Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many (a) applications have been made and (b) how much funding has been issued to customs intermediaries by HMRC.

In total, the Government has now made £84 million available to support the customs intermediary sector to deal with EU trade after 2020.

The initial £34 million has been fully allocated with over 4,000 grant offers for the recruitment and training of agents, improved software and hardware capability for businesses and supporting the establishment of the customs academy. The Government opened an additional £50 million of funding on 29 July and since then it has received over 1,300 applications totalling £18.4m.

Businesses are applying enthusiastically, and funding is still available. The Government encourages industry to take advantage of this support to expand.