Read on Twitter
1. It occurs to me that most people don't understand why there would be border disruption regardless of how good an FTA we have. Hopefully a short thread.
The first thing to note is that within a trade block we share borders and customs formalities.
The first thing to note is that within a trade block we share borders and customs formalities.
2. This obviously means that all of the goods which travel by ship (the bulk of them) go through customs at the ports within which they land (which while we were in the EU would have been the ports on the continent).
3. All of these customs formalities get repatriated. This obviously means that overnight this all changes, we now need to perform the necessary checks ourselves (since we're not part of the EU they aren't going to do it for us).
4. This happens from 1st January at all of our ports, ferry terminals and for all cargo to UK destinations whether from EU or other global suppliers. For EU cargo we need to still perform SPS checks and also RoO checks to ensure that other parties are not benefiting from our FTA.
5. For global cargo we need to perform these checks and more (something the EU would have done for us in about 80 percent of cases). Add to this we have new customs systems rolling out with a minimum of testing... Interesting times, indeed!
/End.
/End.
One more thing to remember we have a shortage of roughly 50k customs staff, 8 thousand customs clerks at freight forwarding companies, thousands of vets for SPS etc. I could go on but my bed is calling... Good night all.
