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Addressing a UK parliamentary select committee, Jon Thompson, HM Revenue and Customs’ (HMRC) chief executive and permanent secretary, said: “40 to 60 percent of my time is spent dealing with [Brexit].”
Immediately following the UK’s EU referendum on 23 June 2016, Thompson said: “430 [extra] people were employed” by HMRC to form a Brexit taskforce, but he predicts that by 2019 this will increase to up to “5,000 employees.”
Also speaking to the UK parliament’s Exiting the European Union Committee on Wednesday (29 November) was Richard Everitt, chairman of the Port of Dover, John Bourne, policy director of animal and plant health for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), and Richard Ballantyne, chief executive of the British Ports Association.
Brexit is an operational challenge to all UK ports, Everitt said, explaining that at Dover “98 percent of trucks arrive from the EU, and these practically get off the ferry and drive off” immediately onto UK roads.
However, there is a huge disparity between the treatment of EU and non-EU imports. Everitt said: “The one to two percent [of trucks] that are not from the EU go to a facility West of the dock, all custom processes are done at this [secondary] facility. These checks take a minimum of 20 minutes.”
Everitt said that the Port of Dover “handles 5,000 inbound trucks a day and less than 100 of these go to the Western facility. We could not cope with any significant increase in delays of inbound traffic.”
Sian Thomas from the Fresh Produce Consortium (FPC), the UK’s leading fresh produce trade association, addressed the committee at an earlier session the same day. She also expressed concerns with the impacts of potential delays, saying: “Highly perishable products have a short shelf life as they are cut and packaged in the country of origin. Any delays mean that the products start to deteriorate.
“If the supplier presents [deteriorated products] to the customer they can refuse to take it. Suppliers often lose contracts purely through delays at points of entry.”
Ballantyne echoed this concern, saying that “40 percent of international trade [passing through Dover] is high value perishable commodities. Holding vehicles up has associated costs for the port itself and along the logistics chain.” [...]