A recent ITV report has highlighted concerns about the amount of illegal meat entering Britain and the potential changes to border controls that could follow a UK-EU SPS agreement. However, the report brings together two quite different issues which are important to distinguish but quite often get conflated.

The first is the illegal importation of meat through ports such as Dover and Folkestone. This involves meat being brought into the country outside the proper commercial import system, including products carried in vehicles in poor or unhygienic conditions and without the required declarations or controls.

According to figures cited in the report, Dover Port Health Authority detained nearly 200 tonnes of illegally imported meat last year, twice the previous year’s total, and intercepted more than 14 tonnes in a single week in March. But, the Authority says it has has limited resources available to carry out this work. This is principally an enforcement problem. Illegal importers are, by definition, attempting to evade the official import system and the controls that apply to legitimate trade.

A separate issue is the system of official SPS controls on legally imported commercial consignments.

Currently, legitimate commercial imports of products such as meat from the EU are pre-notified and can be directed to the Border Control Post at Sevington, near Ashford, for official checks. The head of the facility expressed concern about plans to reduce or remove these routine checks as part of the forthcoming UK-EU SPS agreement, arguing that they provide an additional defence against animal disease and non-compliant products.

However, the proposed SPS agreement is intended to remove much of the bureaucracy and routine border checking associated with legitimate UK-EU trade, while maintaining common standards and, crucially, the ability to carry out checks where necessary.

As John Powell said in his interview the meat industry has broadly welcomed this development because the benefits would operate in both directions. British meat exporters have faced significant additional certification, administrative and border costs when trading with the EU since Brexit. Reducing those barriers should lower costs for businesses and could help UK exporters recover some of the trade lost since the UK left the Single Market.

The important distinction, therefore, is between facilitating legitimate trade and preventing illegal trade.

Removing unnecessary routine bureaucracy from properly declared commercial consignments does not remove the need for robust enforcement against smugglers deliberately attempting to circumvent the system. Indeed, the scale of illegal meat intercepted at Dover underlines the importance of ensuring that enforcement at the border is properly resourced and targeted at precisely that threat.

As the new UK-EU arrangements are developed, the challenge for Government will be to deliver the benefits of frictionless legitimate trade without weakening the separate controls and enforcement needed to identify and stop illegal meat entering the country.

Watch the full ITV report including John Powell’s interview here.