Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown questions the Government about the ability of the customs declaration service system to cope with the increase in volume of transactions when we start to export to the EU.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)

The number of customs declarations is likely to increase from 50 million now to 250 million when we have to start to export to the EU. This will be governed by a customs declaration service system. Will the system cope, and will there be enough agents to handle that volume of transactions?

Jesse Norman

We believe the system will cope. Of course, there are a lot of easements in place, and there is already a functioning CHIEF—customs handling of import and export freight—system to handle the current level of declarations.

Hansard

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