MP's crunch meeting with EU negotiator

Owen Paterson was joined by fellow hardcore Brexit-supporter Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Trimble, the former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and a veteran of the negotiation team which struck the Good Friday/Belfast agreement on a trip to Brussels yesterday (MON) for the behind-closed-doors meeting with Mr Barnier.

The former Northern Ireland secretary said that the trip followed a letter he wrote to Mr Barnier in September. The three, who are part of the eurosceptic European Research Group, were also joined by international trade experts Shanker Singham and Hans Maessen.

Mr Paterson said: "Using existing techniques, existing processes within existing EU law, we can ensure the integrity of the EU Single Market and Customs Union is not infringed and that near frictionless trade can carry on at all our borders, including Northern Ireland, without new infrastructure on any borders.

"We had a long and constructive meeting with Mr Barnier and his staff and we are now going to go back and report to our colleagues and our own Government. "

The eurosceptics argued against the Prime Minister’s plans for a facilitated customs arrangement where the UK would collect tariffs on behalf of the EU on goods destined for the Continent but charge a lower tariff if they were intended for the UK.

Mr Barnier has already suggested this could result in a smugglers’ paradise, with goods deliberately misdeclared and then sent on to Europe in order to avoid the EU’s tariffs, which can be as high as 36 percent on some agricultural products.

The delegation has been accused of going behind the back of the Prime Minister in a bid to scupper her own Brexit plans.

But Mr Duncan Smith said: "The Government negotiates, we are just here to present a paper, which we did, and have a constructive discussion, which we had, and we will now go back and talk to the Government about it."

Eurosceptics believe the Prime Minister is ready to accept the EU’s so-called backstop offer, which would effectively keep Northern Ireland in the customs union and parts of the single market in order to prevent a hardening of the Irish border.