Official Controls (Location of Border Control Posts) (England) Regulations 2024

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to the Motion in my name, as a follow-up to a very interesting debate we had in your Lordships’ House on 2 May, led by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, on the subject of imports and exports of food and agricultural products. It was a lengthy debate, with some excellent comments from a number of noble Lords.

The Minister gave some good answers to many of the questions, but one that I did not feel that he responded to in enough detail was about where all the different checks on trucks would take place—most of the vehicles coming in are trucks, both big and little. I came away with the impression that, if the checks could not be done in Dover because there was not enough space, the drivers would be told to go up the A20, which becomes the M20, and turn left at the fourth junction, which is called Sevington near Ashford.

Now I know that area very well and I thought that there would be a temptation for the drivers to forget to turn left and trundle up either to London or to a small shed, where the cargo could be transferred to another truck and possibly avoid some of the checks. I felt that that was an omission that the Minister might like to put right—and I am sure that he will do so tonight. I am very grateful that we had a quick chat about it recently.

In addition to the comments made by noble Lords in that debate, there has also been a lot of media coverage, particularly about the import of EU food, and comments about basic questions such as: what is a “consignment”? Noble Lords may not want to know what a consignment is, but can the Minister say whether it is a truckload, several parcels in a truck, or something in between? Several years after Brexit, this should have been sorted out. We are told that there is a shortage of staff and places to have the checks, which is adding cost and delay, particularly to the import of foodstuffs, which have a shelf life, and this is something the Government should have sorted out before now.

However, coincidentally, yesterday the Government published a new document—I am sure that it has nothing to do with the fact that we are having this debate today—called What To Do When Attending an Inland Border Facility. It might be complicated but is only about 10 pages long, so I am sure that all the truckers in the world will be studying it over their tea. It gives good information about what they should and should not do, but it also demonstrates how incredibly complicated the system is. The first thing it says is:

“Get ‘border ready’ … Get ready before you reach Kent”—


I suppose that depends which direction you are going in. But, under the heading “Common Transit Convention movements”—I am not going to read out the whole document because we would be here all night—the document indicates that a good debate that your Lordships held two or three weeks ago seems to have delivered something that may actually be of help to the importers and exporters. Maybe this is a lesson that the Government, who may change after the election, want to be remembered by this wonderful document, which has taken them two or three years to produce. However, there it is, and I look forward to the press comments saying how wonderful it is. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for securing this debate, and I return to issues that I have previously raised with the Minister, particularly about biosecurity and the impacts on small and medium-sized enterprises through the operation of these inland sites. I have three points to make.

First—perhaps the Minister can provide information on this—I have been speaking to the environmental horticulture industry and I declare that, along with the Industry and Parliament Trust, I have a fellowship with the Horticultural Trades Association. What seems to have settled into the pattern for the environmental horticulture sector is that it is seeing large numbers of lorry loads being simply waved through and not being subjected to any checks. I am well aware of the desire to make sure there is not too much obstruction at the border, but there is a general feeling, which I will come back to later, that Sevington does not have enough space or staff capacity at the right times and it is impossible to carry out the biosecurity checks that were previously done on-site when goods arrived at nurseries and other places. That presents a serious biosecurity risk, when we know the pests and diseases that potentially can be imported from the continent. There are also concerns about goods coming from other places.

Secondly, I refer to the comments made in the past few days by the director-general of the Institute of Export and International Trade, which particularly looks at the food aspects. He referred to

“businesses left in the dark with vital information provided much too late, the systems being introduced aren’t working properly. Businesses are frustrated, hauliers are angry and fresh produce has gone off due to repeated delays”.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, I am not going to read out an enormous amount of detail here, but it is worth people in general knowing that, on 17 May, Defra issued a series of updates. These indicated that medium-risk plant products will now be split into two categories: “Medium Risk A”, which need phytosanitary certificate and pre-notification, and “Medium Risk B”, which need a phytosanitary certificate but no pre-notification. So far, only certain fruit, such as quince and stone fruit, are in the latter category; spinach leaves have just moved from the “Low Risk” to the “Medium Risk A” category. We have to look at the usage and what is happening to the facilities created by the instrument that we are discussing and think of how difficult it is for people to manage this system when those kinds of things are happening.

Finally, again referring to Sevington, I want to mention issues that were raised by the Dover port authority at the end of March but that still very much apply. Now that we have had some time for the facility at Sevington to be in operation, perhaps the Minister can comment on the way in which it is going. There was great concern about whether Sevington had sufficient capacity to be able to handle products of animal origin. The reports I am hearing suggest that many lorry loads are either being waved through or ending up having to wait for long periods, which for animal products is a serious issue.

We are going into an election period. I guess that these issues are probably not going to get much of an airing for six weeks or so, but they are continuing issues that will need to be grappled with by whoever is in government and by an industry sector that is giving strong indications that the Government’s systems are causing it to struggle enormously with getting in the goods it needs.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

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.