UK Border Strategy: moving goods and people

 

The Government’s 2025 UK Border Strategy sets out how it plans to improve the way people and goods can move across international borders given Brexit and the longer structural changes in world trade.

As a welcome foretaste of what one hopes will continue, this is a pan-department strategy involving the Home Office, DEFRA and the Treasury/HMRC.

The strategy sets out the type of border which they would wish to create, the operating model for that border, the approach to working with the border industry and users to design and deliver this and the changes that will need to be made in government and industry to implement it.

It is a big ask and set out under six “transformations”:

1. Develop a co-ordinated user-centric government approach to border design and delivery which works in partnership with industry and enables border innovation
   
2. Bring together government’s collection, assurance and use of border data to provide a comprehensive and holistic view of data at the border
   
3. Establish resilient ‘ports of the future’ at border crossing points to make the experience smoother and more secure for passengers and traders, while better protecting the public and environment
   
4. Use upstream compliance to move processes away from the actual frontier where appropriate, both for passengers and traders
   
5. Build the capability of staff and the border industry responsible for delivering border processes, particularly in an environment of greater automation; and simplify communications with border users to improve their experience
   
6. Shape the future development of borders worldwide, to promote the UK’s interests and facilitate end-to-end trade and travel.

Written broadly like that, much seems just aspirational or even obvious “apple pie” but the strategy goes into further detail (otherwise it would be a boring 84 pages) and initial work on understanding what needs to be done is already under way.

It is not a small ask: 21 million people travelled through our ports and 255 million through our airports in 2019.  383 million tonnes of international freight were handled at ports with a smaller, but not insignificant, amount at airports and via the Channel Tunnel.

Reductions in red-tape can’t be done one sided: every export from the UK is an import somewhere else and vice versa.  But systems can be made easier and much of the strategy relies on better IT.  Key is simplifying systems where they can be simplified, ensuring that information does not need to be entered multiple times, better use of technology to track goods with information flow-through, “upstreaming” of information so that it doesn’t need to be entered at the ports and better guidance to the end-users.  None of this is impossible, much of the technology already exists and other countries such as Singapore and New Zealand are already leaders in this field.

From a business view point it all looks good in theory although whether it can made simple enough to attract more SMEs into international trade remains to be seen.  Simplification helps but simplification comes with a trade in choices that can be made by business.  “One-size-fits-all” is simple but hurts those where the size doesn’t fit, whereas a range of tailored solutions fits more, but at the expense of complexity.  This is a challenge which the process designers will need to face head on and it is welcome, therefore, that there is an undertaking to work with users (read: passengers and businesses) in realising the strategy.

One potential stumbling block will be the extent to systems can be integrated with other countries’ ports.   There is little in the strategy about this.  New systems will be most attractive if they not only ensure a freer-flow of goods at the UK end but also at the originating or destination ports at the other.  However, any such agreements between countries are slow in realisation and it may be that the only approach here is incremental. 

There is mention too of the Government’s commitment to ten new freeports.  Freeports haven’t really been that successful in the recent past.  The commitment was however made before the Brexit withdrawal negotiations were complete and I wonder is there is a bonded-warehouse type-solution possible here to the “Percy Pig” type issues.  After all, that debacle must strike everybody (apart from those collecting the tariffs) as ludicrous.

I can’t lose sight however of the fact that the strategy also covers passengers as well as goods.  I would be the first to admit that the systems here need to be improved: airports, in particular, are an experience which few people love.  It is quite possible to spend three times as
long in the airport as one does on the actual flight.  Watching old films, I am always amazed how passengers handed over their luggage at the Victoria Air Terminal, boarded their coach, had the passports checked on the coach whilst on the way to Heathrow, and the coach drove right up to the steps of the plane. It’s the sort of seamless journey one can only dream about now.

However, although I am quite in favour of the goods I am exporting being tracked by technology from cradle to grave, I have considerable worries over more technology (e-passports) being rolled out to track people.  This is, I appreciate, a particularly British concern and maybe a generational one.  But any strategy is going to have to cope with the in-built suspicions of the UK to the surveillance society.

The consultation on the strategy is closed, but there is a lot of input that the Government is going to need if the strategy is going to work.  The Government has said this is to a team-exercise:  it is up to you and me, as business and individuals, to frame it in way which suits us.

(Malcolm Bacchus is an independent member of HMRC’s Administrative Burdens Advisory Board.  The views here are his own and do not seek to represent any official views.)