§ Mr. John TownendTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the concession that duty-free goods purchased on both the outward and return journeys on carriers within the single market should be legitimately imported into the country where the travellers' journey started is the subject of an EC agreement; and if he will make it his policy to ensure that the applicable duty-free regime should be decided by each member state in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity.
§ Sir John CopeEC law permits, but does not require, member states to continue with duty-free shopping for a transitional period until 30 June 1999. Like other EC countries the United Kingdom has allowed duty-free shopping to continue, to avoid an adverse effect of the single market on the duty-free industry in the United Kingdom which is the biggest in the EC.
In the single market, there are no routine fiscal checks at frontiers, and the duty-free system now operates by controls on what the vendor sells, rather than what the traveller imports. EC law envisages that the vendor will sell no more than the previous "allowance" to a passenger on an intra-EC journey, so it is legitimate for a passenger to acquire one "allowance" on each leg of a return journey.