Freight News, Road

Committee echoes FTA fears over passport chaos

[ March 23, 2015   //   Chris ]

The Home Affairs Committee has backed Freight Transport Association concerns over a plan to introduce 100% exit checks and manual passport on traffic leaving the UK ports from 8 April. It says that there would be traffic chaos at terminal and Operation Stack would become a regular feature on Kent motorways.

The Home Affairs Committee report, published on 23 March said that the Government would have to give further exemptions to the scheme.

FTA’s manager for international affairs, Don Armour, stated: “This Home Affairs Committee report confirms FTA’s concerns over the new proposed manual individual passport checks.  We have already said that we are not convinced that the proposed passport checking system has been thought through properly or that it is as robust as officials would have us believe, and as a result we believe it will cause delays at the ports and exit points – and chaos on the roads leading to departure.”
FTA is calling for proper segregation of vehicles as they approach the cross-Channel terminals in order that single occupancy vehicles are separated from those with multiple passengers – including coaches – and can be dealt with quickly and efficiently to avoid delays to time-sensitive loads during the passport checking process.

Tags: FTA