The new Tory chair claims we can use Brexit to establish free ports. Except we already can as EU members. They’re not even a clever idea.
In an interview on BBC Radio 4 Breakfast, James Cleverly said that once we had left the EU we could “use that opportunity of Brexit to do the kind of things that we’ve been precluded from doing for decades, including free ports.”
The problem is that we already can establish free zones and free ports. The EU currently has more than 80 free zones. The UK itself had five until the domestic statutory instrument governing them expired in 2012, according to a House of Commons Library report.
Like his boss Boris Johnson – and the new foreign secretary Dominic Raab – Cleverly has a poor grip on facts.
It’s true that, in a recent EU report on money laundering, free ports were identified as a potential money laundering threat. It warned that they facilitate the movement of fake goods, as they “allow counterfeiters to land consignments, adapt or otherwise tamper with loads or associated paperwork, and then re-export products without customs intervention”. So it’s possible that the EU might change the current law to stop free zones.
During the campaign for Tory leader, Boris Johnson suggested the UK could establish six free ports in the UK. This is a desperate measure to alleviate the pain of Brexit that opens a potential backdoor route for tax evaders, smugglers and money launderers.
Far better to stay in the EU and help lead the global fight against money laundering.