By Ben Kerrigan-
Jeremy Corbyn has unveiled new leaked government documents that suggests Boris Johnson misled the public over the nature of his new Brexit deal with the EU.
Labour says the internal Treasury paper, marked “official sensitive”, warns of new customs checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland after Brexit , contrary to the prime minister’s original claims. Mr Corbyn told journalists: ”Today I can reveal further hard evidence that Johnson is deliberately misleading the people”.
“This document is very ominous. There will be other secret reports like this one in every government department that reveal the disastrous impacts of his policies on the safety of the food you eat, on the rights you have at work, on the pollution of the air that we breathe and on the jobs and industries that people work in.
“These reports exist but the government is hiding them from you because in this election the Conservatives want you to vote blind.” The document suggests up to 98% of exporters from Northern Ireland to the UK would “struggle” to bear the cost of additional border checks – which Mr Johnson has repeatedly insisted wouldn’t take place.
Such checks, it says, would be “highly disruptive” to the Northern Ireland economy.The leaked document, entitled “NI Protocol: Unfettered access to the UK internal market”, appears to be an official analysis of the so-called Northern Ireland protocol, which replaces the Irish border backstop negotiated by Theresa May.
Mr Corbyn said: “It is there in black and white. It says there will be customs declarations, absolutely clearly, for trade going from Northern Ireland to Great Britain.
“The government cannot rule out regulatory checks, rules of origin checks and animal and public health checks also. For trade going the other way, from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, there will be all of the above plus potentially damaging tariffs.”
The leaked document seems to confirm in the government’s own words what essentially all trade experts say about the Brexit deal with regard to customs, but which Mr Johnson has continued to deny point-blank when asked in public.
However, the Brexit secretary Steve Barclay and Julian Smith, the Northern Ireland secretary, have both previously said that some checks will be necessary on goods travelling across the Irish Sea.
Johnson has previously said there will be no checks on goods going from GB to NI or NI to GB, because we are going to come out of the EU whole and entire.