3. Statement by the First Minister: 'Trade Policy: the Issues for Wales'

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:25 pm on 6 February 2018.

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Photo of Carwyn Jones Carwyn Jones Labour 3:25, 6 February 2018

There is no doubt in my mind that staying in the customs union is the best way forward. I've seen no evidence of any alternative arrangement that delivers anything that is as good as the arrangements that we have now or anything that would be better in the future. If you're a business at the moment and you export to the European Union or, indeed, you supply a business that exports to the European Union, you are reliant on the free flow of trade. What Brexit has the capacity to do, although it doesn't have to do it this way, is to impose a vast bureaucracy on businesses—more form-filling, more red tape, more delay. This is particularly true and particularly acute in, for example, the fishing industry, where, of course, goods are highly perishable, they need to be moved very quickly, the industry's highly dependent on exports—sending goods to markets where people will pay the most and put more money into those who work in the fishing industry's pockets. The last thing they want is to have to fill in forms before they go, to find queues in ports such as Dover because the physical infrastructure isn't there—and no steps have been taken, to my mind, to address the issue of infrastructure. Checks at the ports—where will they be carried out? That's not been done; the work for that hasn't happened yet. All these things are barriers, let alone potential tariffs, but all those barriers will be put in place for business. The Member asked the question: what comfort can I give him? The comfort that I can give him is this, that we will continue to fight to ensure that businesses have access to our biggest single market, free of bureaucracy and part of the customs union.