Brexit: a disaster in the making

By Richard North - January 30, 2024

Tomorrow, the last day of the month, after no fewer than five postponements, the UK government has finally got its act together and is to introduce a comprehensive border control system for the import of animal and plant products (the so-called sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regime).

For the first time since the implementation of the Single Market Act and the progressive removal of border controls between (the) European Community member states, this regime will apply to goods from (now) EU member states and also Efta/EEA countries, as well as the rest of the world (RoW) countries, to which controls already apply.

The new regime has been given the grandiose label of the BOrder TargeT Operating Model which we first saw in draft in April last year. With a little bit of licence, it could be called “The BOTTOM” – roughly approximating what many traders think of it.

The introduction of the scheme is ostensibly to be phased, with three phases. The first, which starts on 31 January (delayed from October last year), requires health certification on imports of medium risk animal products, plants, plant products and high risk food and feed of nonanimal origin from the EU. At the same time, previous pre-notification requirements for low risk plant and plant products from the EU are removed.

Three months later, on 30 April, documentary and risk-based identity and physical checks on medium risk animal products, plants, plant products and high risk food and feed of non-animal origin from the EU will commence.

Up to press, such limited inspections of EU-originating goods have been conducted at their destinations, but from this date, all inspections will be carried out at the Border Control Posts (BCPs), some of which – built especially to deal with EU traffic – have been standing idle for years.

The process of bringing EU trade into the fold has been combined with a start to simplifying imports from non-EU countries. Initially, this will include the removal of health certification and routine checks on low risk animal products, plants, plant products as well as reduction in physical and identity check levels on medium-risk animal products.

This, undoubtedly, is to make the new system WTO-compliant, where different schemes applied to the RoW and EU/EEA states would leave the UK open to complaints and dispute proceedings followed by sanctions in the case of non-compliance with any rulings.

Then, from 31 October, there will be a new requirement for Safety and Security declarations, applicable to all imports into Great Britain (but not Northern Ireland) from the EU and from other territories where the waiver currently applies.

At the same time, or so the government claims, there will be introduced a reduced dataset for imports alongside the use of the UK’s Single Trade Window. This, supposedly, will remove duplication “where possible” across different pre-arrival datasets – such as pre-lodged customs declarations – and will provide a “single digital gateway” for users to provide the data needed to trade and apply for licences and authorisations for trusted trader schemes.

At its very best, this new unified system represents a huge missed opportunity to unify and simplify the official food safety system in this country, re-unifying a system fragmented by EU law, with the ridiculous imposition of veterinarians to carry out food safety functions, about which I have written endlessly, and on which Pete currently has a few words to say.

Apart from failing to address ongoing problems the model perpetuates all the weaknesses that we identified in the draft, and in particular a system for independent verification of food safety standards in the countries which export foods to us.

But these things apart – to which I will, no doubt return – by its own admission, the system is as yet far from complete. For its full functionality, it relies firstly on the government’s yet-to-be-completed Single Trade Window which, in turn, is the gateway system for the proposed Trusted Trader scheme, which will aim to simplify export procedures.

The trouble is that that the Single Trade Window is yet another government IT scheme, fronted by HMRC at a notional cost of £180 million

The government is being remarkably coy about the identity of the software developers but much of the design work seems to be vested in a Cabinet Office in-house team, with 2023 having been allocated for building and preliminary user testing, prior to its first public use this year.

Coincidentally, the EU is also developing a “single window” system, and tells us that it has already devoted ten years to pilot projects and almost four years to preparation and negotiation. A partial system has been running in pilot mode since 2017 and the first phase is not due to come into effect until 2025, with the second phase scheduled for 2031.

Yet the UK government seem to think that, having spent just a year on development, it can have the system running this year – a target already considered hopelessly ambitious, requiring five to seven years to implement.

This is despite the added complications of having to integrate systems from three separate government departments – Defra, the Home Office and HMRC – while providing an interface between the government’s forthcoming (already problematical) CDS system, and commercial software used by exporters and agents.

Incidentally, the first nation successfully to operate a Single Window system is Singapore. The system, called TradeNet was conceptualised in 1986. The planning and development were carried out from 1987 to 1988 and the first version was rolled out on 1 Jan 1989 with a group of 50 pilot users, becoming fully operational in 1991, with 3,000 subscribers.

Already, the trade press is sounding the alarm. With the Food Manufacturing magazine heading its latest piece “New UK border controls may cause anarchy”. The long-awaited changes to border controls, it says, “may cause significant disruption to trade if suppliers in the EU are not sufficiently prepared”.

The online Politico is even less sanguine, headlining “Britain’s Brexit border is finally here. No one is happy”, while telling us that: “Checks on EU exports to the U.K. have been repeatedly delayed — but the coming months will test firms who fear soaring costs and fresh disruption to supply chains”.

Yet these and other journals only deal with the short-term effects, Food Manufacturing for instance warning that the Sevington BCP in Kent, intended to be an inland border facility for heavy goods vehicles post-Brexit, is still not fully operational.

The plan, it seems, was that the Sevington BCP would be used for import checks for the port of Dover – often known as the “Gateway to Europe”. The fact that it is not yet being used, coupled with potential staffing issues, could again result in delays to checks on goods and delay in delivery to the ultimate customer.

This, though, is a mere detail compared to what is to come. While the media remain focused on the short term, none seem to have realised that the government is only ready, nearly eight years after the Brexit referendum, to launch a partial system that is intrinsically reliant on an as yet unfinished and untested computer system.

With the memory of the Post Office’s “Horizon” programme fresh in everybody’s minds, we could well be on the verge of a systems failure that puts even that disaster in the shade, threatening turmoil in the UK’s trading system that could cost billions.

As the song says, “the best is yet to come”.