David Davis devises 10 mile-wide trade buffer zone along Northern Ireland border to break deadlock in Brexit talks
DAVID Davis is devising a new Brexit plan to break a talks deadlock by giving Northern Ireland joint EU and UK status as well as a border buffer zone.
Under the radical blueprint, the province would operate a double hatted regime of European and British regulations at the same time, so it can trade freely with both.
The Brexit Secretary is also drawing up a 10 mile-wide buffer zone the length of Northern Ireland’s 310 mile border with Ireland.
Dubbed a ‘special economic zone’, it will be for local traders such as dairy farmers – who make up 90 per cent of the cross border traffic - and share the same trade rules as south of the border.
The two plans will together eradicate the need for any border check points, which is a major EU demand.
But both run the risk of infuriating the DUP, whose 10 MPs are propping up Theresa May’s minority government.
The Ulster unionists have insisted their only red line on Brexit is not be treated in any different way to the rest of the UK.
The new plan is a major revision of the ‘Maximum Facilitation’ option, one of two solutions for a post-Brexit customs agreement with the EU.
Mr Davis ordered it after he was persuaded to abandon a technology based solution to keep the Irish border open.
Senior Ulster cops warned him that any border infrastructure, even if it’s just camera towers or swipe points, would be targeted by IRA bombers, and it would also fall foul of the Good Friday peace agreement.
The tracking of goods, which was another part of the original Max Fac solution to keep goods flowing freely over the border, has also been abandoned because of the Northern Irish’s deep rooted concerns about civil liberties.
A senior Whitehall source told The Sun: “Max Fac doesn’t look like anything it used to for Northern Ireland now, because the technology has been stripped out.
“But it doesn’t matter what we call it as long as it works, and we think it will.”
Mr Davis hopes his plan will unite Theresa May’s feuding Cabinet Brexit committee, which is split down the middle over which of the two customs solutions to choose.
The Brexit Secretary leads the committee’s ‘Max Fac’ working group.
Insiders say is making much more progress than the working group for the other option, a New Customs Partnership, which has stalled and “is going nowhere”, a second senior figure close to the Brexit negotiations said.
The source added: “Max Fac 2 is tremendously complicated, but it’s at least something the Cabinet can unite around.
“Persuading the DUP and then the EU to agree to it will be a different job altogether and, let’s be honest, it will be very hard work.”
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But with the clock ticking down fast to a crunch EU summit on June 28, it also emerged that the PM’s 11 strong inner Cabinet is not planning to meet next week and agree a deal either, having not met this week.
Brexit Ministry officials took inspiration for the double hatted model from the tiny European state of Liechtenstein, which the EU allows to operate both the Swiss and EEA regimes at the same time.
Persuading the DUP and then the EU to agree to it will be a different job altogether and, let’s be honest, it will be very hard work
Senior source
A set back of the twin regime is it means factories have to run two different production lines.
The border buffer zone was first suggested by controversial Brexit thinker Shanker Singham, of the Institute of Economic Affairs, who is close to several Leave backing Cabinet ministers.
A DexEU ministry source said: “No decisions have been taken, but a lot of hard work and ideas are going into it”.
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