Britain reveals plan to ask for exemptions for all small traders and farmers as it pursues goal of avoiding EU border posts

Britain will seek a series of waivers for goods and people crossing the Northern Ireland border under new plans that risk creating a “back door” with the European Union after Brexit.

The government aims to avoid the need for border posts with Ireland when the UK leaves the EU, an ambitious goal seen as essential to preserving the Good Friday peace agreement.

“The UK and Ireland have been clear all along that we need to prioritise protecting the Belfast agreement in these negotiations, and ensure the land border is as seamless as possible for people and businesses,” said David Davis, the UK’s Brexit secretary.

Details of the plan unveiled by Whitehall officials have, however, sparked a series of difficult questions about what the knock-on impact of having no border may be for wider EU-UK relations.

Q&A Why is Dublin opposed to the idea of a hard border? Show Hide Ireland’s taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has been much more sceptical than the UK about the potential for avoiding border posts via virtual checks on importers. Whilst agreeing with British ministers and EU negotiators that it is inconceivable for there to be a return to a hard border with the north, Dublin argues that the best way for the UK to achieve this would be by permanently remaining in a customs union with the EU and seeking single market membership like Norway through the European Economic Area. The UK has conceded that some of this will be necessary in its interim phase after Brexit, but hopes clever technological solutions can allow it have looser economic links in the long run. Varadkar is not alone in being sceptical about whether such a cake-and-eat-it customs and trade strategy is viable.

The issue of the Irish border is a priority for the next round of Brexit talks, due to resume in two weeks. However, some senior government figures now concede privately that the talks may not move on to the substantive issue of Britain’s future relationship with the European Union until December, cutting the time left for complex discussions before the two-year article 50 deadline.



One cabinet minister with knowledge of the negotiations told the Guardian on Wednesday it is “impossible to know” whether they will succeed in tying up initial questions, including the withdrawal bill, by October, as they had previously hoped.



When the talks do resume, Britain will ask for an exemption for all small traders and farmers from a host of customs, agricultural and food safety checks. In return, it aims to seek “regulatory equivalence” with the EU to try to avoid the need for inspections of live animals and billions of pounds worth of goods.



Officials refuse to speculate what consequences this may have for limiting the scope of trade agreements with non-compliant countries such as the US. Without matching regulations, the EU could block imports, fearing that the open border was a back door into its consumer market.

Similar fears of a back door in the labour market were put to officials when they revealed there would be nothing to stop EU economic migrants travelling through the Republic of Ireland and into the UK under a continuation of the common travel area scheme. The government believes it can limit the impact of any such undocumented immigration through tighter checks on UK work permits.

Critics pointed out that the absence of border checks would appear to contradict a key aspect of leave campaigners’ pledge to “take back control”, while officials concede the plan relies on unprecedented trust and cooperation with the EU, but say it is worth it to maintain peace and prosperity in Northern Ireland.



Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: “This plan has more holes in it than a colander. The Brexiteers claimed it was worth damaging the UK economy to reclaim control of our borders, now we’re told even this isn’t going to happen.”

Pro-EU Labour MP Pat McFadden said: “For the second day running the government is trying to reinvent the wheel. The obvious solution to frictionless trade and the border issues with Northern Ireland is to stay within the customs union. This gives us easy access to trade within the EU and makes us party to a number of trade agreements around the world.

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Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, welcomed the document’s clarity, but said the arrangements on customs facilitation would be difficult, given the UK’s proposals to negotiate separate free trade agreements at the same time.

He also warned that Ireland would not allow itself to be “used as a pawn” in the Brexit talks if the UK tried to use border negotiations to gain wider leverage in Brussels.

The European commission welcomed the UK’s position papers “as a positive step towards really starting phase one of the negotiations. The clock is ticking and these will allow us to make progress.”

Whitehall officials concede that a reason for their flurry of policy papers this week is to try to end the deadlock over divorce talks by demonstrating that everything is interconnected and must be discussed together.



Perhaps the toughest negotiating issue in Brussels and Dublin will be UK proposals to exempt Northern Ireland’s food producers from sanitary and phytosanitary checks in place to ensure animal welfare and consumer health standards are maintained for any imports into the EU single market.

“We think if we can reach a deep enough equivalence arrangement with the EU it is possible to do that via processes that don’t involve the land border,” said one government official briefing journalists on the plan. “We believe we have got a strong track record on food safety. We think this can be done in a way that doesn’t introduce food safety and veterinary risks into the system.”

Britain will have to tread a fine line between satisfying European import concerns and not ceding all control over food and agriculture regulation to Brussels, or preventing any trade deals with third-party countries that may want exemptions on products such as genetically modified crops or hormone-treated beef.

The UK is expected to argue that for the purposes of health checks and customs tariffs much of the trade across the border is in effect local, not international, trade and should be exempted from controls that exist elsewhere in the EU in order to maintain borderless travel.

Concerns have also been raised about the implications of allowing people to continue to travel without any checks, and whether this outsources UK immigration policy to the Irish Republic.

The Home Office refused to comment on Wednesday night on reports that it has drawn up plans for EU citizens to continue to come to Britain and look for work after Brexit, while controlling how many will be allowed to stay by limiting the number of work permits issued. Amber Rudd is expected to publish proposals in the coming weeks on what is likely to be one of the most controversial aspects of post-Brexit policy-making.

The UK government says that maintaining the common travel area should be possible because security and immigration checks are often carried out far away from the border already. It concedes, however, that the plan relies on Ireland staying outside the Schengen travel zone.

“Controls we introduce away from the physical border allow you to complete the required checks,” said the Whitehall official. “People can still be picked up for security purposes.”

This has sparked fears of an increase in electronic tracking, whereby electronic surveillance is used instead of physical border security.

“Using untested technology to police the border won’t instil a great deal of confidence,” said William Foster, a partner at the immigration law firm Fragomen. “The biggest question for businesses is what will this mean day to day? Will people be tracked when they drive from Belfast to Galway? Will software be used to log their movements?”

UK officials said they did not recognise such fears and said there would be no increase in number plate recognition cameras at the border.

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Brussels has said it wants to see “sufficient progress” in a deal on the Irish border during the first phase of Brexit negotiations, before talks are allowed to progress to future trade ties. The UK has contended that the timetable is artificial, because any agreement on the Irish border will be linked to future customs rules.

A European commission spokeswoman added that the border question was more than just a trade issue. “We must discuss how to maintain the common travel area and protect in all its dimensions the Good Friday agreement of which the United Kingdom is a co-guarantor. It is essential that we have a political discussion on this before looking at technical solutions,” she said.