My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for putting down this Motion for debate and for rightly emphasising the importance of the short straits crossing in relation to these regulations. To pick up his final point about the government guidance issued yesterday, this new system was introduced on 30 April. It defies belief that, after all these months of preparation, the situation is still producing a time lag for instructions on how people should be using them.
Obviously, the area of greatest concern throughout the UK is the issue of Sevington in relation to the short straits crossing, because it is about 20 miles from Dover and from the mouth of the Channel Tunnel to Sevington. Previous questions I have posed to Ministers
have produced what I understood to be a statement that there are no plans by the Government to escort vehicles from the port to Sevington and no plans to observe those vehicles to make sure that they get safely from one to the other. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that people will be trusted to take that journey and not to disappear en route. The drivers of those vehicles will already have been picked out and will know that they are under additional checks. They would have every incentive to avoid those additional checks if they were intent on some kind of malpractice. I fully understand that the average driver is not of that ilk, but there are people with what have been described to me as seriously dodgy loads.
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The more one looks at this, the more unworkable the system becomes. The £29 common user charge per consignment imposed by Defra contrasts with the French customs regime, which charges only consignments from the UK that need SPS checks. It also seems that privately operated ports in many other parts of the UK will charge only consignments that need checking and will not, as in the case of Defra and its charges in Dover, be charging every consignment.
The risk of these charges and the way in which they are being imposed is of course that it will divert trade from the Channel Tunnel and Dover, and drivers will be incentivised to take their loads to ports that will not charge every load. That could lead to longer land routes, which will be undesirable.
In relation to the short straits route, charging per consignment irrespective of the value of goods risks making groupage consignments unsustainable and could lead to them being charged more than the value of the goods they are transporting. Logistics UK has produced warnings that some traders are intent on stopping selling to the UK.
Finally, on 18 April the UK Government told the country’s port authorities in a presentation that they would not turn on critical health and safety checks for EU imports when post-Brexit border controls began, on 30 April, because of the risk of significant disruption. I am now confused as to how many ports in the UK are in practice operating these checks; are there a number of ports where they are not taking place? If that is the case, can the Minister clarify to us how many of the ports are operating those checks, how many are not, and how long it will be before the whole system is operational? How have we got to the point where 30 April was announced and yet the Government appear unprepared?