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The government must quadruple the number of customs officers in the UK to ensure that companies struggling with the mountains of Brexit red tape do not “buckle” under pressure, the Labor Party said in a letter to Michael Gove.
Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Rachel Reeves told Gove that industry figures showing only 12,000 customs officers have been trained are well below the 50,000 the government accepted last February that it would be needed to deal with Brexit.
“Can you please … let me know what the government is doing to address this deficit as soon as possible, so companies don’t have to deal with any more disruptions?” she wrote.
Reeves’ letter comes as existing freight forwarders, freight forwarders and customs brokers say companies are struggling with the new trade regime.
Customs agents are the private operators who are hired to do the paperwork for the companies and are separated from the army of officials recruited by HRMC to verify that the documents are in order.
Last February, Gove told the Commons that he would keep his promise to recruit the 50,000 officers estimated to be needed in six months.
But in November, Bloomberg reported that the £ 84 million fund to train agents was running low even though it was needed at the end of the Brexit transition period.
“What steps is the government taking to address this and how will it support businesses as they face huge amounts of new red tape and disruptions?” Reeves wrote.
“We are all in the business of British business prospering under the new trade relationship between the UK and the EU. As carriers and the industries they support give way to unprecedented bureaucracy through no fault of their own, they urgently need a practical government support plan. ”
In the past, the government has estimated that 147,000 companies trading internationally have no prior customs experience because they have only sold products to EU states.
Several companies told The Guardian they have had to wait days for a response from HMRC to customs inquiries. Others have recounted how businesses entered Brexit with few clues about how complicated the new customs declarations, transit and regulatory certification, and VAT rules would be.
Freight forwarder Colin Jeffries called it an “absolute carnage” as customers did not know what they had to do to trade and EU carriers were rejecting UK deliveries due to new financial guarantee requirements for trucks loaded with goods.
