Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove told MPs today that lorry drivers would need a “Kent Access Permit” to get into the county from 1 January with “police and ANPR cameras [automatic number plate recognition]” enforcing the system. If they failed, they faced queues of up to 700 trucks trying to reach Dover.
Under government plans in a leaked document KAPs will only be issued to drivers who have completed all the paperwork necessary to board a ferry or Eurotunnel train to Calais.
According to the document seen by the Guardian last week the KAP system “is proposed to be enforced in Kent with a £300 [fine] for port bound HGVs that travel without a Kent Access Permit”.
The government has not said how it will enforce the KAP and earlier this week, Labour MP Angela Eagle asked: “Who’s going to be patrolling the Kent borders to make sure that no lorry goes into Kent if it hasn’t got that passport?”
“Where are the border posts for going into Kent going to be? It’s all very well saying we are going to need it, but are we going to have Kent border police or border guards?” she asked at the treasury select committee on Tuesday.
Industry leaders have also been concerned. One said it would need physical checks to “weed out” those with a KAP and those without, which was a non-starter in their view.
With fewer than four months to go before the end of the Brexit transition period on 31 December, the document also notes that ongoing work at the Department for Transport to provide the advice centres “is currently unfunded” with a parallel treasury bid for £18.5m still in development
On Tuesday, Gove wrote to hauliers to warn that if they do not prepare now for Brexit they could face queues of up to 7,000 trucks in Kent, confirming internal cabinet analysis of the potential disruption caused by the UK’s departure from the single market in January.
The letter also warns of two-day delays for cargo travelling to the EU through Dover or Folkestone ferry or Eurotunnel trains in what it is describing as the “reasonable worst-case scenario”.
Many companies are now less prepared for a no-deal Brexit than they were a year ago and have yet to make any preparations for such an outcome, ministers are being warned.
As a result of the coronavirus crisis, stockpiles have been wound down, Brexit-related staff redeployed and cashflows seriously depleted. Yet a potential no-deal outcome is now less than six months away.
The latest warning comes from the Institute for Government thinktank, which also cites official data suggesting that 61% of businesses have made no preparations at all for the end of the Brexit transition period on 31 December.
It also warns that last-minute preparations will be extremely difficult for many sectors, as coronavirus-related government support is wound down and potential for stockpiling is diminished as warehouse
That’s not all…
The think tank UK in a Changing Europe, modelling with the LSE of the impact of a no-deal Brexit, suggests the total cost to the UK economy over the longer term will be two to three times as large as that implied by the Bank of England’s forecast for the impact of Covid-19.
LSE modelling puts the long-term economic hit from a no-deal Brexit at 8% of GDP, similar to that of the government’s own forecast in 2018 of 7.6%, which amounts to £160bn in today’s money, or £2,400 per person.
This compares with the Bank of England’s latest forecast of the impact of Covid which shows a reduction of 1.7% of GDP to the economy up to 2022.
This amounts to £40bn, or £600 per person, and is dwarfed by cost of a no-deal Brexit, which will have an impact on GDP for years to come.
The analysis is part of a long report entitled “What would no deal mean”?
The section on Northern Ireland concludes – contrary to the UK government’s intentions..
The UK Internal Market Bill will make a no-deal outcome considerably more problematic in Northern Ireland.
The Protocol was devised to ensure that, even if there was no UK–EU deal, there would be no physical border on the island of Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement would be upheld. If the UK explicitly rejects the Protocol it has signed, it is hard to see an outcome that does not lead to significant political turbulence.
No-deal impacts can and will be partly mitigated by effective preparation. But this challenging task has been made significantly harder by the diversion of people and resources within government to deal with the response to Covid-19 and by the strain the pandemic has placed on businesses across the country. Brexit has fallen way down their list of priorities.
Even if there is a deal, these frictions will be significant. For goods entering NI from Great Britain, there will be import declarations and safety and security certificates. For animal and plant products, Export Health Certificates and SPS (Sanitary and phyto-sanitary) checks will be required. Negotiations are still ongoing as to what exactly these will look and feel like in practice. These cannot be concluded until we know what the UK-EU deal will (or won’t) be. Put simply, if there is no deal, barriers to GB-EU trade will be put in place all around the island of Great Britain and thus within the United Kingdom. The wording used in the Protocol itself is that the Joint Committee overseeing the Withdrawal Agreement will decide what goods might be ‘at risk’ of movement from GB into the EU via Northern Ireland; these goods will meet the same strictures as goods moving directly from GB into the EU.
If there were a UK-EU deal, then there may be zero tariffs on UK goods entering the EU, but NI (via GB) could still be a backdoor to the EU for importers to avoid the CET (Common External Tariff) on goods from RoW ( rest of the world) countries.
So far, so well understood. The NI section of the UK in a Changing Europe’s report, however assumes that the Protocol in the Withdrawal Agreement would survive in some form alongside the notorious UK Internal Market Bill, cancelling previously agreed rules for NI remaining in the single market for goods. I don’t know why this is assumed. No Deal might mean the scrapping of the Protocol entirely and a crisis over the consequences for the land border.
In other news…
A consultant who had a leading role in the campaign for an alternative to Theresa May’s Irish border “backstop” is in the running for all or part of a £200m government contract related to the post-Brexit checks down the Irish Sea.
Shanker Singham, one of the main proponents of the so-called “alternative arrangements” for the Irish border, is understood to have teamed up with the customs expert Robert Hardy and the technology company Fujitsu for the Trader Support Service (TSS) contract.
A glimmer of hope in the Times
A meeting of the joint committee set up by Britain and the EU to implement the Northern Irish protocol is due to meet on Monday as the latest round of formal Brexit negotiations get under way. Despite posturing on both sides sources said that some progress had been made on the issues of subsidies and checks on goods crossing the Irish sea.
A senior government source said that if a deal could be struck ministers would immediately withdraw the clauses in the bill that allow them to potentially override the withdrawal agreement in breach international law. “If we can reach a deal there will be no need for them,”
Michael Gove will lead the UK delegation. And guess what? Members of the NI Executive are invited.
Former BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior Research Fellow, The Constitution Unit, Univ Coll. London
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