Import checks delay shows government is making up Brexit ‘plan’ as it goes

Even the Grand Old Duke of York’s 10,000 men had their limits. They would probably have died of exhaustion had they served under Boris Johnson’s command. 

So you can’t blame the food sector for growing weary as they are marched back and forth by a government still searching for Brexit’s sunlit uplands.

On the one hand there was a collective sigh of relief when Brexit general Jacob Rees-Mogg revealed that checks on EU imports, due to come into force on 1 July, would be delayed for a fourth time. But there is a growing backlash over whether this cycle of misery for food and drink companies will ever come to an end.

What exactly is the end game and does the government itself have any idea how things will play out?

The answer to that seems to be a resounding “no” judging by the reaction from suppliers who took part in talks with Defra yesterday. They were hoping – in vain – to be briefed on what they should do next, having spent the past few months spending time and money getting geared up for a deadline that has now come and gone.

“We all want to know what the government plan is. We wanted to get the detail,” says Richard Harrow, CEO of the British Frozen Food Federation. “But it is apparent that there is no plan at all.”

Officials from one border facility in Kent were among those making their feelings clear. They apparently asked Defra officials if they should bring in the bulldozers to demolish the facilities that have been prepared at great expense to process the new checks, now delayed until at least the end of next year.

It’s not just the infrastructure either, but the thousands of staff who have been employed to try to get the industry ready for the government imposed changes that most didn’t want. Many of them are now wondering if they will still have a job at the end of the week.

While there was a sense of relief in many quarters that the disruption the checks will inevitably bring has been postponed, the industry is also quite rightly asking whether this shambles will ever end.

And what has added insult to injury is the government’s attempt to dress this up as some sort of carefully considered masterplan.

Rees-Mogg said in his statement that rather than bringing in the checks as planned, “the government is accelerating our transformative programme to digitise Britain’s borders, harnessing new technologies and data to reduce friction and costs for businesses and consumers”.

He added: “This is a new approach for a new era, as Britain maximises the benefits of leaving the EU and puts in place the right policies for our trade with the whole world.”

So the UK continues to rely on EU officials to oversee food safety. British exporters face a wall of red tape while their European counterparts are waved past mothballed checkpoints. Hardly a great Brexit success. 

“The truth is everyone expected this, but everyone knows it’s the wrong thing to do,” says one leading supplier source.

“It’s convenient for sure, as some aren’t ready. Big ports are ready. Smaller ones not and on the EU side, a lot of smaller EU businesses exporting aren’t ready.

“But the asymmetry is ridiculous and insulting. If this is what taking back control is all about – making British suppliers pay extra to export while European suppliers pay nothing to get food into this country – heaven help us.”

Even trade bodies who welcomed the delay argued it was the right decision carried out for the wrong reason.

After coming up with a blank sheet so far, the government is promising more details of its plan in the autumn.

Forgive suppliers if they don’t get too carried away with expectation. They’ve been marched up and down the proverbial hill so many times, they are no doubt growing accustomed to limbo.