Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will repeat their modelling of (1) the inflationary impact of the Border Target Operating Model, and (2) the additional cost to be incurred by businesses resulting from the Border Target Operating Model, once a decision on a Common User Charge is published; and if so, whether they will publish any such further modelling.

The Government’s modelling of the inflationary impact of the Border Target Operating Model was based on an academically peer-reviewed food price inflation model and focused on quantifying the impact on relevant non-tariff measures - policy measures likely to have an economic impact on international trade as they affect the price or quantity of traded products. The food price inflation model is available here: https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/128070/Final%20Report_Defra_December%202021.pdf?sequence=2.

The non-tariff measures analysed included those related to checks (for example the cost of pre-notification, the cost of Export Health Certificates and port fees) as well as upstream impacts (for example administrative processing time, training, certificates of origin and security deposits or guarantees when moving agricultural goods under licence).

We used a range of data sources to quantify and assess the relative impact of the different non-tariff measures associated with the Border Target Operating Model. The data included commercially sensitive information that would not be appropriate to put into the public domain, and in accordance with the principles of statistical propriety we cannot publish a partial explanation that includes only the publicly available sources.

We will publish our plans for the Common User Charge shortly. The Common User Charge will apply to Government-run Border Control Posts in England and may be extended to include other Government-run Border Control Posts across Great Britain once infrastructure plans have been finalised. We do not expect to have to amend our calculation of inflationary impact following publication of these plans.