Tag: Schona Jolly

Brexit phrasebook: what is the customs union? Customs union members cannot negotiate their own trade deals outside the EU, which is why leaving it – while hopefully negotiating a bespoke arrangement – has been one of the government’s Brexit goals. He fully supports the prime minister’s position that this means leaving the customs union.” Although the loss of other pledges in negotiations have been reluctantly accepted, such as the promise to reclaim control over fishing quotas from March 2019, accepting continued membership of a customs union would be of a different and much larger scale. Morgan is one of the 12 select committee chairs who are backing that policy in a potentially difficult debate in the Commons on Thursday on customs union membership. “The majority of the party would not entertain a leadership contest at the moment and those who want to ... should think very carefully if they really want to intervene in the negotiations in the way a leadership contest would.” Labour MP Chuka Umunna, and pro-remain Tory Anna Soubry have tabled amendments to the trade and customs bill, due to be debated on Thursday, that would make staying in the customs union a legal objective of the government. In the House of Lords, the government is braced for more defeats as peers begin a second week of votes on the EU withdrawal bill on Monday. Last week, 24 Tory peers backed the customs union amendment. The government nearly lost a vote in the Commons on a similar amendment, which seeks to incorporate the charter into the legislation. Scared about your human rights after Brexit? The government is vulnerable on the issue, with Tory rebels such as the former attorney general Dominic Grieve only dropping their opposition when the bill passed its earlier stages after ministers pledged to publish a review of the rights conferred by the charter and set out their view.