Hello and welcome to the CER podcast.

I'm Charles Grant, Director of the Centre for European Reform.

I have with me, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on European matters and a former

Deputy Prime Minister.

We're going to talk a little bit about the new paper published today by

Nick and colleagues on the consequences for trade of Britain leaving the EU. Nick, let's start off with

one decision the government has to take quite soon in the UK. Does it stay in the EU's customs union or not?

Why does that decision matter? Well, it matters because the EU's customs union or not? Why does that decision matter?

Well, it matters because the government has been very clear that it wants to strike out and negotiate a number of deals with countries outside the European Union.

This week, they've been talking about Australia and so on. You cannot do that if you are a member of the tariff which binds together all of the existing European. So you have to abrogate from the common external

tariff if you want to negotiate other deals on their own. The problem, of course, then arises that first you can't actually conclude those

negotiations with those other countries until you've left the common external tariff and indeed

the rest of the European Union. So there's a sort of chronology issue, but also if you were to

leave the common external tariff, those British companies that export into the European

Union and want to do so in the future will suddenly be confronted with an absolute mountain

load of paperwork that they have to fill in as their products are exported into a common

external tariff of which we are no longer a member. So that's quite a lot of extra bureaucracy

for British exporters if we leave

the Customs Union. Yeah, look, I think there's going to be lots and lots of nasty surprises in the

next few years for the government, for Westminster, for the public, as the reality of what Brexit

means becomes more apparent. And I think one of the biggest surprises will be that leaving the European

Union, far from being some great blow against bureaucracy, will be an absolute generator of

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