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Retailers including John Lewis and Dunelm have suspended deliveries to Northern Ireland due to uncertainty about red tape to be imposed because of Brexit. Despite Boris Johnson’s insistence that there would be no border down the Irish Sea, firms have been left scrambling to ensure they can navigate the customs declarations imposed on shipments from Great Britain.Hours before the transition period was due to end at 11pm on Thursday, the government announced that parcels sent to consumers in Northern Ireland from Britain would not need customs declarations during a three-month grace period ending on 31 March.The last-minute announcement left companies who had paused deliveries with little time to start up their operations again.
A spokesperson for John Lewis said on Thursday: “We temporarily paused deliveries and collections in Northern Ireland from 30 December while we awaited further guidance on the new trading arrangements.  “We are reviewing the guidance we have received today and look forward to resuming these services as soon as possible.”  Yodel, one of the UK’s largest delivery firms, has told customers they will have to pay additional charges for shipments to Northern Ireland because of the extra bureaucracy. DPD announced before Christmas that it would suspend deliveries in the province. The courier confirmed on Thursday that its position had not changed.
Furniture retailer Dunelm said it was working hard to start shipping to Northern Irish customers and hoped to be back up and running again by 11 January.
Amazon is warning customers that deliveries to Northern Ireland may take longer than normal angering some customers who have paid for a monthly Prime subscription, which includes next-day delivery. Under the Northern Ireland Protocol agreed between the UK and the EU, goods arriving in Northern Ireland from Britain require three documents – an import declaration, a safety and security declaration, and a goods movement reference number.
The requirements will now be waived until 1 April, giving companies some breathing space.
Brexit Briefing: The end of the transition periodA government spokesperson said the three-month grace period “recognises the unique circumstances of Northern Ireland, the impacts of any disruption to parcel movements in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and specific challenges for operators moving express consignments”.They said further details will be published in the new year, adding: “There is no reason not to continue to send such goods to Northern Ireland. There are options available for businesses and operators to continue to easily move goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland as they do now“Some changes will go ahead on 1 January in any case. Businesses receiving goods in Northern Ireland from Great Britain valued at £135 or more will have to fill out a customs declaration within three months of receipt. Alcoholic drinks will also require a declaration.  In August the prime minister said only “over my dead body” would there be a border down the Irish Sea, underlining his earlier claim that there would be no additional paperwork when sending goods between Britain and Northern Ireland.
The problems are the latest example of the disruption consumers and businesses face as the 1,255-page Brexit trade agreement comes into force from Friday.
Delays are expected in Kent as hauliers adjust to the new regime with question marks over the preparedness of smaller exporters who have previously had free access to mainland Europe.Any issues are expected to be mitigated by the fact that 1 January is a bank holiday with fewer lorries making the journey across the Channel. Many companies have also built up stockpiles of goods and parts in anticipation of the transition period coming to an end. More

The first lorry passed through the new customs border into France just minutes after the UK’s historic departure from the single market.  Driver Slavi Ivanov Shumeykov smiled and waved as his HGV was processed by officials late on New Year’s Eve.  The first arrivals on the shuttle from France following the end of the Brexit transition period were expected at about 12.23am.  Scenes in Dover have been quiet as many hauliers have been staying away to avoid being the first to test new border controls.   More

Brexiteer MPs have claimed the UK’s formal departure from the EU marks the greatest political reform since the advent of British democracy as they heralded the end of the transition period. Following years of political turmoil the final step in the Brexit process took place on 11pm on New Years’ Eve 2020, delivering on the result of the 2016 EU referendum as the transition out of the European single market and customs union drew to a close.Boris Johnson said historic moment — the culmination of a decades-long concerted campaign in particular from Tory Eurosceptics and fringe groups such as the UK Independence Party — was a “new beginning in our country’s history and a new relationship with the EU as their biggest ally”.Despite concessions to the EU in the trade deal agreed on Christmas Eve, Eurosceptics have largely lined up behind the PM in support. Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said “we spare a thought for Northern Ireland and our fishermen, but this is a moment to celebrate 2021 as an independent United Kingdom”.Veteran Tory Sir Bill Cash claimed Thurday’s milestone was a “victory for democracy and sovereignty” that can only be compared in peacetime with the evolution of modern democracy after the end of the Stuart dynasty.
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Boris Johnson has declared the new year marks “an amazing moment for this country,” in a message broadcast as the UK completed its departure from the European Union and most of Britain hunkered down at home under coronavirus restrictions.The prime minister, who was seeing in the new year with his immediate family at No 10, said he was confident that 2021 was the year when the UK will reach “the end of the journey” back to normal life after a 2020 blighted by the Covid-19 pandemic.And he claimed the completion of Brexit at 11pm on New Year’s Eve, with the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union, would mean that “our freedom is in our hands and it is up to us to make the most of it”.The UK is free to pursue independent trade policies for the first time in more than four decades after the Brexit transition period with the European Union came to an end.
Membership of the single market and customs expired four and a half years after the in-out referendum which sought to settle the issue but sparked political turmoil.Mr Johnson said the EU had provided the UK with a “safe European home” during the 1970s but the country had now “changed out of all recognition” with global perspectives.His message was broadcast as the tally of daily coronavirus deaths reached 964, with cases hitting a record 55,892, while newly released papers showed the PM’s Sage advisers had warned that even a total lockdown may not rein in the virulent new variant of the disease. Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayMeanwhile, Mr Johnson’s own father, Stanley, revealed he had applied for French citizenship, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff denounced the Brexit process as the UK’s worst negotiation in at least 40 years and foreign secretary Dominic Raab agreed a deal with Spain which could see Gibraltar join the EU’s Schengen open border system.With the UK chairing the G7 group of major industrialised nations in 2021 and hosting November’s United Nations COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow, Mr Johnson said the year ahead would enable the country to showcase itself as an “open, generous, outward-looking, internationalist and free-trading global Britain”.Despite projections from his own Office for Budget Responsibility forecasters that a free trade agreement of the kind he reached with the EU on Christmas Eve will knock around 4 per cent off the UK’s GDP, he insisted that Brexit would allow Britain to “turbocharge” cutting-edge sectors like life sciences, artificial intelligence and battery technology and create “millions” of high-skilled jobs.Brexit will free the UK to strike new trade deals and to “do things differently, and if necessary better, than our friends in the EU”, he claimed, despite clauses in the agreement he signed which allow Brussels to impose tariffs if the UK diverges from its rules.Despite polls showing majority support for Scottish independence north of the border in the wake of Brexit, the PM said he believed it was the “overwhelming instinct of the people of this country to come together as one United Kingdom – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland working together to express our values around the world”.The prime minister said that 2020 had been a “grim” year when the government was forced to tell people how to live their lives and when “we lost too many loved ones before their time”.But he said it was also “the year when we rediscovered a spirit of togetherness, of community” as people applauded health workers and put their own lives on hold to protect their neighbours and save the NHS from being overwhelmed.He hailed the key workers who kept the country running as well as the scientists who created treatments for coronavirus and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine which has been approved for use from next week.“With every jab that goes into the arm of every elderly or vulnerable person, we are changing the odds, in favour of humanity and against Covid,” said Mr Johnson in the video recorded at No 10.“And we know that we have a hard struggle still ahead of us for weeks and months, because we face a new variant of the disease that requires a new vigilance.“But as the sun rises tomorrow on 2021 we have the certainty of those vaccines, pioneered in a UK that is also free to do things differently, and if necessary better, than our friends in the EU.” Mr Johnson said: “2021 is the year we can do it. And I believe 2021 is above all, the year when we will eventually do those everyday things that now seem lost in the past, bathed in a rosy glow of nostalgia – going to the pub, concerts, theatres, restaurants, or simply holding hands with our loved ones in the normal way.“We are still a way off from that, there are tough weeks and months ahead. But we can see that illuminated sign that marks the end of the journey, and even more important, we can see with growing clarity how we are going to get there.“And that is what gives me such confidence about 2021.” More

With only hours to go until the UK leaves the EU single market and customs union, only 450 lorries had applied for permits to allow them to enter Kent and cross the Channel on the first full day of Brexit.Officials are hoping that the tiny figure – compared to the 6,000 to 7,000 heading to Calais by ferry and 3,500 on Eurotunnel trains on a normal day – is simply a reflection of low traffic volumes on the New Year’s Day bank holiday, as well as some hauliers holding back from trips to the continent until new arrangements have bedded in.But it raises the spectre of significant disruption in the weeks to come unless there is a marked pick-up in applications for the new Kent Access Permit (KAP).After the UK leaves the EU single market and customs union at 11pm on New Year’s Eve, any lorry entering the county without a KAP – nicknamed the “Kermit” by drivers – can be turned around and sent back with a £300 penalty.Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras will act as the first line of defence against chaos at the ports which many fear will result from the sudden introduction of mountains of new Brexit bureaucracy in the form of customs paperwork, safety and security declarations and sanitary checks.Government sources said they were “confident” that all necessary new systems and infrastructure are in place and ready for operation in time for the moment of transition, with 10 inland sites prepared to process queues of trucks waiting to travel through ports.But officials admit that a question mark remains over the number of exporters and hauliers who have responded to appeals to prepare for the additional hoops they will have to jump through to ship goods to the continent.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayThe government’s “worst case scenario” envisages queues of as many as 7,000 lorries in Kent if no more than 30 per cent turn up at ports with the correct paperwork.Officials believe that a large majority of major exporters – perhaps 90-95 per cent – have made the necessary preparations, but the figure for small and medium-sized businesses is not known. Many are believed to have waited to see what would be in Boris Johnson’s trade deal, which was not sealed until Christmas Eve, seven days before the transition date. The HMRC’s support website has registered a surge in traffic in recent weeks and officials are hopeful that as many as 60 per cent of SME trucks will turn up with the movement reference number which proves their paperwork is in order and permits them to board a ferry or train.But capacity constraints at both Dover and the Eurotunnel terminal in Folkestone mean that turning round any more than 30-50 lorries an hour will automatically generate queues.Alex Veitch of hauliers’ organisation Logistics UK told The Independent he was “optimistic” that the worst-case scenario would not play out.But he warned: “It’s not a question of whether there will be delays, but of how significant the delays will be. There will undoubtedly be some form of disruption in early January. This weekend will be quite quiet but next week will start to build up as companies come back from holidays.“We simply don’t know how many exporting companies are going to be ready. The latest figures we have from a survey in early December suggested that out of the 10,000 or so significant-sized businesses who account for a very high proportion of trade with the EU, around half said they were ready. That figure has to be 80, 90 or 100 per cent for things to go smoothly.”A big concern, following the scenes of thousands of trucks stuck at Manston airfield in Kent after France closed its borders over Covid before Christmas, was the lack of facilities for food, drink and toilets for drivers stuck in queues, he said.And he said haulage companies had been given little or no time to familiarise themselves with new computer systems.“It is essentially going to be a massive live testing exercise of several new bits of software and users who have never had to do this before,” he said. “It will be a learning curve for a lot of haulage companies.”Any queues may not start building up until the second week of January, as companies have built up stockpiles of goods in anticipation of disruption in the first days of 2021, stepping up crossings in the weeks before the Brexit deadline.John Keefe, director of public affairs at Eurotunnel owners Getlink, said that lorries with the correct documentation should be able to pass through without delay, with their details “pinged” to customs authorities in a matter of seconds by numberplate recognition or scanner and any inspections taking place in specially constructed facilities on the other side. The KAP should mean those without the right paperwork never make it as far as the terminal.With huge amounts of time-sensitive goods – from car parts for just-in-time manufacturing to perishable food and couriered parcels – passing through the tunnel, companies are likely to learn quickly that being turned back is an expensive process, he said.“We are very confident that the bit we control will work very, very well,” said Mr Keefe. “With the low volumes of traffic predicted over this bank holiday weekend, we have got all the time we need to iron out any glitches before traffic picks up again in the middle of the month.”A government spokesperson urged firms to make sure they have their papers in order before sending trucks to the Channel ports, to avoid being flagged down and fined by officers of the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA).“HGV drivers that travel to ports in Kent without being granted a Kent Access Permit will be identified via ANPR cameras,” he said. “They will then be subject to enforcement action including an on-the-spot fine of up to £300. “For the small minority that might try to game the service, they will be stopped at the border anyway and fined – only adding to disruption for other drivers.” More

It was late evening of 31 January 2020, and there seemed just a chance, a remote chance, of a reluctant coming together. The fissure exposed by the Brexit vote – a fissure that had by now spread cracks all over the once reasonably United Kingdom – might yet be capable of being, if not bridged, then respectably papered over.I was in London’s Parliament Square that night – as were fewer people than you might have expected at what will be seen forever as a historic juncture: the UK’s official departure from the European Union. And some of us, at least – as I overheard from the Americans immediately behind me – were there for the history rather than the rejoicing, which was unexpectedly muted.Nigel Farage, by now of the Brexit Party, though with a reasonable claim to have been masterminded the whole Eurosceptic project, had hoped for a sparkling Leave Means Leave jamboree to see out the UK’s 47 years of EU  membership. One by one, though, most of the grandiose plans had been stripped away by a central government concerned not to inflame passions further and by a city government whose voters had massively supported Remain. More

Gibraltar’s border with Spain will remain open following the end of the Brexit transition period after the UK and Spain agreed a draft 11th-hour deal.The British territory on the southern tip of the Spanish mainland will continue to be part of European Union programmes, such as the free-travel Schengen area.Spain will be responsible for applying Schengen rules in Gibraltar, as the EU representative, Spain’s foreign minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya said.Madrid and London had been negotiating how to police the land border between Spain and Gibraltar, which was excluded from the last-minute exit deal reached between Britain and the European Union last week.Ms Gonzalez Laya said her government had worried that the only hard Brexit would be in Gibraltar, adding that people in the Rock “can breathe a sigh of relief”.Boris Johnson welcomed the deal, adding: “The UK has always been, and will remain, totally committed to the protection of the interests of Gibraltar and its British sovereignty.”Pedro Sanchez, the prime minister of Spain, said the deal will “allow us to remove barriers and move towards an area of shared prosperity”. Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, said the draft agreement would be sent to the European Commission to start negotiations on a formal treaty.“All sides are committed to mitigating the effects of the end of the transition period on Gibraltar, and in particular ensure border fluidity, which is clearly in the best interests of the people living on both sides,” he said.More follows More

PM says his Brexit deal achieves ‘having his cake and eating it’Boris Johnson has said the UK’s destiny “resides firmly in our hands” and hailed “wonderful” new customs forms, as his Brexit trade deal entered into law hours before Britain leaves the single market and customs union at 11pm on Thursday.His deal with the EU has been branded the worst UK negotiation in at least 40 years by Tony Blair’s former chief of staff and the negotiator of the Good Friday Agreement. Jonathan Powell said Brussels had got its way “on every major economic point”.It comes as Spain said Gibraltar will remain part of EU’s passport-less, free-travel Schengen Area – after reaching an initial agreement with the UK over the British territory’s status on Thursday. Meanwhile, the PM’s father Stanley Johnson confirmed he is applying for a French passport.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayShow latest update
1609426422PM welcomes Gibraltar agreementBoris Johnson has welcomed the agreement in principle for Gibraltar to maintain freedom of movement within the EU’s Schengen zone – though he is keen to point his commitment to the territory’s “British sovereignty”.Adam Forrest31 December 2020 14:531609426087‘Border fluidity’ for Gibraltar until formal deal done, says RaabConfirmation from the UK of arrangements for Gibraltar. Foreign secretary Dominic Raab said the British government had “reached agreement on a political framework to form the basis of a separate treaty between the UK and the EU regarding Gibraltar”.Raab added: “We will now send this to the European Commission, in order to initiate negotiations on the formal treaty. In the meantime, all sides are committed to mitigating the effects of the end of the transition period on Gibraltar, and in particular ensure border fluidity, which is clearly in the best interests of the people living on both sides.”
Adam Forrest31 December 2020 14:481609425533How Brexiteers will celebrate Brexit tonightThere will be no triumphant scenes in Parliament Square – but Brexit supporters are determined to mark the moment the long, messy process finally becomes real at 11pm.
The choice of tipple? Former UKIP deputy chair Suzanne Evans will raise a glass of “beautiful Winbirri English sparkling wine”.
Lance Forman, a former Brexit Party MEP, has something more complicated worked out. “I shall pour myself two glasses of fizz – one French champagne and the other English sparkling. First, I shall drink the French to say goodbye and then the English, to say hello.”
Emily Hewertson, who rose to fame after appearing on BBC’s Question Time, isn’t fussy about the origin of her tipple. “I will be popping open a glass of [Moet] champagne and will have a gold old sing to Rule, Britannia.”Adam Forrest31 December 2020 14:381609425001Longer-term treaty for Gibraltar ‘to be signed within six months’More on the 11th-hour breakthrough to keep open Gibraltar’s border with Spain. Spanish foreign minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya has said an agreement “in principle” means people in the British territory will remain subject to rules in use in Europe’s Schengen area – eliminate general travel checks.
A compromise agreement between Spain and the UK will now be sent to Brussels, where the European Commission will enter into negotiations with London to turn it into a proper treaty, Gonzalez Laya said. She said she expected the treaty to be signed within six months. Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez also confirmed the “in principle” agreement.Neither Downing Street nor the Foreign Office has made any immediate comment on the announcement.
Adam Forrest31 December 2020 14:301609423300Gibraltar to remain within EU’s Schengen zone, Spain saysGibraltar will remain part of EU agreements such as the Schengen Area, Spain said after reaching an initial agreement with the UK over the British territory’s post-Brexit status on Thursday.
Madrid and London have been negotiating how to police the land border between Spain and Gibraltar, which was excluded from the last-minute exit deal reached with the EU last week.
The border-free, passport-less zone – named after the eponymous Luxembourg village where the agreement was signed – first came into effect in its current form back in 1995.
Adam Forrest31 December 2020 14:011609422143Report: UK-Ghana deal won’t be done on timeBritain and Ghana are close to an agreement on post-Brexit trade – but a deal will not happen in time to prevent a period of trading on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms, a source close to the negotiation said on Thursday.
It means British exports to Ghana would continue to be subject to a wide array of WTO tariffs. The two sides were expected to reached consensus on the main elements of a deal soon and would look to implement as quickly as possible, the source told Reuters.Official data shows Britain exported goods and services worth £722m to Ghana in 2019.
The government will publish legislation implementing all the continuity agreements struck by international trade secretary Liz Truss later on Thursday – accounting for 97 per cent of the trade it sought to protect. But deals still outstanding include Albania and Jordan.   More