Thread by @Joe_Mayes

How’s the effort going to train 50,000 customs agents for Brexit?

Reports from the front-line… 1/

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Coronavirus has hampered the recruitment drive.

@BIFA – one of the organisations running courses sponsored by a £34m gov fund – has suspended classroom training till June, and online registrations are down 80% since Feb 2/

“This is all blown out the water by the virus,” said Robert Keen (@BIFA_DG), director-general of BIFA. “Everybody is fighting to keep their businesses going.” 3/

The gov set up a UK Customs Academy in Sep last year to provide online training, but the academy declined to say how many people had been trained.

`There is a significantly long way to go,’ said Marco Forgione, DG of the Institute of Export, which helps run the program 4/

Forgione said 50,000 is likely a conservative estimate of how many agents needed.

He also said people made redundant by coronavirus should re-train as customs professionals.

`In a lockdown world, they should be using this time to acquire the skills, get the qualifications' 5/

Another sign worrying industry – a major logistics group gave proposals to the Treasury on Mar 17 about organizing a mass customs education campaign.

More than a month later, they’d had no reply.

We wrote earlier about how virus is sapping Whitehall 6/
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

“My impression is it has come to a full stop,” said Rod McKenzie (@RHARodMcKenzie), managing director of policy and public affairs at the Road Haulage Association. He expressed surprised he hadn’t seen any job ads for customs agents. “Nothing is happening” 7/

Though also signs gov recognises scale of problem – FT follows up today on Gove’s comments to Brexit Committee about *another* customs academy, perhaps based in Kent 8/
ft.com/content/3c1ae9…

Why does this matter?

When Britain leaves the EU’s customs union, it’ll need to handle ~200m extra customs declarations a year, per industry estimates

These will be required whether there’s a UK-EU trade deal or not 9/

And if the docs can’t be processed, there’s the risk of border disruption – goods help up at ports, queues in Dover, supply chains hit… when firms will still be recovering from the virus.

Or firms just won’t bother trading with the EU because of the new cost and hassle 10/

What does the government say?

“The U.K. has a well-established industry of customs intermediaries who serve British businesses trading outside the EU,” HMRC said in a statement 11/

HMRC also said `thousands’ of agents, freight forwarders and parcel operators had used the 34 million-pound fund to improve their IT hardware and train staff.

They didn't give a more specific figure than `thousands', or how that breaks down 12/

Another instructive call with a major freight forwarder in Dover this morning.

I ask how the government-supported training of agents is going.

``Are they?’’ comes the reply. ``We have no knowledge of any government help’’ 13/

Given all that, don’t be surprised if the 50k customs agents target becomes the new 100k coronavirus tests target in the back-half of 2020 – and if you’re looking for a job, there could be worse ideas… ends/

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…