31 August 2023

WhatUKthinks' Curtice: Do Voters Care About Controls on EU Imports?

The defining slogan of the Leave campaign in the 2016 EU referendum was, of course, ‘Take back control’. The slogan not only referenced how Brexit would facilitate control of immigration, but also of goods and services entering the UK. For some advocates of Leave at least, that latter prospect was a crucial part of their vision of Brexit. It would allow the UK to implement and enforce its own regulatory regime, one that would be more competitive than that of the EU. Indeed, the Trade and Co-operation Agreement negotiated by Lord Frost reflected that vision by excluding any firm commitment to follow EU regulations in future.

Not that voters necessarily believe that much use is being made of the regulatory freedom Brexit was supposed to bring. In Redfield & Wilton’s latest poll for ‘The UK in a Changing Europe’, only 36% think that, since Brexit, ‘the UK government has written laws and regulations that diverge from EU laws and regulations’ to a ‘significant’ or a ‘fair’ degree, while 39% believe it has either undertaken a ‘small amount’ of divergence or none at all. As many as one in four (25%) state that they do not know. Those who voted Leave and those who backed Remain differ little in their response to this question.

Meanwhile, in the last few weeks, the UK government has postponed or cancelled two elements of the original vision for Brexit. First, it has postponed the introduction of border checks on food imports entering from the EU. Already delayed on more than one occasion, even though checks on goods entering the EU from the UK were introduced as soon as the UK left the single market at the beginning of 2021, they were scheduled to be introduced in October. Indeed, regulatory checks on imports from the EU in general have repeatedly been delayed, and, following an announcement in April, are now not due to be implemented until next year.

Second, the government announced that it was abandoning a planned requirement that goods sold in the UK should have a British safety certificate – and its accompanying logo displayed on those goods. Under these plans, EU safety certification (and the display of its logo) would no longer be sufficient – but now it will be, a step that will potentially limit the impact of the UK’s legal ability after Brexit to set its own safety standards....

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