Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many additional (1) customs, and (2) immigration, personnel are being recruited at each of the Welsh ports to deal with any additional paperwork and interviews as a result of the UK's departure from the EU.

Border Force resource and staffing requirements are continually reviewed, and we deploy resources flexibly as and when they are required. Border Force will continue to build a pipeline of resource to flexibly respond to future requirements.

We have already delivered a largescale recruitment and training exercise, which has seen an uplift of permanent staff, bringing the number of full-time equivalent Border Force staff to over 8,700 from c7,700 in March 2018. This includes a multi-disciplinary Readiness Task Force (RTF) of c.300 officers, which is available to deploy across the UK at short notice to deal with emerging issues and peaks in demand.

We are working closely across government to ensure we have the necessary trained staff, processes and infrastructure in place to respond to the increased custom checks from January in 2021.