Hauliers

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB) [V]]

For Irish Sea freight, extending the grace period makes sense—but not unilaterally; not by resiling from due process and the protocol. Breaking our word is not what Britain does—or used not to be.

On the wider problems hauliers face, I see no quick fix, because they stem directly from ditching 60 years of market-opening endeavour. At a stroke, we have gone back not just to before the Thatcher single market success, or Mr Heath’s customs union, but back before the Macmillan Government invented EFTA successfully. How astonished they would be to see their party now put autarchy over access and opt for frontiers over freedom. It has consequences. In the decade after rejecting the EEA, Switzerland grew more slowly than every EU member state. In yesterday’s Budget Red Book, we saw that our exports are forecast still to be shrinking in 2025. I fear that the hauliers are only the harbingers.