A ‘very attractive, big facility with two or three people rattling around doing some paperwork.’
The list of failures when it comes to Brexit just keeps growing. It’s been revealed that the government spent £2.3 million on a Brexit border inspection facility in the port of Poole which has carried out a grand total of just two checks.
The shocking waste of money comes after the expected number of checks due to be carried out at the facility, which includes inspection rooms and refrigeration facilities for plant and animal products, failed to materialise.
Politico reports that Brian Murphy, chief executive of Poole Harbour Commissioners, which has spent more than £500,000 of its own cash on the facility ‘blames the predicament on the previous government, which was constantly “moving the goalposts” of its five-times-delayed post-Brexit border regime, ultimately reducing the number of checks that would be needed’.
“Previous decisions had already been made for huge infrastructure and then they moved the goalposts,” Murphy said. “So you’ve got massive facilities that were built and designed for initial thinking and that thinking has now moved on and some facilities are just nowhere near what was expected. Two physical checks by the Port Health Authority since April 30 is just madness.”
He also described the facility as being ‘very useful for a basketball competition’ and a ‘very attractive, big facility with two or three people rattling around doing some paperwork.’
The latest waste of money shows yet again just how short sighted and incompetent the Tory government was over Brexit.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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