Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Neville-Rolfe on 22 November 2023 (HL136), whether they received representations from businesses and business groups that they would need all the information to prepare for the Border Target Operating Model at least six months or a year before implementation.

The Government initially published a draft model in April 2023. The purpose of the draft was to gather feedback from businesses to enable the Government to make changes based on their representations. Following this, the Government moved some of the implementation milestones in the final Border Target Operating Model in order to give businesses more time to prepare. The final Border Target Operating Model was published in August 2023 which gives businesses sufficient time to prepare ahead of the planned timetable. The first implementation milestone (health certificates) is at the end of January 2024, followed by a physical checking regime at the end of April 2024 and then safety and security checks in October 2024.