My Lords, these amendments are designed to concentrate the Government’s mind and to get some answers. I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, about Holyhead. The situation is very similar to that at Dover. When the Government try to close down the debate, I remind them that the areas expressing extreme concern to us about the lack of preparedness are the ones that have loyally voted Conservative over a long period, and they will be particularly worried that their concerns are not being heard with due seriousness in this Chamber.
The sort of Brexit that we get will of course have a major impact on our ports. They might have to change the way that they process goods twice: once possibly for the transition period and once for the end game, whatever that is.
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Noble Lords expressed concern about the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, but they need to be told that the information he gave us was based on specific statistics and calculations by the port authorities and the haulage business in general. These are not scare tactics by any campaign group; they are the conclusions of the industry itself. Indeed, I would say that it is an industry in which there were, at the
beginning, a lot of supporters for the concept of voting to leave the EU. However, the reality of the situation and the lack of preparation for what is coming has changed their minds. The words of the representatives of the Port of Dover suggest that any delays at the port—and there are bound to be delays—are likely to make Operation Stack look like a minor queue at the traffic lights. For the modern way of doing business—such as just-in-time deliveries and the crossing of the border by things such as car parts, which cross it many times —this makes the whole situation much more critical.
For 30 years, we have had minimal customs checks based mainly on an intelligence-based system of doing business. Basically, the French customs told us in advance when, for example, lorries were coming through that needed to be checked and vice versa. That will no longer be possible after Brexit, unless we remain part of the customs union. People and goods were stopped by exception. News emerged last week that the UK is being pursued because of our failure to control Chinese imports, which have been coming into this country for years at an artificially low rate and then being immediately re-exported to Europe. That we cannot control what we are doing already bodes very badly for the future, when things will get much more complex. There is little or no evidence of progress so far, and HMRC has stated that it will take years rather than months—possibly up to five years—to install a new system.
I want to finish by talking about something that has hardly been mentioned here: the cost to companies. Companies are horrified by the systems that they will have to put in place. Remember, if you are a small or medium-sized company that trades only with Europe, you have not had to worry about the customs process. Now, such companies will have to put in place, or prepare to put in place in the future, a whole new system, which will cost them dear and is causing them a great deal of concern. The Government need to provide some answers for these companies quickly.