My Lords, the Government’s damaging and reckless version of Brexit has already imposed a red-tape burden on those trading between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, through their insistence on quitting the EU single market and customs union. Now the Government admit, in their internal market White Paper, that
“the absence of EU rules could make it easier for new barriers to arise”—
that is, within the UK as a whole. They are struggling to substitute the glue of what they call
“the wider EU ecosystem of institutions and treaty rights”
in holding the UK internal market together. Therefore, why are the Government threatening to make this challenge even harder, and the prospect of an EU deal less secure, by refusing to agree with the EU a level playing field on standards, including an independent regulator on state aid and subsidies?