Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to their announcement on 12 June of an additional £50 million being made available for customs agent recruitment, training and IT, what that money is intended to cover; and what assessment they have made of the statement by the Road Haulage Association that the amount of money allocated is insufficient.

The Government has already injected £34 million into growing the intermediary sector, in order to encompass EU trade after 2020. Thousands of agents, freight forwarders and parcel operators have taken advantage of this funding to make improvements, from IT hardware to staff training. To date, this funding has supported over 20,000 training courses, nearly 15,000 units of IT, the recruitment of an additional 600 new customs agents, and the online customs academy training centre (where Government has procured training capacity directly) which has delivered 1,139 courses so far.

The new £50 million support package will further boost the capacity of the customs intermediary sector to help provide businesses with support ahead of the new processes taking effect in July 2021. Having listened to industry feedback, the focus of support will continue to be on IT, recruitment, and training. This new investment will provide a significant boost to the sector and build on the success of the grant scheme to date.

This additional funding is one element of the wider package of measures announced in June to help lay the foundations for a diverse, innovative and competitive intermediary sector. The Government also intends to change rules which will remove the financial liability from intermediaries operating on behalf of their clients, and allow parcel operators to continue declaring multiple consignments in a single customs declaration.