Hauliers

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, the guidance to hauliers on the government website about the trade and co-operation agreement requirements amounts to 37 pages—some little light reading.

Ian Wright, CEO of the Food and Drink Federation, told the Commons Committee on the Future Relationship with the EU that

“we now have to treat every different bit of a consignment and every different product with the same approach that we might have previously done to whole lorryloads … we are going to see the re-engineering of almost all … supply chains over the next six to nine months.”

The difficulties of Brexit red tape result from the choice made by this Government for a very hard Brexit. By prioritising sovereignty over market access, they were determined to leave the single market and customs union. The only real hope is to change that situation in the years ahead. Now there is a unilateral move by the Government to change the provisions of the Northern Ireland protocol. This foolish and regrettably confrontational move has surely prejudiced hopes for negotiated easements of the protocol or the TCA, unless the Minister can assure me that that is not the case.