Brexit: No 10 denies idea of joint EU and UK status for Northern Ireland

Downing Street has dismissed a mooted idea for a post-Brexit customs deal where Northern Ireland would have EU and UK status and a “buffer zone” along its border with Ireland, saying it could not accept plans that treated the region differently from the rest of the UK.

The No 10 statement follows reports that David Davis, the Brexit secretary, had devised the idea as a possible workaround for a maximum facilitation customs scheme, avoiding a delay for the necessary technology to be ready.

According to the Sun, Davis had proposed Northern Ireland have a joint regime of UK and EU customs regulations, allowing it to trade freely with both, and a 10-mile wide “special economic zone” on the border with Ireland, thus avoiding checks there.

The Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) declined to comment directly on the report, but also did not reject it, saying work was underway to “refine” possible customs solutions.

However, sources rejected the idea Davis had personally championed the plan, while a No 10 spokesman said Theresa May could not accept such an approach: “The prime minister has been absolutely clear that we cannot and will not accept a customs border down the Irish sea, and that we will preserve the constitutional integrity of the UK’s common market.”

Work was still ongoing on a customs plan that would do just this, as well as allowing the UK to make trade deals, keeping trade as frictionless as possible and avoiding a hard Irish border, the spokesman added.

Asked about the plan earlier, a DExEU spokesman said: “We have set out two viable future customs arrangements with the EU and work is ongoing to refine these.”

May’s cabinet Brexit subcommittee is currently considering two customs models: “max fac”, which would seek to use technology to avoid border checks, and the PM’s preferred “customs partnership”, under which the UK would collect duties for the EU.

The cabinet has been deadlocked: Brexiters, such as Davis, object strongly to May’s option, but her allies say the technology needed for max fac will not be ready for some time.

With time running out before a key European council summit on 28 June, May split ministers in her Brexit subcommittee into two teams to seek solutions, with Davis heading the max fac group.

The Democratic Unionist party has described Davis’s proposals as “at best contradictory”.

Sammy Wilson, MP for East Antrim, said the idea of Northern Ireland being under a joint EU and UK regime was a recipe for confusion with no clarity on who would hold legal primacy. It also defeated the purpose of Brexit which was to leave the customs union and single market, he said.

“These convoluted arrangements only arise because of the government’s failure to make it clear to the EU that regardless of [the EU’s] attempts to keep us in the customs union and the single market, we are leaving,” said Wilson.

Davis’s reported plan would also most likely have raised objections from the EU.

There was no immediate response from the DUP. However, a spokesman for the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said Ireland remained concerned that May and her ministers were still not focusing on the broader questions over the border issue, notably a “backstop” position in the event of no immediate solution.

“At this stage in the process, the UK must engage in a more detailed and realistic way on the draft text of the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland including the backstop,” the spokesman said.

According to the Sun, Davis was ready to drop his support for technological solutions, after police said systems, such as number plate recognition cameras, could become a target for sectarian attacks.

An unnamed Whitehall source told the Sun: “Max fac 2 is tremendously complicated, but it’s at least something the cabinet can unite around.”

The Labour MP Chris Leslie, a supporter of the anti-Brexit Open Britain campaign, said: “If there was an award for coming up with unnecessarily complicated and convoluted solutions to self-inflicted problems, David Davis would win it every year.”