Our ports haven't changed, it's not like we have less space in Dover now than we did 5 years ago.
The nature of ro-ro traffic or logistics involved haven't changed.
The customs/SPs procedures for non-EU members haven't fundamentally changed.
/2
If you had asked someone in 2015 to outline the risks related to moving fresh products from the EU to the UK under an FTA/no-deal, they would have told you.
/3
The current situation results purely from:
Known risks and issues ➕
Bad time management ➕
Tight deadline
which leads to ⬇️
A complete mess.
/4
✅Are we all going to starve?
No.
✅Are we going to see disruption and potentially some short-term shortages?
Very likely.
✅Are prices about to go up?
Very likely.
/5
✅Will there be a lot of really stressed and sleep-deprived ppl in the logistics/customs/retail sector?
You better believe it.
✅Is this a situation the private sector should be in? Challenges the private sector should have to deal with?
No.
/6
✅Could this stress and panic have been avoided if we had prepared on time?
Yes, though prices would have still gone up.
/ends
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First stop Canada. Yes, we rolled it over and agreed to re-negotiate. That’s great (although doesn’t really give us full continuity). But it’s a success.
And then there is this 👇
/2
Women’s economic empowerment and the environment - two of the areas where FTA provisions are pretty much "nice to have": don’t change much, are on best endeavours principle and the work needs to anyway be done domestically by each party.
/3
I like this approach - sign a continuity deal and commit to negotiating a proper one later on.
Allows you to maintain some sort of continuity but acknowledges that the EU deal is not necessarily fit for purpose for the UK-Canada trade relationship.
More importantly, this removes the Jan deadline for negotiating a proper FTA. Until you do, the roll-over applies. Meaning parties have more time to ensure the new deal is exactly what they want it to be.
/2
The downside, of course, yet another deal for the UK to negotiate. While LT can talk about the UK having large numbers of negotiators, few of them have proper experience and we will still be somewhat overstretch
/3
SME chapters very rarely (if ever) include provisions that really require an FTA - it's mostly things both sides could and should do (irrespective of a deal).
Quick background: upgrading CHIEF (current system) to CDS predates Brexit. Introducing EU's new customs legislation in 2016 meant that new functionality required. CHIEF was also getting old and generally needed a revamp.
/2
So CDS was supposed to be ready in 2018. HMRC announced it will launch it in August 2018 and gradually move traders from CHIEF to CDS batch by batch.
that stood in the way of a compromise. Perhaps it was just the Brexit myth (sovereignty etc) or once again an example of this Gov talking itself into a corner.
I'll be very interested to see whether the UK will indeed "cave".
/2
As smn tweeted yesterday.
We've known for a while that there will need to be some movement on both sides for a deal to be reached - it's not possible for both sides to keep their current red lines.
/3