French border staff told to work harder instead of blaming Brexit

Blaming Brexit for Dover chaos is ‘lame excuse’, Tory MP says

Brexit is not to blame for chaos at the Port of Dover, Tory MPs have insisted. East Worthing and Shoreham MP Tim Loughton dismissed using Brexit as a “lame excuse” and said delays are due to a lack of French border staff.

Meanwhile, Dover MP Natalie Elphicke pointed out that problems with traffic have been “longstanding before and after Brexit”.

Disruption was first reported on Friday as the port declared a critical incident and said the delays were “due to lengthy French border processes and sheer volume”.

Ms Elphicke aimed criticism at the French Government, suggesting it needed to put more effort into the issue.

She told the Express: “What’s needed at Dover is long-term investment for border controls and roads – and for the French border officers to speed up processing at the port.

“We’ve just received a £45million commitment from the Government to tackle these issues. Action is needed now to prepare for the summer peak holiday season.”

Mr Loughton said it is “very fashionable to blame everything on Brexit”.

The former minister told Times Radio: “I was with the Home Affairs Select Committee when we visited Dover a few months ago to see the whole of the port operations there.

“We’ve been down several times because we had problems with congestion last year.

“And I’ve been through Dover and the tunnel myself several times in the last year.

“The whole issue about what was going to happen with passports after Brexit is people wanted to make sure we were checking who was going in and out of the country.

“So the problem isn’t with the fact that passports are being more rigorously checked. I think that’s a good thing. The problem is how many people we’ve got doing it.

“Last time I was going across the Channel, we went through the British passport control in a matter of minutes and then there was a big queue to get through the French passport control because only two booths out of I think 10 or 11 were actually open.

“It’s because there were not sufficient Border Force people there from the French equivalent checking those passports.

“Obviously arrangements have got to be better. There needs to be more people processing those passports at peak time and it needs to flow better.

“But to just blindly say all this is all due to Brexit, it’s a bit of a lame excuse.”

But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer today claimed Brexit “has had an impact” on cross-Channel journeys.

He told LBC: “Of course Brexit has had an impact – there are more checks to be done.

“That doesn’t mean that I am advocating a reversal of Brexit, I am not. I have always said there is no case now for going back in.

“Once we left, it was obvious that what had to happen at the border would change.

“Whichever way you voted, that was obvious. Whichever way you voted, you are entitled to have a Government that recognises that and plans ahead.

“Yet again we have got to the first big holiday of the year and we have got queues, to the great frustration of many families trying to get out to have a well-earned holiday, and I think my message to the Government, their message, would be ‘Get a grip’.”

Meanwhile, travel journalist Simon Calder also said the chaos was “95 percent” due to Brexit.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman yesterday rejected suggestions that Brexit could be the cause of delays at the port.

She said it would not be fair to view the delays as “an adverse effect of Brexit”.

Ms Braverman told the Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme on Sky News: “What I would say is at acute times when there is a lot of pressure crossing the Channel, whether that’s on the tunnel or ferries, then I think that there’s always going to be a back-up and I just urge everybody to be a bit patient while the ferry companies work their way through the backlog.”

She suggested that in general “things have been operating very smoothly at the border”.

Coach passengers were forced to spend hours waiting to enter the Kent port to be processed and board ferries over the weekend, but the queues had cleared by this morning.

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