division_name: Leaving the Eu: Customs
motion: <p class="indent" pid="b341.0/2" pwmotiontext="yes">That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, that she will be graciously pleased to give directions that the following papers be laid before the House: all papers, presentations and economic analyses from <phrase class="date" code="2018-01-01">1 January</phrase> 2018 up to and including <phrase class="date" code="2018-05-16">16 May</phrase> 2018 prepared for the European Union Exit and Trade (Strategy and Negotiations) Cabinet sub-committee, and its sub-committees, on the Government&#8217;s preferred post-Brexit customs arrangements including a Customs Partnership and Maximum Facilitation.</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b341.0/6" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;Faced with intractable problems with political pressure for a solution, the government reaches for a headline grabbing high-tech &#8216;solution&#8217;. Rather than spend the resources, time and thought necessary to get a real answer, they naively grasp solutions that to the technologically illiterate ministers look like magic.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b342.3/3" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;If we don&#8217;t break the impasse on this customs decision, everybody will be affected&#8212;manufacturers, services companies, retailers. An awful lot hangs on this now.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b345.4/3" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;must be fearless. Ministers must have the confidence to challenge each other in private. They must ensure that decisions have been properly thought through, sounding out all possibilities before committing themselves to a course of action&#8230;They must not be deflected from expressing dissent by the fear that they may be held personally to account for views that are later cast aside.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b346.3/3" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;I fully accept that the Government will enter into confidential negotiations&#8230;I do&#8230;accept that there is a level of detail and of confidential issues and tactics that should not be disclosed, and I have never said otherwise.&#8221;&#8212;[Official Report, <phrase class="date" code="2018-12-07">7 December</phrase> 2016; Vol. 618, c. 223.]</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b347.7/4" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;The paradox of their situation is that, far from that leading to an increase in the accountability of Ministers and decision makers, it has reduced accountability because it has cut the audit trail. Officials and Ministers have gone in for Post-it notes and oral decisions which should have been properly recorded, or for devices for ordaining all sorts of documents which have nothing to do with the Cabinet or Cabinet Committees as Cabinet documents.&#8221;&#8212;[Official Report, <phrase class="date" code="2018-05-24">24 May</phrase> 1999; Vol. 332, c. 31.]</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b351.1/4" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;The company&#8217;s delusional directors drove Carillion off a cliff and then tried to blame everyone but themselves&#8221;.</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b354.0/6" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;systematic and forensic annihilation&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b364.4/4" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;Labour will set out our priorities in an International Trade White Paper&#8230;on the future of Britain&#8217;s trade policy&#8221;.</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b364.4/9" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;engaging in a race to the bottom&#8221;.&#8212;[Official Report, <phrase class="date" code="2018-01-15">15 January</phrase> 2015; Vol. 590, c. 1108.]</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b366.2/4" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;minimise the additional time and administrative burden&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b368.4/5" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;We export more to Ireland than we do to China, almost twice as much to Belgium as we do to India, and nearly three times as much to Sweden as we do to Brazil. It is not realistic to think we could just replace European trade with these new markets.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b375.1/3" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;I saw a hard border with physical infrastructure, with customs posts, people in uniforms with arms and dogs.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b375.3/2" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;is definitely not a solution&#8221;,</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b375.3/6" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;ensuring UK-EU trade is as frictionless as possible&#8221;.</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b376.0/3" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;We have&#8230;had no visibility of any technical solutions, anywhere in the world, beyond the aspirational, that would remove the need for physical infrastructure at the border.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b380.0/3" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;If you are trying to take a difficult decision and you&#8217;re weighing up the pros and cons, you have frank conversations&#8230;And if those conversations then are put out in a published form that afterwards are liable to be highlighted in particular ways, you are going to be very cautious. That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s not a sensible thing.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b385.0/5" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;the need for a post-Brexit customs union reflects what EEF and UK manufacturing have long called for&#8230; free and frictionless trade can only be achieved by comparable customs rules to those&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b387.1/3" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;Faced with intractable problems with political pressure for a solution, the government reaches for a headline grabbing high-tech &#8216;solution&#8217;. Rather than spend the resources, time and thought necessary to get a real answer, they naively grasp solutions that to the technologically illiterate ministers look like magic.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b388.0/2" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;all papers, presentations and economic analyses&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b388.0/4" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;the European Union Exit and Trade (Strategy and Negotiations) Cabinet sub-committee, and its sub-committees&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b388.0/8" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;Now more than ever, government needs space and time in which to assess arguments and conduct its own debates with a degree of privacy.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="italic" pid="b390.2/5" pwmotiontext="yes">The House divided:</p>
  
  <p pid="b390.2/6" pwmotiontext="yes">Ayes 269, Noes 301.</p>