No-deal Brexit: Tens of thousands of lorries with ‘wrong paperwork’ to be turned away at ports, secret government documents reveal

Ministers accused of ‘fiddling the figures’ to disguise chaos of HGVs being prevented from reaching the border in the first place

Ministers have “fiddled the figures” to disguise the true level of chaos at British ports from a no-deal Brexit, it has been alleged.

The government’s Operation Yellowhammer dossier – only released after a parliamentary battle – predicted a “low risk of significant sustained queues” at ports other than in Kent.

But new documents have revealed this would only be the case because tens of thousands of vehicles would be turned away before they reached the coast, for not having the correct paperwork.

In Liverpool, Holyhead and Portsmouth about two-thirds of vehicles would not be allowed into the port, the Department for Transport (DfT) papers, stamped “official sensitive”, show.

Andy McDonald, Labour’s shadow transport secretary, said the DfT was “not being straight with the public” by only publishing assumptions that were “practically meaningless”.

“Much of the analysis only seems to consider those vehicles which have the correct paperwork and totally overlooks the impact of those HGVs which won’t,” he protested.

And Jo Stevens, a Labour supporter of the People’s Vote campaign, said: “The revelation that the government appear to have fiddled the figures to make the calamity of no deal look less damaging is another sign of the behaviour which has led to a complete breakdown of trust in Boris Johnson.

“The only hope that Johnson has of meeting his claims about the ports is to turn away vast numbers of lorries before they get there. That means lost orders, lost money and eventually lost jobs.”

The DfT declined to comment on the documents, revealed by the Financial Times, but insisted there “should be limited disruption” if hauliers had “the correct documentation”.

“We have implemented a major campaign to ensure hauliers can take action to get ready and are able to operate and that trade can continue to move as freely as possible between the UK and Europe after Brexit,” a spokesperson said.

However, the documents, dated last month, set out how only a minority of the normal “flow rate” of vehicles will be allowed into the ports, if the UK crashes out of the EU with no agreement on 31 October and EU countries impose import controls.

“One hundred per cent of non-compliant vehicles will be turned away, which means the resulting flow rate is 29 per cent at Holyhead, Heysham and Liverpool, and 32 per cent at Portsmouth,” one states.

Meanwhile, at Dover, the busiest port for traffic to and from the EU, the queues could reach a peak of 8,500 vehicles, according to one of the documents seen by the FT.

It calculated that, given the typical 16.5m length of an articulated lorry, the tailbacks outside Dover could stretch to about 150km.

One document said imports would only be able to flow freely at Portsmouth if there were “local arrangements preventing HGVs that have been turned back from blocking inbound flow”.

The issue was set to be discussed at the meeting of the XO committee of ministers responsible for no-deal planning on Monday morning.