe that staying in the single market would comply with the referendum result to leave the EU. It is not the people who have decided that we are going for a hard Brexit but the Government. It is their decision. I think that we could still agree to leave and comply with the referendum but get out of all these pitfalls. The amendment does not require the Government to do down the road of a single market now. I believe that they should accept it and go on trying to reach agreement, but, if they fail by the time the Bill gets Royal Assent, surely it behoves the Government to choose a safer, simpler solution compared to the alternative, which is probably the cliff edge. It would give industry time to adapt to the many small changes that would be required.
Does the Minister have any comments about this? What is going to happen at the frontiers? We do not know—except that the electronics will probably not work. He may say that we are still in negotiations. I know that lots of civil servants are working very hard, and some of them pretty effectively, to try to find solutions. But the comment that I hear from them is that they cannot really make progress without political direction, of which there is very little. I am offering Ministers a face-saving option. If after two years they have not that reached agreement, let us go for the single market. I beg to move.