Dear Lord Lilley,

Thank you for your letter of 13 October in which you asked me to examine statements made in paragraph 16b of the White Paper on The Future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union. You asked specifically about the statement that “Under the UK’s proposals, it is estimated up to 96 per cent of UK goods trade would be most likely to be able to pay the correct or no tariff upfront, with the remainder most likely to use the repayment mechanism.”

As you note in your letter, the 96 per cent figure took the volume of unfinished goods imported to the UK from non-EU countries as a proportion of total trade. It would have been helpful for the White Paper to have included an explanation of the calculation and its assumptions. I have asked Ed Humpherson, Director General for Regulation, to make this point to the department.

Yours sincerely,

Sir David Norgrove

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Related Links:

Ed Humpherson to Philip Rycroft (November 2018)

Rt Hon the Lord Lilley to Sir David Norgrove (October 2018)