Friday 18 September 2020

Freight industry Gove meeting a "washout"

The round table meeting with Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove demanded by a group of trade bodies representing the UK freight industry took place recently and has now been scathingly described by the head of the Road Haulage Association as a "washout".  Richard Burnett says they still have "no clarity" about the questions and concerns they have been raising with civil servants for months.  Instead of a small meeting of the key players the meeting was attended by a "wide range of stakeholders, all of whom have their own concerns and agendas."

Such a forum is not the place to resolve big issues or make decisions anyway. They are usually  more suited to information imparting or gathering. This one appeared to be neither and little or no progress was made.

Peter Foster at the FT has written about the frustration in the industry and tweeted a thread:
He says one of the problems is that "the Treasury and Gove really don't understand what is happening on the ground - they really do see this customs business as a wonderful opportunity and can't understand why industry isn't flinging itself at it."

This is apparently a reference to the poor take up of the £50 million available in grants. But apparently it amounts to £12K for each new employee's salary and up to £1750 for training internally and externally. Figures in the industry say it just isn't enough.  The government seems proud of creating an unnecessary army of pen-pushers.

Plus, and Foster doesn't mention this, if I was in that business I would worry that the job would not be a permanent career. Sooner or later somebody will realise it's all totally insane and we will rejoin the single market and customs union.  All those newly recruited and trained agents will find themselves out of work.

Another point Foster does make is that even existing customs agents are not happy to take on ro-ro work for Europe because they don't have experience of it:

"So several conversations I had saw brokers  (who previously were sending non-agri/plant goods on long shipping routes to rest of world) were very wary of getting into ro-ro work with perishables where all sorts of bad sh*t can happen, with inexperienced staff & clients"

This in itself should raise alarm bells. The government thinks in 75 days you can recruit and train complete novices to do something that experience brokers don't want to touch!

Foster says if it turns out to be "a total mess" like the A-Levels fiasco, PPE procurement, etc some mandarin or regulators will be lined up for the blame, and the chop while ministers "complain they yanked the handle and nothing happened."

But the difference this time is that there will be a "clear paper trail of industry warnings" and ministers like Gove will find it difficult to avoid the blame. Which is why it will not happen.

The only surprise to me is that it has taken so long for men like Gove to see the scale of the problem - assuming that he now does of course.  It's easy to look at an issue from the outside and ignore the problems. We have all done it I imagine. I have said before everybody's job looks easy until you try it yourself.  But most people are wise enough - at least at the beginning - to defer to experts and listen before pronouncing on something about which you know little.

But Gove, Johnson and all the rest didn't listen to experts - they were all scaremongers - even before they advocated Brexit. This is why we're in the mess we are.

The started off knowing nothing and over the last four years have learned nothing. 

The RHA boss's frustration comes across in the statement but you can be sure industry voices are only going to become louder and louder as the ticking clock counts down.

This morning's announcement that the government are considering another two week national lockdown will only add another problem to all the others. At some point they are going to need an extension to the transition period and Johnson is going to face big questions about why he rejected an extension in June.

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