Peter Mandelson has dismissed the prospect of an incoming Labour government taking Britain back into the EU, saying “you’ve got to be joking” that Brussels would want to renegotiate the UK’s membership.
The Labour peer, a former EU trade commissioner and close adviser to Keir Starmer, said rejoining the 27-country bloc would require a referendum that UK voters had little desire for, after the Conservatives’ botched handling of Brexit.
“I cannot see the British people running towards [a referendum] for love nor money after what we went through during the last one. I really do not think that people are going to run towards a repeat of that experience,” he told a British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) event at Heathrow airport on Wednesday.
Lord Mandelson, speaking at the launch of the lobby group’s report on building “Global Britain” after the general election, added that a Starmer government would build closer ties with the EU without rejoining.
The EU wanted a more “stable, constructive relationship” with the UK, Mandelson continued, but there was no desire in Brussels for wholesale negotiation of the country’s return.
“Reopen a negotiation? You’ve got to be joking,” he said. “They [the EU] have got other priorities. They have other fish to fry now. And they’re not going to go through the back-and-forth, up-and-down, seesaw motion; or another protracted, probably hard fought over, and indecisive negotiation with Britain. So that’s simply answered.”
His comments come after the BCC called for politicians to “step out of Brexit’s long shadow” and prioritise trade, including through closer ties with the UK’s single largest trading partner.
Martha Lane Fox, the tech entrepreneur and president of the BCC, said there was often a reluctance among politicians to either recognise problems or suggest solutions because of how they may be viewed either side of the Brexit divide.
“This must stop. Our politicians must be bolder in their decision making. They must set out a strategy on how we mange EU regulation and, where it makes sense, to diverge so that British business can benefit,” she said.
Mandelson said Brexit had triggered a “rollercoaster ride of instability, a merry-go-round of changing ministers” that had left the British economy “travelling along with one arm behind our backs”.
Speaking to business leaders in the headquarters of the company responsible for operating Heathrow, overlooking the airport’s northern runway, the former business secretary under Tony Blair said Labour would not follow the Conservatives’ post-Brexit strategy of chasing free trade deals around the world.
However, he said there was a danger that Britain could become “stranded” between a possible Donald Trump administration in the US and weaker post-Brexit relationship with Brussels.
“There is a danger that we become stranded, or that we become collateral damage in what could become quite an escalating tension,” he said.
Trump, who launched a series of increasingly bitter trade battles with the US’s traditional allies and adversaries alike during his time in the White House, has said that if he is elected in November then he will impose 10% tariffs on all goods imported into the US.
Mandelson said the measure could push the UK to “join with others to maximise the influence that we exercise” including in the EU and other G7 nations, while also suggesting that action was required to strengthen the World Trade Organization.
“What a calamity [a trade war] would be, both for the US and Europe, and, I have to say, for the rest of the world,” he said.
Since Brexit, British passports must have an issue date less than 10 years old on the day of departure to the EU, and must have at least three months left before their expiry date on the intended day of return. But millions of passports issued prior to September 2018 have longer validity periods.
Analysis by The Independent suggests 200 people every day are falling foul of this rule at UK airports, with thousands expected to see their holidays ruined over the upcoming break.
The rule change follows Britain’s Brexit deal with the EU, which puts the UK into the “third country nationals” category – alongside Venezuela and Samoa – with different expiry rules than when it was a member state. It means Britons are being turned away at airports, ferries and trains bound for Europe even if they have previously travelled to the EU on the same document.
“It’s a monumental white elephant, just painted black,” says Gerald Vernon-Jackson, Portsmouth city council’s cabinet member for transport, standing outside the £23m warehouse, which was completed two years ago.
The 8,000 sq metre facility situated in Portsmouth International Port – the UK’s second busiest cross-Channel terminal – is the home to its border control post (BCP). One of more than 100 registered BCPs, it will be the place where many food and plant products coming through Portsmouth from the EU will be checked when post-Brexit import rules come in on 30 April.
Filled with expensive loading equipment and refrigeration systems, the site has 14 unloading bays, where lorries are expected to be examined, and 22 processing chambers, where plant and meat products will be checked by hand for disease by government inspectors.
But despite millions of pounds being pumped into the south coast project, half of the site will be left empty and unused when it comes into operation next month, and the council is chasing a reimbursement of £6m of the construction costs from government.
“When we built this, it was designed to the exact specifications the government wanted under its previous Border Operating Model. Now we are only expecting to use seven bays and 10 chambers,” says Mike Sellers, the port’s director.
The difficulties at Portsmouth have been replicated to varying degrees across the UK, with millions of pounds spent on facilities that may be only partially used. Unlike the majority of ports across the country, which are privately owned, Portsmouth is owned by the council, meaning the authority picks up the associated costs.
“You will find similar situations with a number of other roll-on-roll-off ports across the country,” says Richard Ballantyne, the chief executive of the British Ports Association.
Since the government first announced it would check imports of products of plant and animal origin after Brexit, ministers have changed their minds on the scope of these checks. This has meant the volume of goods expected to go through BCPs such as Portsmouth has fallen, while the amount of redundant space in these facilities has grown.
“It was built for between 50 and 80 vehicles per day: we are now expecting to process only half a dozen when it opens,” Sellers added.
When the UK left the single market in January 2021, the EU immediately began requiring health certificates for British meat, dairy and plant products, while also introducing physical inspections at EU borders.
The UK is now following suit. The certification scheme is already in place, and inspections on high- and medium-risk imports start next month.
In expectation of these checks, 40 ports, including Portsmouth, applied to the government’s £200m Port Infrastructure Fund in 2020 to build new, or upgrade existing, infrastructure. Among the newly built BCPs were three at Hull, Immingham and Killingholme on the Humber, costing £70m, and a £15m BCP at the port of Purfleet in Essex.
But port owners have argued that the fund was not big enough, and that they have had to cover the difference. Their trade association, the UK Major Ports Group (UKMPG), calculates that they have paid £100m to fill the funding gap.
Ballantyne says a condition of funding was that BCPs met government specifications under its original Border Operating Model. However, in April 2022, fearing the checks would add to food inflation, the then Brexit opportunities minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg, confirmed the government would alter the plan and come up with a more targeted checks regime.
This was replaced by the current system, the Border Target Operating Model (BTOM), which requires checks on only high- and medium-risk products.
Ballantyne says the problem is that most ports had built the infrastructure by the time the changes were brought in, meaning many were left with facilities that will be far larger than what is needed.
But this is not the case everywhere – at Sevington, the inland border control post which will check imports coming through the Port of Dover, there are concerns it is not big enough.
This week, the Dover Port Health Authority warned that the facility may not be able to cope with scale, and had “significant capacity and design limitations.”
At Portsmouth’s BCP, you can see that it has the opposite problem, with “Keep Out” signs on changing rooms, offices and huge loading bays which will remain empty well after April. However, it will still cost the council £800,000 a year to operate, and £1.8m to staff.
“We are starting to look at the longer-term solution of how to bring down operating costs based on the volumes that will now be coming through the BCP,” says Sellers. “That solution might be building a new, much smaller BCP and trying to generate some form of income from this facility.” He suggests it could be demolished entirely to make way for more profitable commercial premises.
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says that the new border controls are being introduced progressively to protect the country’s biosecurity. It adds that it provided £200m to ports and that it had been up to each BCP to determine how that funding was best used.
These financial pressures have been exacerbated by five separate delays to the implementation of new border rules, which has meant that Portsmouth and other BCPs have been mothballed for years, unable to recover costs.
When the checks do eventually come in, the ports will be able to recover these costs through a common user charge, which will be levied on businesses that use them. But despite there being just over a month until the checks come in, the government has yet to finalise the details on what it will charge at its own BCPs, which is affecting commercial ports.
Marco Forgione, the director general of the Institute of Export and International Trade, says: “The uncertainty this causes doesn’t just impact exporters and importers: it extends to commercially run BCPs, who can’t set their prices and charging structure until they know exactly what the government charges will be.”
Geraint Evans, the chief executive of UKMPG, says the government is “cutting it fine” to allow operators to have visibility of charges.
He says: “Sophisticated markets are price sensitive and we maintain our clear position that anything other than full cost recovery of the initial investment in the posts and operational costs would be unfair, potentially skewing what should be a level playing field.”
For Vernon-Jackson, it is just another BCP-related headache to add to a long list. “Irrespective of whether you think Brexit is a good or a bad idea, this has been incredibly badly handled,” he says.
Farmers are calling for the government to grant them a universal basic income, saying the post-Brexit agriculture subsidy scheme has left many poorer.
Delays to the sustainable farming schemes put in place after the UK left the European Union, to replace the common agricultural policy (CAP), have meant that in England many farmers have been left out of pocket. The new regime initially suffered from low subscription rates, and the government has underspent hundreds of millions from the £2.4bn farming budget each year due to lack of sign-up.
Scotland and Wales have different farming schemes, and Northern Ireland has not yet set up its new scheme due to Stormont not having sat for two years. In Wales, there have been protests over plans to ask farmers to set aside 20% of their farms for nature and tree planting.
Government projections and independent analysis have shown that the new nature payments schemes will not plug the gap left by the lack of EU subsidies for most farmers. The nature schemes were never meant to replace the CAP payments exactly, and instead are aimed at paying farmers to provide public goods.
Now, at least 100 farmers have signed up to a new campaign group, BI4Farmers, to ask for a universal basic income (UBI) for all farmers in Britain.
The campaigners said that farmers across the UK were “basically kept afloat” by EU subsidies and now risk going out of business. Analysis by the organic farming group Riverford has found that half of farmers surveyed said they may go out of business due to post-Brexit trade deals, uncertainty over farming payment schemes and rising costs.
Jo Poulton, the BI4Farmers coordinator, said: “British farmers are overworked and underpaid but the Brexit process presents an ideal opportunity to change this.
“A basic income for farmers would guarantee an adequate income, improving access to time off and reasonable working hours and making entering a career in farming affordable for new entrants.”
Sustainable farming groups have also shared their support for a UBI for farmers to enable to them to experiment with nature friendly farming methods such as using fewer pesticides without sacrificing their income.
Will White, sustainable farming campaign coordinator at Sustain, said: “Universal basic income could be an important safety net for farm workers and small new entrant growers, providing financial security that liberates them to pursue agro-ecological practices without the looming pressure of financial survival.
“When paired with better funding for environmental land management schemes, UBI has the potential to significantly bolster the agricultural sector’s overall resilience. Looking into radical yet promising solutions like this is essential. We support a deeper exploration of how basic income policies could work in the UK context and are watching this campaign with interest.”
Ruth West, a cofounder of the Oxford Real Farming Conference, added: “Concerned citizens, farmers in dire straits, policymakers and all those who care about a fairer food system should get onboard and help move this practical, doable plan to the next phase.
“BI4Farmers presents us with a golden opportunity for a sustainable farming future. It’s an opportunity we must not miss.”
The UK and the EU are within “kissing distance” of a post-Brexit deal to guarantee free movement over the border between Gibraltar and Spain, Gibraltar’s chief minister has said.
After a meeting between the UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, and the European Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič, agreement was reached on issues that have dogged negotiations for the past five years.
It includes an outline pact on having an EU presence at the airport in Gibraltar to ensure the regulation of people and goods coming into the EU.
Lord Cameron left Brussels after the meeting without speaking to reporters, but Gibraltar’s chief minister, Fabian Picardo, and Albares said the meeting had been positive and constructive.
Asked how close they were to a treaty, Picardo said: “We are very, very, very close. In English we say within spitting distance but actually it is nice to say we are within kissing distance.”
He said those in the room on Friday had “reached the limit” of what they could do in Brussels, but on a scale of one to 100 they were at “90 or 95”, leaving him “very optimistic”.
A major sticking point has been who controls Gibraltar’s airport, which under the proposed free movement deal would be an external border of the EU. The UK and Gibraltar have resisted Spain’s insistence that Spanish border officials be based at the airport, which is also home to an RAF base.
All sides are eager to clinch a deal before the EU parliamentary elections in June. It would end a tortuous journey begun by the Brexit referendum in 2016, which created a potential hard border with customs and passport checks between Gibraltar and Spain.
A joint statement from the European Commission, Spain, the UK and Gibraltar said: “Discussions took place in a constructive atmosphere, with significant progress achieved. General political lines have been agreed, including on airport, goods and mobility. Negotiations will continue over the coming weeks to conclude the UK-EU agreement.”
With 15,000 commuters a day crossing the border, there are some parallels with Ireland, which secured continuing free movement with Northern Ireland as part of the Windsor framework secured in March 2023.
However, the EU and Spain were worried that in Gibraltar’s case, free movement would give travellers on “the rock” free movement into the wider continental Europe.
Spain is part of the Schengen area, which allows people to travel across borders involving 29 countries without passport controls.
In the Brexit referendum, 96% of voters in Gibraltar supported remaining in the EU. The tiny territory on Spain’s southern tip depends greatly on access to the EU market for its 34,000 inhabitants.
Belated progress is being made towards a formal trade and border deal for the British overseas territory, in which 96% voted remain
These are difficult, despairing days on the Conservative backbenches. Almost certainly a dreadful set of local election results looms in May. Nationally, fears of a Labour landslide on the scale of 1997 grow. But last month, briefly, it was quite like old times as Brexit veterans Sir Bill Cash and Mark Francois indulged in an opportunity to play some favourite old tunes.
Rumours of an imminent deal with the European Union over the post-Brexit status of Gibraltar have permitted some satisfyingly retro talk of red lines crossed and sovereignty compromised. Following the successful negotiation of the Windsor framework for Northern Ireland, opportunities for this kind of stuff are now few and far between. In a House of Commons debate in March, Brexit chainmail clanking, Sir Bill took his chance, warning that aligning with EU rules, and allowing Schengen border checks on Gibraltar, would amount to caving in to a “foreign power”. A dangerous precedent would be set for other British overseas territories. “Here we go again,” lamented Mr Francois sympathetically.
Fortunately, the ageing ultras of the Eurosceptic right are no longer the political force they once were. There have been numerous tortuous rounds of talks between Britain and the EU since Brexit anachronistically marooned Gibraltar outside the Schengen area. But the appointment of David Cameron as foreign secretary, and the proximity of June’s European elections, appear to have focused minds on reaching a deal before the disruption entailed by a new European Commission and intake of MEPs. Well over four years after the Brexit withdrawal agreement was signed, it’s about time.
A trade and border deal formalising free circulation of people and goods would clearly be in the interests of both Gibraltar and the relatively poor neighbouring Spanish region of Campo de Gibraltar. Under ad hoc temporary arrangements, free cross-border movement has been permitted, meaning about 15,000 Spanish workers have been able to keep their jobs on the Rock. But when it comes to a formal deal, there are sticking points regarding the status of a Spanish presence at Gibraltar airport, which also hosts an RAF base. These could plausibly be resolved by allowing border enforcement to be conducted by officials from the EU’s border agency, Frontex.
Rightly, the status of Gibraltar’s sovereignty is not up for discussion in the talks. But on all sides there are sensitivities that need to be carefully handled. A flippant remark recently made by one EU commissioner, who responded to questions about a possible deal by saying “Gibraltar español”, was crass and unhelpful. That negotiations on the EU side are being led by the commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, who performed the same role in relation to the Windsor framework, bodes rather better for a successful outcome.
On Friday, in a sign that a treaty deal may be close, Lord Cameron and Mr Šefčovič met for talks in Brussels, along with Gibraltar’s chief minister, Fabian Picardo, and the Spanish foreign minister, José Manuel Albares. Such progress is long overdue. Leaving the EU was a bad idea for Britain. It was simply a nonsense for a territory on the southern tip of the Iberian peninsula. The remain vote in Gibraltar was 96%. Four years after Britain formally exited, dragging the Rock with it, a sane solution must be reached to deal with an anomalous absurdity.
When I met the Dutch politician Geert Wilders years ago, he was set on ‘Nexit’. Now he too would rather stay in the EU
Exports are performing badly, pace the fantasy world of the Daily Express; supply lines for imports once regarded as routine are disrupted or discontinued altogether; staff shortages owing to new restrictions on travel and employment of our fellow Europeans are hurting the hospitality trade in what we used to boast about as our “service economy”. The UK’s economy is “5% worse off than it would be in the EU” according to a recent well-researched report by Goldman Sachs. Welcome to Brexit Britain!
In the early days of the Brexit disaster, I met Michel Barnier, the EU’s impressive negotiator, at a high-powered conference on Lake Como organised by the Ambrosetti Institute. We agreed what a disaster was in store if the UK did not come to its senses.
I also met the rightwing Dutch “firebrand” Geert Wilders, who at the time, and for some time after, was a campaigner for “Nexit” – the Netherlands leaving the EU.
Wilders was very interested in British politics, and I did my best to inform him, not least on the horrors of Brexit. I know I didn’t change his mind about Nexit – this was in 2017 – but the evidence of the damage wreaked by Brexit is now manifest to all. Wilders has apparently dropped his campaign to leave the union and prefers to alter it “from within”. If there is one positive thing Brexit has achieved, it has been to have a salutary effect on rightwing continental politicians’ opposition to the EU.
Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader, has memorably described the subject of Brexit as “the mammoth in the broom cupboard”. The present Labour leadership knows it is a disaster, but, in advance of the election, is terrified of offending “red wall” voters who were conned by the propaganda of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and co. And the Tories also know what a disaster it is, but they prefer to confess this among consenting adults in private. One exception is Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has a great sense of humour and claims with a straight face: “There is no doubt that leaving the EU was the best decision we could have made for our economy.”
Which brings me to the fact that another former Labour leader, Harold Wilson, is back in the news. Wilson won four elections and was a consummate politician. It is revelations about his love life that have brought him back in the news, but for me what really matters is the revival of memories about how he held the warring factions of the Labour party together, and contrived to ensure that it backed the “remain” case when there was a referendum in 1975 about whether we should stay in what was then the European Economic Community. (We had entered in 1973 under the Conservative premiership of Edward Heath.)
Our membership of what was also known as the common market galvanised the British economy and undoubtedly boosted output and growth – adding some 8% to gross domestic product, according to the economic historian Nicholas Crafts.
Now, last week there was a report in the Financial Times about a paper from a political consultancy claiming that if Labour won the next election handsomely it would immediately seek to move closer to the EU via “a de facto customs union by another name”.
This was so sensitive that it prompted an immediate denial, with Labour’s shadow cabinet office minister and spokesperson on Europe, Nick Thomas-Symonds, claiming the party was committed “to making Brexit work” and that there would be “no return to the single market, the customs union or return to freedom of movement”.
In my opinion, such protestations must be a holding operation until, one hopes, this miserable gang of Tories are thrown out and sensible relations with the rest of Europe can be resumed.
There are those who worry that we may well be on the verge of a third world war. As Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, has recently said: “Recent events may very well be creating risks that could eclipse anything since world war two. We should not take them lightly.”
Who knows? But the geopolitical situation is looking bleak. Defence spending may have to rise dramatically. Quite apart from the commercial and investment opportunities of a resumption of membership of the EU, strategic considerations may well come to the fore.
It was Heath’s predecessor but one, Harold Macmillan, who is supposed to have declared that what he feared most was “events, dear boy, events”. I fear I have an uneasy feeling that the Labour government the polls are telling us to expect is going to be confronted with “events” in spades.
Drug shortages are a “new normal” in the UK and are being exacerbated by Brexit, a report by the Nuffield Trust health thinktank has warned. A dramatic recent spike in the number of drugs that are unavailable has created serious problems for doctors, pharmacists, the NHS and patients, it found.
The number of warnings drug companies have issued about impending supply problems for certain products has more than doubled from 648 in 2020 to 1,634 last year.
Mark Dayan, the report’s lead author and the Nuffield Trust’s Brexit programme lead, said: “The rise in shortages of vital medicines from rare to commonplace has been a shocking development that few would have expected a decade ago.”
The UK has been struggling since last year with major shortages of drugs to treat ADHD, type 2 diabetes and epilepsy. Three ADHD drugs that were in short supply were meant to be back in normal circulation by the end of 2023 but remain hard to obtain.
Some medicine shortages are so serious that they are imperilling the health and even lives of patients with serious illnesses, pharmacy bosses warned.
Health charities have seen a sharp rise in calls from patients unable to obtain their usual medication. Nicola Swanborough, head of external affairs at the Epilepsy Society, said: “Our helpline has been inundated with calls from desperate people who are having to travel miles, often visiting multiple pharmacies to try and access their medication.”
Paul Rees, the chief executive of the National Pharmacy Association, which represents most of the UK’s 7,000 independently owned pharmacies, said: “Supply shortages are a real and present danger to those patients who rely on life-saving medicines for their wellbeing. Pharmacy teams have seen the problems get worse in this country over recent years, putting more patients at risk.
“Pharmacists … are spending hours a day hunting down stock, yet too often have to turn patients away. It’s distressing when pharmacy teams find themselves unable to provide a prompt medicines services, through no fault of their own.”
Global manufacturing problems linked to Covid, inflation, the war in Ukraine and global instability have helped cause the UK’s unprecedented inability to ensure patients can access drugs.
But Britain’s departure from the EU in 2020 has significantly aggravated the problem, laid bare the “fragility” of the country’s medicines supply networks and could lead to the situation worsening, the report said.
“A clear picture emerged of underlying fragilities at a global and UK level, not fundamentally rooted in Brexit but exacerbated by it in some specific ways, especially through some companies removing the UK from their supply chains,” it said.
The UK’s exit from the single market has disrupted the previously smooth supply of drugs, for example through the creation of a requirement for customs checks at the border, as has Britain’s decision to leave the EU’s European Medicines Agency and start approving drugs itself. The UK is now much slower than the EU at making new drugs available, the report found.
Post-Brexit red tape has prompted some firms to stop supplying to the UK altogether.
The fact that the fall in sterling’s value after the Brexit vote in 2016 coincided with drugs being in much shorter supply globally due to pharmaceutical firms experiencing shortages of ingredients, which drove up prices, has also played a key role in creating the shortages.
That has forced the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to agree to pay above the usual price for drugs that are scarce to try to ensure continuity of supply far more often than it used to. “Price concessions” rose tenfold from about 20 a month before 2016 to 199 a month in late 2022, and cost the NHS in England £220m in 2022-23, the thinktank found.
The report is based on Freedom of Information requests to health bodies as well as interviews and a roundtable discussion with key figures in the drugs industry, senior DHSC civil servants and European health bodies.
It warned that Brexit had created “further risks … for the UK”. The Nuffield Trust said drug shortages could get worse because the EU’s 27 countries have recently decided to act as a unified bloc to try to minimise the impact of global scarcity, which could leave supplying Britain even less of a priority for drug companies.
Dr Andrew Hill, an expert in the drugs industry at Liverpool University, said: “With this background stress on global supplies, the UK is now more vulnerable to drug shortages. The UK is now stuck behind the US and Europe in the queue for essential drugs. Other countries offer high prices and easier access, with simpler regulations for supply.”
Ministers should agree to pay more for generic medicines, which are usually much cheaper than branded ones, to help tackle shortages, Hill added.
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society, which represents pharmacists, urged ministers to amend the law to allow community pharmacists to circumvent shortages by giving patients slightly different prescriptions, as their counterparts in hospitals already do.
“At present, if a liquid version of a medicine is available but tablets have been prescribed and are out of stock, the pharmacist cannot provide the liquid version,” said James Davies, the society’s director for England. “The patient has no choice but to return to the prescriber for a new prescription, which causes unnecessary workload for GPs and delay for the patient.”
DHSC said most drugs remained available. “Concessionary prices can arise for various reasons and cannot be linked to shortages,” a DHSC spokesperson said.
“Our priority is to ensure patients continue to get the treatments they need. There are around 14,000 licensed medicines and the overwhelming majority are in good supply.”
Businesses have described Britain’s Brexit border plans as being in “complete disarray” after it emerged some checks on EU imports due to come in later this month will be delayed.
Post-Brexit border rules will come into force on 30 April that will require many meat, dairy and plant products from the EU to be physically checked at government border control posts (BCPs).
But trade bodies have said fresh confusion about when the checks would come in were “incredibly challenging” for business planning, while others said huge questions remained about the government’s readiness for the regime.
Under the rules, medium- and high-risk products, which includes meat and dairy products, as well as most plants, could be subject to checks at the borders, as part of a move to enhance the UK’s biosecurity.
However, the Financial Times reported that the government would not “turn on” the checks on 30 April in a bid to avert delays, due to border systems not being fully ready.
The government insisted the checks would be commencing on 30 April but indicated that it would be focusing on higher-risk products and scaling up checks on other products in a “sensible and controlled way”.
The Guardian understands that this will mean that the government will focus its checks on the highest risk products across high and medium bands, and then slowly build up to full checks. The government has yet to give a timeline on this but said it would take a “pragmatic approach”.
There have already been five previous delays to the implementation of these checks, which were initially set to come in July 2021.
Phil Pluck, the chief executive of the Cold Chain Federation, said: “The ongoing confusion about how and when new checks will be introduced makes these preparations incredibly challenging.
“A phased approach is the right one but businesses urgently need clear information about what exactly these phases will include, and a definitive timeline.”
Martin McTague, the chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, said the system was in “complete disarray”, and businesses are having to “decode messy and unclear messages” from Whitehall over whether they would face checks.
In January the first phase of border target operating model was introduced with medium- and high-risk goods having to secure plant health and vet sign-offs before goods could be exported to the UK.
Nan Jones, the technical policy manager at the British Meat Processors Association, said it was aware there had been high rates of mistakes being made in the new paperwork by importers which was causing issues with the government’s IT system at the border.
She said: “Currently there is no consequence for this error but once the new border controls come into force, these errors will result in consignments being directed to a BCP for an inspection.
“This could result in UK border posts being overwhelmed with extra work they are not equipped to process”.
Despite being just 11 days away from implementation, businesses have said there are gaping holes in the government’s regime, which are affecting their planning.
Delays to the government publishing its charges for goods coming through Dover has meant number of private border control posts at ports across the country have still yet to publish their rates for importers.
It has also emerged that the government’s Sevington border control post in Kent, which will process all Dover and Folkestone goods, has yet to receive formal designation that will allow it to carry out the checks.
To achieve designation BCPs must hit a number of requirements including complying with biosecurity protocols, have the correct equipment and staff, and be suitable for the volume of goods coming through.
Tom Southall, the executive director of the Cold Chain Federation, said the government had been telling it for a months that this was down to a few snags but it will be ready. He added: “That this still hasn’t happened 11 days out is pretty incredible.”
Marco Forgione, the director general of the Institute of Export and International Trade, said: “Sevington hasn’t been approved, we’re still not sure yet what the full charging regime is going to be in most private BCPs […] there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done and we’re 11 days out.
“Businesses in the UK are unclear, businesses in the EU are even more uncertain.”
A UK government spokesperson said: “There has been extensive engagement with businesses over the past year – with our approach welcomed by several trade associations and port authorities.
“We are confident we have sufficient capacity and capability across all points of entry to handle the volume and type of expected checks.”
Quote:Labour also turns down European Commission’s proposal, which would allow young Britons to live, study and work in EURishi Sunak has rejected an EU offer to strike a post-Brexit deal to allow young Britons to live, study or work in the bloc for up to four years.
The prime minister declined the European Commission’s surprise proposal of a youth mobility scheme for people aged between 18 and 30 on Friday, after Labour knocked back the suggestion on Thursday night, while noting that it would “seek to improve the UK’s working relationship with the EU within our red lines”.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, suggested the scheme, which would also have allowed young people from within the EU to stay in the UK to work or study for the same period of time, would have been an area in which there could be “closer collaboration”.
“The topic of youth mobility is in both our interests, because the more we have youth mobility being on both sides of the Channel, the more we increase the probability we will be on good terms because the next generation knows each other very well,” she said on Thursday.
But the UK government indicated on Friday that Brexit had ended free movement and it had no desire to reopen that conversation, even with strict conditions on length of stay.
“We are not introducing an EU-wide youth mobility scheme – free movement within the EU was ended and there are no plans to introduce it,” a government spokesperson said.
However, they did note that the government would be happy to do deals with individual member states. It is known that the UK is keen to strike an arrangement with France.
One source said the UK wanted to “cherry-pick” which countries it wanted such programmes with.
The youth mobility scheme would not be a return to freedom of movement and would, if agreed, require a YMS visa, evidence of sufficient funds to sustain a living and health insurance.
The Conservatives have been urged to rethink their rejection of the offer because it could help boost the economy.
Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: “Expanding our existing youth mobility visas to cover European countries on a reciprocal basis would be a win-win.
“It would be a much needed boost to our economy, especially hospitality and tourism; it would offer great new opportunities to young British people to work abroad; and it would be a crucial step towards fixing our broken relationship with Europe.
“Of course, the details would need to be negotiated, but no UK government should reject this idea out of hand.”
Some Labour MPs believe the scheme could have helped Labour reach its plan to decarbonise UK power by 2030.
A senior Labour MP likened the scheme to a “sugar-rush, fast-fix” solution that would be helpful to an incoming Labour government but would be hard to wean off. They said: “Even though Labour has reduced its green objectives, it still wants to decarbonise the grid. There will be a time lag between training, recruitment and reskilling workers that would require an army of engineers for example to do that, and we’re currently far behind.
“To hit the ground running, this scheme offers us the opportunity to do that, but we would have to continue to fix labour market shortages.”
A Labour spokesperson said: “This is a proposal from the EU Commission to EU member states, not to the UK. It has come about because the UK government is reportedly approaching other European countries to try to establish mobility arrangements.
“Labour has no plans for a youth mobility scheme. We have already suggested some tangible ways that we would look to improve the relationship and deliver for British businesses and consumers, including seeking a veterinary agreement to tackle trade barriers, mutual recognition of professional qualifications and improved touring opportunities for artists.”
Anand Menon, a professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King’s College London and director of UK in a Changing Europe, said: “Clearly there is a debate to be had about the costs and the benefits of a youth mobility scheme, but I find it utterly depressing that both of the major political parties, one of which will form a government after the next election, do not know the difference between free movement and a limited youth mobility scheme which involves visas.”
He said he suspected the surprise emergence of a youth mobility scheme was a move to head off cherry-picking in the EU in the face of a surge of far-right parties, some of which are Eurosceptics.
“They are scared that member states will do bilateral deals, which becomes more of a threat the better the Eurosceptic parties do in the elections,” Menon said.
“For instance, Geert Wilders [the Dutch populist politician] would be more likely to do a bilateral deal with Britain if it involves annoying Brussels, and then the danger is you end up with governments in the EU negotiating unilaterally with the Brits because it is in their own interests.”
Companies say £145 charge for goods coming to UK via Dover or Channel tunnel will lead to higher prices
Importers of food from the EU into Britain have said that newly introduced post-Brexit checks could increase their costs by up to 60%, pushing up prices for customers and driving some shops out of business.
