Could the “darkside” version of a no deal backstop end with checks in the Irish Sea?

Oh, what a mess. Meet Liz Truss, who is Chief Secretary at the Treasury (ie Chancellor Phil Hammond’s right hand woman) who is in some way responsible for laying out the temporary tariff regime to be invoked in the case of a no deal Brexit

https://twitter.com/mickfealty/status/1105859866676076545

The prospect of tonight’s free vote is already splitting not simply party colleagues, or even members of the cabinet, but ministers within the same critical department charged with delivering Brexit.

It is obvious from the Chancellor’s Spring Statement that he thinks a no deal would be economically damaging to the UK economy. Ms Truss acknowledges the scale of that damage, but unlike the chancellor wants a no deal left on the table.

Their own department’s plan for imposing a time limited tariff regime takes care to leave the border unregulated for trade, but in the Chief Secretary’s mind it also implies checks on the Irish Sea. And she may have a point.

In its briefing on the proposed temporary regime, the National Farmer’s Union briefing describes the scenario like this:

If trade-flows shift towards moving product from ROI through NI to GB (for example through Belfast port to Stranraer) with the purpose of tariff avoidance, this would be considered to be a breach of the relief.

If trade flows did shift, HMRC may consider such shifts and investigate in order to determine what the motivation behind this was.

Under such an investigation, HMRC would seek to determine whether a breach of the relief for the purposes of tax avoidance had occurred and take appropriate action. [Emphasis added]

Hmmm… Any Irish farmer facing less than two weeks notice of steep tariff rises would be foolish to continue using southern ports when there’s a tariff free window through Northern Ireland. So will there be checks?

Probably not in the first place until the shift in flows have been established (which will be obvious even to the blindest of blind eyed officials). In the second place there’s a rather opaque reference to motivation. [Would saving livelihoods count as a mitigation? – Ed]

Which leaves us pretty much in the same situation as before, except it frontloads a fair amount of disruption and damage to southern farmers. Sooner or later those flows will have to be regulated, and with a no deal the only way to do that is in the Irish Sea.

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