Following months of media coverage of the previous government’s rollout of its post-Brexit border control strategy – including reports of border delays, food going to waste and poor conditions at Britain’s borders – it’s no surprise Labour had inherited a trade policy trainwreck.

But the full scale of it all came to public attention the past few days after analysis of a letter sent by the SPS Certification Working Group, which represents 30 trade bodies covering £100bn worth of the UK’s food supply, to new Defra secretary Steve Reed, showed just how chaotic the current state of affairs is.

The group warned of multiple challenges at the UK’s borders, where documentation and physical checks on EU goods began taking place earlier this year, as part of the Conservative government’s Border Target Operating Model (BTOM).

At Sevington – the government-funded facility processing goods entering Britain via Dover – industry is concerned about food safety and biosecurity breaches, claiming the border control post there, and its staff, is ill-equipped to handle certain temperature-controlled foods.

The SPS group also claimed imported food coming into the UK through the various Brexit border posts was being sent back to Europe to be tested due to a lack of laboratory capacity, which was causing further food waste and delivery delays.

Goods entering Britain going to EU

Among nearly 20 key issues highlighted by the industry, there were also complaints that the opening hours of most BCPs are too restricted, and that there are no 24/7 helplines for importers needing assistance.

The letter also revealed evidence of how much more of the Brexit brunt small businesses are carrying versus big companies. SMEs importing EU goods are paying up to 13 times more charges per tonne than their bigger counterparts, as The Grocer reported last week.

The main problem remains with the common user charge (CUC), a fixed fee on goods entering Britain via the port of Dover and the Eurotunnel. The CUC would be more widely accepted if it wasn’t for the fact it is disproportionately impacting small businesses, of which the UK’s food supply chain is largely made up of, and if the checks were actually taking place, which according to several traders are not – with border officials reportedly waving truckloads in without checking to avoid more queues and delays.

While all this goes on, there are border control posts across the country sitting empty right now due to poor infrastructure planning and a series of u-turns by government, which has pared back the scale of initially proposed checks on EU goods.

This includes a £2.3m border inspection facility at Poole, where only two checks have been conducted since its inauguration because of a series of policy shifts that saw a pare-back of originally proposed physical checks. There’s also the £25m border control post at Portsmouth International Port, which may end up torn down, as it is becoming an “untenable drain” on the city’s finances, as per the council chief.

The list of inaptitude-driven issues goes on and on. The Conservative government knew of them – indeed was warned by industry many of them would happen – and yet did next to nothing to prevent or fix them ahead of the general election.

What is the Tory Brexit legacy? 

It is not yet entirely clear how Keir Starmer’s government will address border trade challenges. Sure, there has been a pledge to rekindle relations with the EU and pursue a vet deal that would largely get rid of physical checks and exports paperwork. But would this solve the issue of the common user charge, which is currently being slapped on businesses regardless of whether their goods are checked or not?

If the CUC is binned, how will Defra pay back these publicly funded facilities? And what of all the other BCPs that are barely functioning as is, and of the people hired to work in them?

There are a lot of unanswered questions. Labour minister Reed and his counterpart, business and trade secretary Jonathan Reynolds, will certainly face mounting pressure from industry to address them urgently and prevent a full meltdown at Britain’s borders.

This also raises a rather fundamental question: what is the Tories’ Brexit legacy? This is certainly not what David Cameron envisioned when he called for the referendum. It is miles away from the path Theresa May would have liked things to go down. It’s also not even close to Boris Johnson’s no-deal, red tape-free Brexit dream. So the question might remain unanswered.

Now Labour must work closely with industry to clean up the Tory mess. And they need to do it quickly, before the damage becomes irreversible.

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