Seaborne Freight

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

As my hon. Friend knows, I have had discussions with the leader of Thanet District Council over the past few days, and I have been clear that there is a strong case to include Ramsgate port in the resilience work being done in Kent to prepare for a potential no-deal Brexit. We must also be mindful of the council’s financial position and ensure that it is not exposed to financial risk as a result of the broader resilience work happening across Kent.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Questions remain about the legality of all three contracts for additional ferry capacity. The Government used an accelerated procurement process to award the contract to Seaborne Freight, which can be done only in urgent and unforeseeable circumstances. The Department said that the circumstances were the

“unexpected and unforeseeable limitations on the extent to which the market had… been able to”

put “in place contingency plans” for a no-deal Brexit. Given that the Government have consistently provided reassurances that that there will not be a no-deal Brexit, how was it “unexpected and unforeseeable” that the market was unable or unwilling to put in place contingency plans for this scenario?

[Chris Grayling]

The particular prompt for this procurement exercise was a change in the assumptions last autumn about the level of potential disruption around the channel ports. That prompted us to look again at what the capacity requirements might be to maintain supply of essential services into the United Kingdom, particularly for the NHS. It would be prudent for any Government in such a position to plan for all eventualities. I want the UK to leave the European Union with an agreement, and we are working hard to achieve that, but we would not be doing our job properly if we were not preparing for all eventualities.