BREXIT BORDER INSIDE ENGLAND
UK trucks will need ‘pass’ to enter Kent Queues of 7,000 lorries at Dover?
A BREXIT border is being set up in Kent to deal with potential lorry gridlock in January.
Michael Gove warned yesterday that only a quarter of firms were ‘fully ready’ for the UK to exit the EU customs union and single market on December 31.
Leaving the bloc means the French authorities have to impose full EU customs and controlled goods checks on all shipments from Great Britain – regardless of whether there is a post-Brexit trade deal.
Mr Gove admitted there could be chaos at the border with up to 7,000 trucks waiting for two days in tailbacks.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said to minimise possible disruption lorry drivers will need a permit to enter Kent to prove they have the correct documentation.
He told MPs: ‘If they don’t have the material required then it’ll be the case that through policing, automatic number-plate recognition cameras and other means that we’ll do our very best to ensure Kent residents are not inconvenienced. Our survey evidence indicates while 78 per cent of businesses have taken steps, just 24 per cent believe they are fully ready.
‘Indeed, 43 per cent of businesses actually believe the transition period will be extended even though the deadline for any extension has now long passed and the date we leave the single market and customs union is fixed in law and supported across this House.’
The Government yesterday published a document setting out the ‘reasonable worst- case scenario’ for what could happen at the border.
Mr Gove told MPs it was not a prediction or a forecast but what could happen if preparations were not made and ‘if our neighbours decline to be pragmatic’.
He explained: ‘The scenario builds on an estimate that only 50 per cent to 70 per cent of large businesses and just 20 per cent to 40 per cent of small and mediumsize enterprises would be ready for the strict application of new EU requirements.
‘In those circumstances that could mean between only 30 per cent and 60 per cent of laden HGVs would arrive at the border with the necessary formalities completed for the goods on board. They’d therefore be turned back by the French border authorities, clogging the Dover to Calais crossing.’
Mr Gove said this could lead to queues of up to 7,000 HGVs in Kent, adding: ‘These queues and associated disruption and delay would of course subside as unready businesses who had their goods turned back at the French border would not want to repeat the experience.
‘But it is clearly far better everyone is aware now of what is needed to prepare rather than to face additional disruption next year.’
Conservative former minister Damian Green said the prospect of huge queues would ‘send a chill’ through his constituents in Ashford, Kent.
Fellow Tory Damian Collins, who represents Folkestone and Hythe, warned that 7,000 queuing lorries would be ‘intolerable’.
Rachel Reeves, who is Mr Gove’s Labour shadow, said: ‘It is incredible that ministers are only now admitting to their plans to arrest British truckers for entering Kent without new travel passports.
‘With just over three months to go, how are businesses meant to prepare amid this Conservative carnival of incompetence?’
Mr Gove said the Government was publishing its reasonable worst-case scenario assessment ‘not just because any prudent government will always prepare contingency plans for the worst, but to illustrate the costs of a lack of preparedness while there is still plenty of time to prepare’.
His announcement came as the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier arrived in London for informal trade talks.