London, UK: The Road Haulage Association has urged the government to help with customs agents recruitment and training, pointing out that industry would need 50,000 more customs agents to process the extra paperwork after the Brexit transition period.
Richard Burnett, chief executive of the RHA, told the Financial Times that a Canada-style trade deal – which would eliminate most tariffs but would still involve customs declarations – could lead to an extra 200m customs declarations a year.
He said that a customs agent, fully trained and experienced in dealing with HMRC procedures, can typically deal with about 20 customs clearances a day, suggesting around 50,000 new staff would be needed.
Michael Gove, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who is responsible for readying the country for full Brexit at the end of the year, confirmed in parliament on Thursday afternoon that the RHA estimated 50,000 new recruits would be needed in the next six months.
Burnett said that traders were still waiting to hear from ministers exactly what processes they needed to prepare for on January 1 and they also needed financial assistance to help recruit staff.
He stressed that exporters would have to start recruiting staff well ahead of New Year’s Day, incurring an upfront hit while the customs agents sat twiddling their thumbs.
“This is a huge upfront hit for firms and the Government must help,” the RHA said in a Tweet.
Agents in Dover who deal with lorries coming in from the Ukraine, Turkey and other non-EU countries have warned that the skills base around customs disappeared with the creation of the single market in 1991, with just a handful of customs agents now operating in offices in Dover.
Government sources have said the new recruits would largely be “intermediaries”, agents who help businesses process their export and import paperwork with HMRC. The tax authorities will also recruit government agents to process the paperwork and guard against tariff evasion on borders.
The Freight Transport Association and the RHA have been pressing the government for the past three years to wake up to the realities of a hard Brexit. The FTA said Thursday’s publication of the government’s negotiating goals gave some “hope” in that it provided confirmation that the government was not pursuing frictionless trade.
However, it called for “more ambition” to help road, aviation and rail transport prepare to minimise the disruption from 1 January. “Over recent months, the FTA has repeatedly requested the UK government prioritise the needs of logistics in its negotiations around the future trading relationship with the EU or risk a devastating effect on the UK’s highly interconnected supply chain.”
The FTA has also warned of knock-on effects on ‘UK plc’s’ future productivity, and on the economy as a whole but these concerns seem to have been overlooked,” it said in a statement.
