Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the potential risk of smuggling through Welsh ports after the end of the transition period; and what steps the Government it taking to mitigate that risk.

The UK has now left the EU, providing a once in a generation opportunity to take back control and strengthen the security of the UK border as a whole.

In December, the Government announced a plan to strengthen our border security. This included introducing the collection of pre-arrival goods data to stop smuggling and enable us to more effectively target illicit commodities travelling from the EU to the UK, the power to stop EU criminals at the border once we have ended free movement, the phasing out the use of European ID cards that are regularly used fraudulently given their insecurity compared to passports as well as introducing Electronic Travel Authorisation to provide an enhanced ability to screen arrivals and block threats from entering the UK.