Travel gridlock hit the Kent roads around Dover and Folkestone again over the weekend as British tourists were confronted with the realities of travelling to the EU during a busy period for the first time since Brexit came into force in January 2021.
It was a miserable start to a holiday on the continent with queues of five to six hours, and travellers were warned the disruption is set to continue through the summer.
What is the cause? Could it have been avoided and is there a fix?
What is to blame?
In short, the big increase in post-pandemic travel combined with Brexit passport checks.
The weekend after English state schools break for the summer in July is the busiest single weekend for the port of Dover.
But this was the first time since Brexit that the new restrictions for entry to the EU had been tested to their limit.
This time last year, although lockdown restrictions had been lifted, passenger numbers were a fraction of normal volumes, and the British government had imposed an “amber plus” restriction on travel from France requiring holidaymakers to quarantine on their return to Britain.
What happened at the weekend?
The port of Dover experienced a fivefold increase in car numbers year on year.
On Friday it said it handled 11,000 cars, up from 1,200 on the equivalent Friday in 2021.
On Saturday it handled just under 12,000 cars, compared with 2,400 this time last year, and 10,000 cars on Sunday compared with 1,900 on the equivalent Sunday in 2021.
Was Dover prepared?
Yes. The Dover chief executive, Doug Bannister, told LBC it was “absolutely true” that Brexit was to blame for the extreme delays caused by a new requirement to stamp British passports.
The port had been preparing for months for the increase in traveller numbers but said it was let down by unexpected French border staff shortages.
In anticipation of the peak weekend, Dover installed three extra passport checking booths in June. It also converted an old French police checkpoint for freight checks to avoid lorry queues.
It had also set up a triage system that prioritised cars over trucks for this holiday weekend specifically.
On Friday morning, only six of the nine car passport booths were operational. The French said there was a technical issue in the tunnel, which delayed their staff getting to Britain.
By lunchtime on Friday the full complement of French staff were on site but by then the queueing had got “out of control” and Dover had a huge task to make up for lost time.
By Monday, queueing time had returned to normal, and the special traffic arrangements in place in Dover ended at 8.25am.
But Liz Truss said the French were to blame
The foreign secretary and Tory leadership candidate battling to be Britain’s next prime minister told France it must stop the “avoidable and unacceptable” situation at the border.
Is Brexit to blame?
To a large degree, yes.
Criticising the French, as Truss did, was to deny the consequences of the hard Brexit the UK Conservative government fought for and won.
The port handled almost 142,000 passengers over the weekend and each of those passports had to be manually stamped because of Brexit, taking the average time each passenger had to spend at passport control from 48 seconds to 90 seconds.
Writing in the French English-language newspaper, the Local, the veteran commentator John Lichfield said “strictly speaking” the gridlock was not the fault of Brexit but “the fault of successive British governments who have failed to prepare for Brexit and failed to educate the British public on what Brexit means”.
Was the bottleneck caused by passport checks preventable?
Yes. The government rejected the port of Dover’s request for a £33m chunk of a Brexit infrastructure fund in 2020 to, among other things, double the capacity for French passport checks. It got just £33,000 instead.
Will passport checks be automated in future?
Yes. And there are plans in place for an electronic visa waiver system, called the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS), similar to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) in the US.
It is expected to be fully operational next May.
A second automated system called the Entry/Exit System (EES) is being built in the EU to replace the current method of manual stamping.
It will register the person’s name, type of travel documents and biometric data (fingerprints and captured facial images).
It was due to become operational this autumn but may be pushed back to next year.
Automation may be another nightmare for Dover and Eurotunnel
While ETIAS and EES may work in airports, where barriers are in place for biometrics, this is a headache for Dover and Eurotunnel.
Biometric checks could require passengers to get out of their cars to go through an airport-style facial recognition barrier or fingerprint checks.
Both Eurotunnel and the port of Dover warned that this was both a danger for drivers and passengers but also that there was no room for the extra biometric booths.
Are there any solutions?
The transport industry has been warning since 2017 that a hard Brexit would lead to gridlock on Kent roads.
The only way to fully remove Brexit barriers is to rejoin the single market, and that is not an option either under a Conservative or Labour government.
John Keefe, the head of public affairs at Getlink, the owner of Eurotunnel, told the BBC that one of the issues was that all the traffic was coming down one motorway, the M2, but significant improvements could be made if the A2, the old road to Dover, was upgraded to a dual carriageway to the port.
He also said more haulage could go through the rail network.
