Mr. Nigel Mills:

Here are my couple of points. Obviously, there has been a lot of preparation done, mainly to try make sure that hauliers have got the paperwork and that is checked and confirmed before they try to use it anywhere near Dover. This is to try and avoid a truck starting to be allowed into France blocking the port for all those who have got the right paperwork. In the UK, it is likely that we will phase in all our new controls over a six-month period. We will not be holding over the EU and will be prepared to allow some faith in transition at the start of the new year. Perhaps that would be a positive step for the EU if negotiations succeed or fail, if the EU could make a similar gesture to try and avoid it being a real mess in Calais or, even, in Northern Ireland. There will need to be some phasing in of these rules in the early part.

I have no idea whether President-elect Biden has had any influence on this. My main suspicion would be that we knew we definitely had to come up with a workable solution for most of these issues in the protocol. That got tied up in the politics of the negotiation and therefore took a lot longer and perhaps some, not quite threats but, pointing out that if we did not agree to this then we would not be allowed to do that between the mainland and Northern Ireland probably prompted an overreaction from the UK Government. I hope we have managed to get past that. It is perfectly reasonable for the loyalist community in Northern Ireland to have real concerns about economic barriers turning up between Northern Ireland and the mainland. It is almost unprecedented around the world to have two parts of a country in different customs areas and thus creating new obligations. It is not just a one-way issue - the Good Friday Agreement and the consent principle. That is a two-way issue for both communities. It is important for both sides of this to work together and find flexible working arrangements that make the rather unusual strained economic position in which we are putting Northern Ireland work on the ground. That will take the compliance authorities to take a risk-based approach to this and look for where the real risks and the real problems of goods getting across without paying the right tariffs or without meeting the right rules are, and not try and focus those on every small transaction that happens which would be unsustainable. What we need to do is move into that phase of having compliance work of this on the ground and not the arguing over the high principles so much on which we will never find a perfect solution.