A global, free trading Britain should back freeports

Boris’s new government abounds with good people and good ideas to boost business – and we are already reaping the rewards. Liz Truss, as the new President of the Board of Trade has announced today that once we leave the European Union, the UK will be a global free trader, with freeports and safe harbours to help this aim along.

Freeports are areas next to shipping ports or airports that we designate as effectively foreign territory. That doesn’t mean they are owned by foreigners; it simply means that for tax and regulation purposes, they are treated as if they were outside the UK. They’re areas where HMRC has no right of entry or the authority to pick pockets.

In particular, it means that goods coming into them are not subject to UK tariffs, taxes or regulations. Those burdens only apply if the goods then enter the domestic economy. If they are shipped abroad, even if they have been processed to add value, they do so without having paid UK taxes that make them more expensive, and without being subject to the minutiae of bureaucratic rules that goods for the domestic market have to struggle through.