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Video report from ITV News business and economics editor Joel Hills
It’s called Operation Stack for a reason
From the first lights of this morning 33 miles of the M20 turned into a truck park.
The eastbound road has capacity for 3,000 vehicles. Tonight, there are 945 and counting.
Previously, the prime minister seemed strangely unaware of the volume of traffic that was piling up.
At your press conference this afternoon, Boris johnson told reporters there were 174 trucks parked.
At the time I was speaking Kent Highways was telling me that there were 500 in the queues and that number has increased even more.
Johnson also said the delays “only occurred in Dover”, which handles “only 20%” of the goods shipped from the UK to the EU. Surprisingly, he did not mention Eurotunnel.
The Channel Tunnel accounts for another 26% of trade between the UK and the EU, according to a recent analysis by EY.
Almost half of the products we export to the EU come from Dover and Folkestone. Didn’t the prime minister know this? Was he being selective? Either way, he drastically underestimated the magnitude of the problem.
A solution was discussed a few hours ago, but France appears to be insisting on a stricter testing regime for truck drivers than the British government is willing to accept.
The French are not prepared to accept lateral flow tests, which can be processed in 30 minutes. They want PCR tests, which are more reliable but take at least a day to process.
Supermarkets insist that you can shop with confidence and that your Christmas dinner is safe. The food you need is on the shelves or on the way.
But if the outage extends to Wednesdays, there will be supply shortages, of fresh fruits and vegetables in particular, which are out of season in the UK.
A strawberry lasts for about nine days after being picked. Transporting strawberries from Spain to UK supermarket shelves typically takes up to five days.
A few days of delays at the border shorten the shelf life of a strawberry and can make it nearly impossible to sell.
If politicians can find common ground in the next 24 hours, Port of Dover is fully confident that the truck queues will clear within hours and this problem will go away.
If you can’t, expect the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables to drop after Christmas.
