Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Neville-Rolfe on 14 March (HL2919), whether the inflationary impact model will be updated on the basis of (1) the announced Common User Charge, and (2) the application of the Common User Charge to the additional fruit and vegetables that have been classified as medium rather than low risk.

The approach and plans set out within the Border Target Operating Model (BTOM) remain unchanged. We will continue to support business readiness throughout the implementation of checks and take a sensible pragmatic approach to enforcement.

The government’s consumer food price inflation model for the BTOM included an assessment of policy measures likely to affect the cost and/or quantity of traded products, including the Government-run BCP operating costs that will be recovered via a Common User Charge. Estimates of the cost and impact of the Charge were included in the modelling of the inflationary impact of the BTOM and we stand by these estimates.

This data includes a mix of published and unpublished commercially sensitive data sources. To publish only a partial picture of that data would not be in keeping with statistical propriety.