Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Brett): Thank you for coming along today. I apologise for keeping you late. We will hand over to you to make some opening remarks.

Mr Martin Reid (Road Haulage Association): Thank you very much to you all, particularly to the Chair for receiving our letter in the first place.

We watched the evidence session with the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) a few months ago, and so much of that resonated with what we as an organisation have been hearing from our members. The barriers and cost, levels of bureaucracy and hindrances that hauliers face on a day-to-day basis, when they are just trying to support the Northern Ireland supply chain, are horrendous. I was very keen to bring along two members who could get across their lived experience on a daily basis. Rather than listening to me or Alistair Gunn as part of the trade association, it is really important that you hear from the businesses that are feeling this directly every day. I am delighted to have Alistair Hobson from Montgomery Transport; he will tell you his experience from the perspective of a medium-sized business. We have Mark Tait from Target Transport, which is an SME with four or five employees, is that right, Mark?

Mr Mark Tait (Target Transport): Four.

Mr Reid: Four. They are right at the coalface when it comes to moving goods from GB to Northern Ireland. It is a particularly difficult time. We believe that there are some solutions. Part of that sits with the reset talks between the UK and the EU. However, those are long-term aspirations, and we feel that more needs to be done. While those would remove a lot of the problems, on a day-to-day basis it is becoming more difficult for these guys to carry out business. I do not know who you would like to hear from first as to what their experience is, or whether you have any general questions before that.

The Chairperson (Mr Brett): I will open up, then. Gentlemen, thank you both for coming. It is really good to hear lived experiences rather than political arguments being rehashed. Can you give an overview of how complex the new procedures are, the cost that that adds for you, and whether you have had to change suppliers or employ additional people to cope with the paperwork that is required? Today the report on the UK internal market guarantee scheme has been published by the Government. It is important that we nail the misconception that might come from that. They say that 96% of goods qualify for that scheme. However, it is important to record that — you can maybe speak to this — that scheme still requires friction and paperwork, and that 96% does not mean that it is completely free-flowing trade; there are still requirements from that. Maybe you can just speak to those, if that is OK.

Mr Alistair Hobson (Montgomery Transport Group): Thanks very much, Chair, and thank you, everyone, for the invite. I have been involved in customs for 28 years in different roles, mainly in air freight. What we have in Northern Ireland at the moment is probably the most complex border in the world in terms of how we move freight within the United Kingdom. When the Windsor framework was implemented in stages, we mapped out 17 different ways that we could move data into customs. It is difficult for us to give you visibility on cost, because we work into the Republic of Ireland. Certainly, one of our largest movers of data, let us call them, is the largest supplier of consumer pharmaceuticals in Northern Ireland. It supplies 55% of the market, roughly. The estimate that it gave me, just to implement the Windsor framework and import control system 2 (ICS2), was a quarter of a million pounds for one business.

We see a disconnect between politics and the Civil Service: that is our main problem. We bring the problems to the Civil Service, and we get stock answers. We basically argue the civil servants into a corner, and the two stock answers are, "That was not part of the agreement" and "That is a commercial decision for you." The realistic outcome of the lived experience is that small and medium-sized firms are really hit by this, particularly in Northern Ireland and GB. There is going to be less choice in Northern Ireland, because small GB firms are walking away from the market. It is being filled, in some ways, by larger businesses that can cope and that have the budget to cope with the IT development, but we see a lot of smaller firms struggling.

The main outcome of this, in our opinion, is that people are flouting the law and finding workarounds. In our opinion, it is actually making the so-called border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland more porous, because it is giving people more opportunity to, once the goods are in Northern Ireland, do what they like with them. There are other issues as well that I am sure Mark will want to touch on. The way that customs is set up, we are legally responsible for all of this. The legal burden falls on us. We keep being told that the bad actors in the supply chain will be pursued. We have not seen any evidence of that from customs North or South. We are in a space where we are still competing with some firms that have 10 operator licences for 15 lorries or 10 registrations for 15 lorries, so it is not a big step to say that those guys are moving things and declaring them as empty. The trailers are not being, and cannot be, inspected. Therefore, the goods are slipping into the market in the EU anyway. It is a solution that was ill-conceived and practically does not work, and it is costing a lot of money. The result that we are seeing at the moment is that talent is leaving the industry at a time when recruitment is so challenging. We are seeing that the top talent, who have experience in customs, are seeking out of customs as well, which is an added pressure to us.

All in all, it is an administrative burden. A lot of our operations are carried out at night. If we have a problem, we are told to call the company and sort it out. How many companies work at 3.00 am? None, so the solution that Revenue and Customs gave us was to leave off the freight that does not qualify — that has not made the cut to get across the border. However, when your margins on a 40-pallet truck are two pallets, we just become uncompetitive; we are going out of business. That is the bottom line. I believe that 450 haulage firms closed last year in the United Kingdom. That is real pressure, and when we have a Government who say that they are going to build a million homes and build this and that infrastructure product, they are not going to do anything, because transport is almost an essential service, and the pressure on us is unbelievable. We just want politicians to overcome that gap between the Civil Service and the lived experience.

The Chairperson (Mr Brett): When you say "Civil Service", do you mean the UK Civil Service or Northern Ireland?

Mr Hobson: The UK Civil Service, mainly.

The Chairperson (Mr Brett): Does that include your interactions with the Trader Support Service (TSS)?

Mr Hobson: We are sort of dealing at a higher level with a Northern Ireland stakeholder engagement team, and a lot of those things come from that. Continuity of staff is a real issue there. When you go to a meeting, its staff are saying that the derogations to the Windsor framework are fantastic, and we are saying, "But ICS2 is due in, where the information that you provide is not required anyway. What is your plan for ICS2?", and the leader of that group asks, "What is ICS2?" That is a major problem. The industry in total is having that difficulty with the Civil Service. The Civil Service can send three emails about an announcement of some sort of change in a transit code. They will send three separate emails to me, but cannot answer simple questions on how we simplify trade.

Mr Reid: In my written submission, I mentioned the TSS specifically. We listened to Lord Murphy's evidence, and I have read his report, and it is very difficult to disagree with his views on the TSS. Alistair mentioned ICS2, which brings another level of bureaucracy and more hassle and cost for the sector. HMRC was originally due to bring in the changeover to ICS2 on 1 September. It wrote out to industry to say that, along with most of Europe, there would be a delay to a maximum of 31 December. Out of nowhere, on 18 August — a completely random date — TSS switched over to ICS2, with no warning to the industry, no time for the industry to adjust and no time to find the extra information that is required for ICS2. Mark wandered into his office on a Monday morning to be confronted with that, with no warning. Why did TSS take the decision to flip over on a completely random date that did not even match the HMRC roll-out date and inflict that on the industry? That is just one of a number of ways in which we feel that the TSS, which is supposed to provide support, does little, if anything, to help the industry.

Mark, you can probably come in here.

Mr Tait: Thank you very much for inviting us along, folks. I will touch on what you said at the start, Chair, about 96% of goods qualifying for the UK internal market. I refute that. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that the Secretary of State says that 15,000 businesses in GB and NI are now registered for the UK internal market scheme (UKIMS). Well, my first question is how many are not registered. It is a bit like a gym membership in that you can register for it, but that does not mean that you get to use it. As Ally pointed out, we have found that the Windsor framework and UKIMS were grossly oversold in terms of how they would simplify things.

How do I explain it? I will give an example. We work for a customer in Mallusk where we bring in lifting equipment — slings, ropes and that sort of thing. The customer is registered with the UKIMS. You are saying that, if I bring in two pallets with 100 boxes of slings on them, as we are UKIMS registered, that should save us any hassle and that those should qualify with no problem. The problem is that our customer sells goods in the Republic of Ireland and further into the EU. If even one box from those two pallets goes into the Republic of Ireland, everything on the two pallets will be at risk, so nothing will qualify for the UKIMS. The problem that the customer has is that, if they have duty to pay on that, they will have to pay that upfront and then reclaim it. They can only reclaim it, however, once they have sold the goods and can prove that those goods either stayed in Northern Ireland or left Northern Ireland.

I will give another example. We have a customer in Lisburn that does work for NI Water. Not that long ago, I sat down with them to go through the supplementary declarations that they compete. I raised this point at one of the meetings that we had with HMRC in Erskine House in Belfast. That customer processes maybe four or five supplementary declarations at a time and has to pay the duty, which can be up to £100,000 each time for a small business. They then have to wait 120 days for HMRC to give that money back so that they can process another four or five declarations, giving money to HMRC again to then have to try to get it back again. It is a vicious circle. You talk about cost. You might say that the cost is neutral there, how can any small business survive being out £100,000 all the time, waiting to get that money back when it should never have been paid out in the first place?

We are a company of four people. Last night after work, I sat with a customer for two hours trying to clear seven supplementary declarations. I was able to help them to clear three, but I had to refer four back to the TSS because even I did not understand the codes and information that they are asking for. How is any small business supposed to understand, in lay terms, the information that they are expected to provide? As Ally said, we are so scared of inputting incorrect information into the system that we are not prepared to take that risk. The UKIMS should allow us to input whatever information is being asked for from the customer up front, so that the customer has nothing to do once the goods get here. That is if the goods qualify for the UKIMS, but the problem that we have is knowing what the customer is going to do with the goods. How do I know where they are selling them to? We have to say to the customer, "We can't use the UKIMS system for you, as it's now set up on TSS". As Ally said, when ICS2 kicked in, it basically wiped out any benefit that the UKIMS supposedly provides, because it now asks hauliers for the safety and security part of that declaration to input commodity codes and country of origin values up front, but we are not getting those details from the suppliers in GB.

The other problem that I have raised with HMRC is that, when dealing with groupage, we are not dealing with just one product on one pallet or one trailer. I will go back to the example of the slings that I mentioned. If I get a pallet of those slings, there are ropes and nuts and bolts, meaning that there are 40 or 50 products on that pallet that have 40 or 50 commodity codes. I am expected to input all of those for one pallet. That could take me half an hour to 45 minutes. As a small business, I already have 60 or 70 things to do in a day. That does not compute into my working day.

Mr Hobson: It is also important to say that the Civil Service at the top of Revenue and Customs has set out its stall quite early to say that it does not really care about small to medium-sized businesses. The solution that the large integrators are providing, however, does not work either: they take systems that they are applying at a multinational level and try to apply them internally to Northern Ireland.

We talk to our members and other bodies, and we see that they are adding staff. There is a large manufacturer that we cannot name, and it has three members of staff to manage the after-effects of the Windsor framework and trade in Northern Ireland. It costs their business £80,000 a year for three staff that the company cannot afford. The pressure on manufacturing makes people want to close those businesses in Northern Ireland if they are not supplying into the EU, and that is the stark reality of the practicalities. We have put forward solutions to HMRC, but it will not entertain them. It is as if it does not want to put its head above the parapet.

The Chairperson (Mr Brett): What does your solution look like?

Mr Hobson: Our solution is to transfer the point of risk to the point of sale.

Mr Reid: I put that in my written submission. It is not a silver bullet, and it will not remove everything, but it will make a lot of the pain, delay and cost go away, particularly for the smaller businesses. Mark mentioned some of the financial pain, and to put that into context, the average margin for a haulier is about 2%. Alistair has mentioned that two of the pallets on a 44-ton truck represent the profit. For a lot of the businesses, it is not necessarily the goods going from Northern Ireland to GB that represent the profit; it is the return load, and they are diminishing over time. The haulier bears the risk for those movements but bears an unreasonable amount of risk in the supply chain as a whole. Fuel represents about 40% of the haulier's costs. The credit lines for fuel are for a maximum of seven days, and payment processes can be for 60, 90 or 120 days. The haulier could have paid for the fuel for five or six jobs before they are paid. No family jewels are sitting in the background to use when those situations go awry, for example, when their truck is held because of a missed process, such as the right commodity code.

As Alistair said, the willing horse is being flogged. The hauliers who have tried to do it right and have engaged with HMRC, asked the questions and are on the radar, are the ones who are being stopped and pulled over. As time moves on, there will be fewer goods on the shelves in Northern Ireland and less choice for consumers, and there will definitely be fewer hauliers prepared to move the goods in the first place.

Mr Tait: Sorry, Chair. I can give you another example of what Martin has alluded to. Martin referred to the ICS2 that came upon us by surprise in August, and that was not supposed to come in until January. Within three weeks, three suppliers in GB stopped trading with my customer in Portadown because they would not comply with the ICS2 requirement. That is not just a loss for him; it is a loss for me. The argument is that we will get it from somewhere else, but it is not easy to do that. If we bring an item from the South or further into the EU, it has costs and environmental implications. Yes. It is not just as easy as saying, "OK. You have lost one supplier, and that does not matter. We will look for something else". Unfortunately, I cannot flick a switch and change my business model to suit.

The Chairperson (Mr Brett): I will open up the questions to colleagues.

Ms D Armstrong: Thank you for coming in. It is complex, and I can hear the difficulties that you are having. It is very challenging. My question arises from a haulier who came to me about cross-border haulage. They talked about disparities in the tachograph regulations and enforcement between GB and Northern Ireland. Are they issues caused by operational compliance exacerbated by the Windsor framework? Have you heard anything about that?

Mr Hobson: The Windsor framework does not specifically deal with tachograph regulations; it just deals with the movement of goods. It could be connected to the other retained legislation, but that is not my area of expertise in the business.

Ms D Armstrong: It is the sense of the waiting and delays when waiting time is needed at a port if the paperwork is not right.

Mr Reid: Depending on where you are in a two-week cycle, a driver needs to take their weekly rest at certain times, whether it is 24 hours or 45 hours depending on the cycle. If they are held up at a port or delayed there when their weekly rest runs out, they must take their breaks.

Mr Hobson: For example, if DAERA holds a vehicle for two hours, the knock-on effect on a haulier because of the rest periods on a tachograph could be a day. We would have to switch trailers and things like that, and switch an operation. That has an impact on the vehicle going back into GB. It is important that in order to have true dual-market access, we need to be able to service that. If we have trailers held up at the port coming into Northern Ireland, a school kid could tell you that going back out is going to be a problem. Essentially, that is the issue. I cannot emphasise enough how much that pain is being felt in the haulage industry. It is just shocking, and it is shocking what the Civil Service is asking us to do.

Ms D Armstrong: It is important that we hear that, and thank you. The just-in-time supply chain stymies manufacturing production. You also talked about cash flow. Businesses are ordering products for just-in-time supply, and that has the likelihood of holding up production as well, if there are those delays.

Mr Reid: We saw that at the end of last year when Holyhead port closed. We had a situation whereby drivers who would have been using Holyhead to get to the South or the North to take their weekly rest were stuck in the UK. That meant that they had an additional day's driving to get to Cairnryan or to go south. That meant that the driver, the truck and the trailer were not where they needed to be. That was in the run-up to Christmas, which exacerbated the situation. However, it is essentially the same issue. If they are held past their rest period, then the driver, truck and trailer are not where they need to be for the next day.

Mr Hobson: It takes a storm that lasts for more than 12 hours to really impact shelves in Northern Ireland. That is the fragility of the supply chain, and I think that people do not realise how fragile it is. We are not looking for sympathy; we are looking for action.

Ms McLaughlin: I concur with what Diana said. It is important that we hear about the difficulties first-hand. I was struck by the 2% profit. That seems to be very unsustainable as a business model, and you must be under significant pressure. Alistair, I think you said that 450 haulage companies in the UK have closed. Do you have numbers for haulage companies from here that have closed? Also, are you telling the Committee that a lot of haulage companies now see that their business mode, with the complexities and bureaucracy, are now unviable and have the potential to close?

Mr Hobson: I could not comment on the industry as a whole. I am here on behalf of just my business. Certainly, the evidence that we have is that people are flouting the law to get around this. That is basically what it points to. We asked for a trusted hauliers scheme so that hauliers who were not in the trusted trader scheme did not, for want of a better expression, have their collars felt more in the inspections. We were just told, "No. We'll take that away and think about it." A year later, we asked them, "Have you had any more thoughts on having a trusted haulier scheme?" and were told, "It won't work because it wasn't part of the negotiations". When you have Revenue and Customs officials saying, "That's a commercial decision", the commercial decision for a lot of businesses is going to be flout the law or see if they can get loads into the likes of France. You need to have the work there at the correct margins because, if you are sending a driver to France, it takes a hell of a lot more time than if you are sending a driver to Manchester or somewhere like that. I do not know whether the Road Haulage Association (RHA) can supply that information at a later date.

Mr Reid: We can certainly have a look at that. We will have a breakdown of the numbers on where a lot of the insolvencies have come from. We have noticed that there has been a lot more consolidation in Northern Ireland. A lot of businesses that have run for quite some time and family businesses are now open to selling up and getting out, basically, because it has become too problematic. We have seen that quite a bit. There is no doubt that the market is changing because of it.

Ms McLaughlin: You are, obviously, well aware that a trusted haulier scheme is one of the recommendations in Lord Murphy's review. Even while listening to you, I have been busy trying to look up the ICS2 scheme and what it does. It is really complex for individuals. We sit here at Committee as elected representatives, but it is really difficult for us to understand it as well. That recommendation sounds extremely sensible to me because you would have a specific trusted haulier scheme into which experts and those who work in that industry feed information about where the barriers are and their complexity.

Mark, you said that you have four employees in your company. It is beyond burdensome to try to deal with all those reports and fill in all the forms in advance of anything being put on a lorry to be taken from GB or from here to GB. I have absolute sympathy for the sector. None of it is easy. Any barriers at all will be difficult and will involve an awful lot of cost for a small business. I am glad that you came in today and that your voices have been heard, because I feel and hear your frustrations.

Mr Tait: At the start of the session, the Chair asked whether we had taken on extra folk to cover the cost. As a very small business, we cannot afford to take on extra folk. It just means that I have to work longer.

Ms McLaughlin: You mentioned that you were dealing with that last night.

Mr Tait: Last night's work was for no pay. I do not get paid for that. I know of a guy from a company — I will not mention names, because he is not here — and we have dealt with guys who go in and do that work for a company, but they charge a hefty fee for that. Even that guy admits that, as hauliers, we do not have that luxury. We cannot do that.

Ms McLaughlin: As politicians, we have to try to find some solutions for you. We will press the UK Government to see when they will take up the recommendations, and, hopefully, they will, but resources are required to look into some of those issues, and we will seek —

Mr Tait: Sorry to interrupt, but I just want to go back to what Ally and Martin said, there are hauliers and companies in Northern Ireland that are blatantly flouting the law and getting away with it. To us, that is wrong. We have suggested the reintroduction of some of the schemes that we used, which were very simple to use, when we were members of the EU. They meant that things could be audited so much more easily from the point of sale. When anybody broke the law, you could see right away from the information that a company was not doing it right. You could then go and find it. The problem at the minute is that nobody checks anything as it comes off the boat. Let us say a trailer is declared as being empty: nobody checks it, it goes through, and nobody says a word. The flip side of that is that if you have to start checking 100% of trailers that come off boats, nothing would ever get delivered.

Mr Reid: Having hauliers whose systems and procedures had been audited, checked and verified through a trusted haulier scheme would allow authorities to go after those who had not been checked etc. There is precedent for that in other industries. Construction has a trusted trader scheme and various things.

We hope that politicians here and their respective parties could try to exert influence and push the idea of moving the risk to the point of sale into the debate and reset talks. Our frustration is that, despite us and others bringing that idea forward, we have no indication that it is even remotely being considered as being on the table in those discussions, but it really would make such a difference to Northern Ireland plc.

I will explain for anybody who is not 100% sure about what we mean. Although some goods, such as retail goods, can move faster through the process, the default position is that any goods that move to Northern Ireland are at risk. That puts under pressure anybody who wants to stockpile or put things in a warehouse. We have a member that has offices in GB and Northern Ireland, and the Northern Ireland operation helps with the build of a product, which then goes back to GB. Its position is untenable, because all of the goods — the nuts, bolts and bits — that are coming from GB to Northern Ireland to be assembled are basically "red-laned". Our suggestion, and that of many other bodies, is that if you move the risk to the point of sale, you will know what the end destination is — you will have the invoices to show where it is going. If it is going to the Republic of Ireland or the EU, it attracts customs. There is no argument with that. If it stays in Northern Ireland or goes back to GB, it does not. It is not rocket science; it really is not.

At the minute, just about everything that is coming into Northern Ireland, regardless of whether it is staying in Northern Ireland, going back to GB or going elsewhere, is lumped into the same thing and attracts the same hassle, the same costs and, in some cases, the wrong duty. That is something else that we have been seeing recently. The large-parcel delivery guys are chasing for duty on goods that are moved under UKIMS, even though no duty is required. That is more hassle for the admin and more time spent arguing. It is difficult to do business just now.

Ms McLaughlin: Thank you very much.

Mr Middleton: David, you can go ahead.

Mr Honeyford: Thank you, Gary. I appreciate you coming in. It is good for us to hear at first-hand what is happening. Obviously, we do not want barriers, but we have to work our way through to make better. I get your frustration; I hear it in your voices. I have a couple of things to square the circle, because we are getting other information. Is the different size of the parcel the issue? I am trying to find where the issue is. Evri, for example, is opening a base in Belfast, because it has access to it. Is it because there are bigger parcels? Is there an issue?

Mr Hobson: I will give you a lived example. We do two-person deliveries for some of the large retailers in GB. A lot of those people use the same fulfilment centre, no matter who you are buying the product from, so the contract is with the fulfilment centre. We take a line of fridge-freezers that are 95 kilos in weight, and they move in under the consumer agreements. If you buy the American fridge-freezer, which is slightly bigger — it is 110 kilos — when it is put on the pallet, it is subject to full customs procedures.

Mr Tait: Even for a consumer.

Mr Hobson: Even for a consumer. Somebody has stuck their finger in the air and said, "100 kilos is the limit we'll put here". No one knows where and nobody can tell us where that came from. The Road Haulage Association represents the people who work in the sphere of goods over 100 kilos. We are in pallet work, which is why we find it so problematic. We are having to do full declarations for Mrs Smith on Finaghy Road to get her American fridge-freezer. It is madness. However, Mrs McConaghy, next door, gets the smaller fridge-freezer, and it comes in without any palaver. Who dreams these schemes up without consulting people?

Mr Honeyford: You have answered that. The way in which you are talking suggests that there is not so much of an issue with the lorry that goes out of here. It is the return. That is the issue. We get trade figures through. I cannot remember which way around it is, off the top of my head, but they showed a 14% growth in sales exports in the past year from Northern Ireland to GB and 12% growth from GB to Northern Ireland. If you are not hauling that growth, and there is not more, is that just being moved in a different way?

Mr Reid: Alistair, have you had a look at that?

Mr Alistair Gunn (Road Haulage Association): I have tried to. Some of the data on it is not entirely up to date. It is difficult to really see what is going on. There are some indications in the data that is available, particularly around unloaded movements through ports in Northern Ireland, to suggest that it is easier to get goods out than back in. That is putting a cost on to the hauliers. However, it is a difficult picture.

We would probably need to see clearer data from the Northern Ireland perspective on how the Windsor framework is affecting things for us to be able to really quantify the impact on our members. You have heard the frustration. It will lead to impacts. It is difficult for us to turn around to you and say, "This is the clear picture at this stage".

Mr Hobson: Do those figures include loads that are bypassing GB?

Mr Honeyford: No. Those are the figures from GB. I am not dismissing anything about the problems. I get all the problems with the paperwork, and I want to look at solutions in a second, but what you are telling us is that you are carrying less back. What I do not understand is that if the figures are showing that there is more coming across, is that coming across on an aeroplane or through a different route?

Mr Hobson: It is probably the large consolidators. Transport is for us in the sphere of ro-ro, which is roll-on roll-off, but there are other methods to get freight in. There is lo-lo, which is container work and air freight, and the large consolidators sit in a gap that is almost voodoo for us, for want of a better expression. The likes of UPS have one person in customs responsible for solving its issues. We are seeing on the ground that manufacturers, in particular — that is where the 80,000 comes in — where somebody has had to have three members of staff because, essentially, that manufacturing business is having to operate what is called an inward processing scheme (IPR), which is a layer of customs knowledge that is beyond the rudimentary customs knowledge that Mark is talking about. Essentially, if you are bringing in glass, you have to be able to track that glass through the supply chain. That is what it calls for.

Without seeing the data, I cannot really answer, but we are seeing bigger suppliers slightly increasing their volume, but we are also seeing less choice because the small and medium-sized firms are definitely walking away from the market, because, if you are selling two pallets to Northern Ireland and it costs you an extra £50 for two pallets on one consignment, why would you not sell those two pallets into Birmingham? That is what people are telling us regularly through our business development managers (BDMs). They do not really want to go down that road any more, but larger firms might be picking up the slack on that. I am not quite sure.

Mr Honeyford: I want to look at solutions, but the levels of barriers and the complexity of it is intriguing. There are multiple layers to it. You might not be able to answer this, but is it easier to come into the south of Ireland or is it more complicated?

Mr Hobson: We find that easier.

Mr Honeyford: So, it is easier to come from Wales into Dublin and then come North.

Mr Hobson: Yes, because you know what you are doing.

Mr Honeyford: Are those barriers not there?

Mr Hobson: The barriers are there, but there is a one-stop-shop solution. In Northern Ireland, the agreement that the Government have actually has complicated the situation by offering us 17 different ways in which we have to deposit data into their servers, whereas we can do one customs entry into Revenue in Dublin. We know where it goes. We have one software package, the guys are trained to do it, they hit a button, and it goes to Revenue.

Mr Honeyford: Is that it away?

Mr Hobson: That is the customs entry completed, whereas we are essentially doing almost 17 types of customs entry to move goods into Northern Ireland, depending on whether you are in the Northern Ireland retail movement scheme (NRMS) or UKIMS, whether goods are going to a residence or if they are going to a residence and weigh over 100 kilos, whether you want to do APIs or you want to deposit the information in another way.

Mark mentioned the pharmaceutical company. We have one trailer, and we think that it is quite simplified for them, by the way. We have to do six customs entry for one trailer, depending on various incoterms, how they are selling it and whether the goods are subject to NRMS or non-NRMS. For one trailer, we are doing six customs declarations.

The Chairperson (Mr Brett): You could then be waiting 120 days to get your money back.

Mr Honeyford: On solutions, would the one-stop shop be the trusted haulier scheme? What would the one-stop shop look like? What can we do —?

Mr Tait: Sorry, may I ask you one question? You mentioned figures. Do those include retail and food?

Mr Honeyford: They include everything.

Mr Tait: We cannot speak on behalf of anything like that. The latest figures show that Northern Ireland is basically feeding 25% of the UK as a whole, so, yes, there has probably been a large growth in food export. I nor Ally can talk to the situation with food. However, from a commercial point of view, we have seen a drop-off in manufacturing goods leaving Northern Ireland; that is my experience.

You asked about the solution. The main ask that we are pushing for is to move the point of risk to the point of sale. As Martin said, that is not a silver bullet, but, with every other international declaration or international sale, you declare the point of risk at the point of sale. If there are duties to pay on it, you pay them either at the point of sale or at the point of receipt, whichever way the incoterms work. For us, that would be a major, major improvement to the system. It will take a few other things. It is not as simple as moving everything to the point of sale and that will be it solved, but that is our main ask at the minute.

Mr Reid: It should remove the situation, which Mark talked about, where somebody can do only a certain amount of declarations and pay the duty in order for the duty to come back to enable them to afford to do the next lot. It just becomes a ridiculous cash flow position to be in.

Mr Hobson: As well as that, there is the pressure that Mark talked about. He said that he spoke to someone last night who has seven. In the past two days, a large retailer contacted us. When I say "a large retailer", that company has sponsored Premier League and Championship football teams in England. It has asked us to help it out with 750 declarations. That is a backlog. How does it improve trade for it to have to do 750 declarations, most of which will be staying in Northern Ireland because it has supplied directly to consumers in Northern Ireland? Where do the Government sit with that when that is technically illegal, because it has gone past the period within which supplementary declarations had to be completed? No thought is given to the fact that that just generates more and more bureaucracy. Technology could solve it. The ideology has to line up with the practicalities. I was looking at a quote from 2019, when various people were arguing with each other. On whether technology could solve the Irish border problem, Sabine Weyand said:

That was six years ago. People are still hanging on to those things from six years ago. We, as businesses, have seen technology move on exponentially in that time. The solutions are there. We are pleading for people to come and visit us. We cannot even get people to come and visit us. They do not want to be seen doing that. They want to go and see a shining light. I know the sphere that people live in: you need a good story. We are not asking for your visit to be put on the front page of 'The Irish News' or the 'News Letter'. We are just asking you to come and see us, see our lived experience and get a handle on what is going on. We will solve the problems with you. We want to solve them. We want our businesses to thrive, and they are not thriving.

Mr Honeyford: We want to see your businesses thrive as well.

Finally, this is an agreement between the UK Government and the EU, so we are a bit removed from it. If there is something that we can do, what does it look like? Do you want us to highlight that to —?

Mr Reid: Yes. That is where we have come from right from the start. We were a lone voice in the early days of Brexit when we were pointing out that those issues would be detrimental. We want to point out that it is about freight movements, not politics, but we need politics to resolve it. We hope that, regardless of what side of the House people sit on here or in the UK, they know that Northern Ireland plc needs this and businesses here need it. We need to have a discussion about moving the point of risk to the point of sale. We need that to be on the agenda when the EU and the UK have reset talks. As I said, we have not had any comfort so far that that is even on the Government's radar or that they are prepared to speak about it.

I know from other bodies that I am not alone in feeling that, when you bring up the issues with moving goods from GB to Northern Ireland, the UK very much files them in a "too difficult to deal with" box. There is never a right time to deal with them, because, in the run-up to an election, everybody wants to hit the buttons that will get votes. The key point is that nobody seems to be able to grasp the nettle and say, "This is what is required". It is not just hauliers who would benefit from this; all GB-to-Northern Ireland movements would benefit. Regardless of what sector or sphere you are in, you would benefit.

Mr Honeyford: Thank you very much.

Mr Middleton: A lot of questions have been asked, and you have answered them well. Hopefully, you feel that you are getting a hearing and that your issues have been raised. However, as you said, Alistair, sympathy is one thing but action is another, and you have been waiting for some time on that front.

I find it absolutely ridiculous that you can get stuff from GB to the Republic of Ireland more easily than you can move it within your own internal market. It is absolutely shameful for any UK Government to stand over that. That having been said, as I said to Lord Murphy earlier, we are working with the European Union, which, from the outset, never accepted the referendum result and made it as difficult as possible for us to smooth our internal market.

There is some good stuff in Lord Murphy's recommendations, and we are waiting for the UK Government to give their verdict on whether they will accept those recommendations. Having a trusted haulier scheme is one of the recommendations, and that would be positive. Are there other things in the recommendations that would make an imminent difference?

Mr Hobson: A version of the Trader Support Service that is fit for purpose. There are a lot of hardworking people there, but, in essence, what we have been left with is a data-entry website. Whether you put the data in or spend a quarter of a million pounds to get it done via software developers or whoever, that is not fit for purpose. As far as we are aware, the people behind the TSS have solutions, but the new tender has been reduced. It has not been expanded. We have been led to believe that the requirements for the new tender have been reduced, whereas we know that the technology is available now to take information, whether it is in a PDF, an API or whatever, and store it centrally. That means that, rather than hauliers managing it, the Government can manage it. Legislation would be needed for that to happen, and that is the pain point. We are at the fulcrum of the legislation, but we just want to move freight.

Mr Middleton: GB businesses being unable to get their goods into Northern Ireland is having an impact on our businesses, including, clearly, your businesses, which transport those goods. Are the GB businesses not shouting loudly enough about the impact that this is having on getting the goods in, or is it a case of their being so confused by the bureaucracy — I am exhausted even listening to some of it — that they have just said, "Do you know what? It is not worth the hassle. It is a fairly small proportion of what we do, so we will just forget about it"?

Mr Hobson: Unfortunately, for my sins, I am a member of a committee in the Association of Pallet Networks. That comprises the people who work in partnership with other firms around the UK and Ireland. The feedback that we are getting in those meetings is that Northern Ireland is just being treated as another part of the EU when it comes to the practicalities that are the fallout and outworkings of this. That is madness, given that we keep being told by the leadership of the Northern Ireland stakeholder committee, "We will talk to any business that you want us to". That is great, but there are three people on that committee: how many businesses are they going to speak to in that small timescale? What they have told us in meetings — Mark can testify to this — is, "You need to go out and tell your customers about this". However, we do not often have a relationship with the people who are buying and selling the goods. We may have a relationship with a third-party logistics provider or fulfilment centre. We are being put in the middle, where they say, "Sort the problem out", but that is between the buyer and the seller of the goods. It is not for us. We do not have any relationship with them; we are maybe fifth-hand. I do not know whether that answers your question, but certainly —.

Mr Middleton: It is clearly having an impact on you. It is one of the issues that I raised with Lord Murphy in the previous session: how those GB businesses can feed into our democratic processes in Northern Ireland. Ultimately, it is a UK-EU negotiation. It concerns me that, when you speak to civil servants, they more or less say, "That is not what was agreed", as if that is it, we will never be able to change it, and we have to just suck it up and live with it. That concerns me, and, if that is the space that the Government are in, we will certainly not be silent on that front. Let us wait and see what recommendations come out of the Government. Thank you.

Ms Nicholl: A lot has been covered, and, while I was listening, I felt quite anxious about what you are going through and the idea of having to manage all that. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. You invited us to come and visit: I am very happy to visit and see what you are going through.

As you heard, we have different views on exiting the EU, but we are all united in our commitment to seeing our businesses thrive, which you are not being allowed to do right now. I heard what you said, and thank you so much for sharing your experiences. The Committee will definitely relay those and make sure that your voices are heard. It is always really great when people come with solutions as well. Thank you so much.

The Chairperson (Mr Brett): Thank you very much. We will do quite a bit of follow-up on the issues raised in Lord Murphy's report and by you today. In my role as an MLA — not as the Chair of the Economy Committee — I will be bringing a debate on this to the Assembly on the Monday after next. I hope that the unanimity that has been voiced at this Committee will transfer into the House, but somehow I doubt that.

Ms Nicholl: Some chance.

The Chairperson (Mr Brett): Exactly. [Laughter.]

Mr Reid: If the Committee or any of its constituent parts have any questions at all, please feel free to reach out to us directly. You have our contact details at RHA.

The Chairperson (Mr Brett): I, personally, thank you for being willing, throughout the entire process, to stand up and speak up on the issue, particularly at a time when it was taboo. It was said that you were risking the Northern Ireland peace process and putting people's lives at risk: all that nonsense. You stood up and said that, from a particular business point of view, the arrangements do not work. Thank you for that.

Mr Reid: It was always about freight movement and nothing else.

The Chairperson (Mr Brett): Exactly. Thank you for that.