Freight operators in Britain raise concern on Brexit disruptions after government dossier leak
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The leak of Operation Yellowhammer, the British government’s no-deal planning dossier, indicates a hard Brexit would be “far, far more potentially disruptive” than industry has been told to prepare for, according to the Freight Transport Association.
The U.K. government must urgently clarify what it predicts the impact of no deal will be for moving goods into and around Britain, James Hookham, deputy chief executive of the Freight Transport Association (FTA), told POLITICO’s London Playbook.
The leak came as a bolt out of the blue for one of the most important industry associations preparing for a no-deal scenario. James Hookham, deputy chief executive of the Freight Transport Association (FTA), said that some of the reported Operation Yellowhammer scenarios pointed to something “far, far more potentially disruptive” than his organization had been told to prepare for, and he’s now calling for urgent clarification on what the government predicts the impact of no deal will be for moving goods into and around the U.K.
The FTA was particularly blindsided by the suggestion the government’s own no-deal zero-tariff policy could hit the U.K.’s domestic fuel industry, leading to the closure of two refineries, strikes and disruption to fuel availability. Adding the caveat that the FTA had not been shown the original Yellowhammer document, Hookham said: “That really frightened me, because that’s clearly got the potential to disrupt all U.K. goods distribution activity and commercial activity, if the domestic fuel supplies are under threat. That’s certainly never been raised with us before.”
Hookham continues: “We’re calling for some kind of independent review of the evidence and the scenarios that the government’s using, just to get it all out on the table. What we’re feeling now is that we’re just shooting in the dark, we’re being asked to prepare for something that we don’t fully understand and that the government’s not prepared to share with us … All of a sudden this isn’t just queues at Dover … this could have a knock-on effect to all domestic goods distribution and that is orders of magnitude more than we were led to believe might happen.”
Any threat to fuel supplies would be a “game-changer,” Hookham said, and urged the government to be open about its expectations to help industry prepare. “What we want now is just some honesty and some clarity. How can we help to mitigate this if we don’t know what we’re trying to solve?”
