Wine importer tells James O'Brien of shocking struggles with post-Brexit red tape
25 January 2021, 17:50 | Updated: 25 January 2021, 17:57
Wine importer tells James O'Brien of post-Brexit red tape struggles
This is the moment a wine importer told James O'Brien about the difficulties being faced by his industry due to post-Brexit red tape.
The exchange comes amid UK firms have reported being hit by additional charges, taxes and paperwork following the UK's departure from the European Union.
Daniel Lambert told James: "We came in...on January 4th all ready to go and face 2021 and we found out that the importation system wasn't quite as we were expecting.
"It was completely unknown to a lot of producers the forms that they needed to go and get hold of.
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"It took nearly two weeks for them in fact to find out what they needed to do.
And you have a lot of importers to date who still have not actually managed to get anything across the border."
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He added: "The first point is that the huge amount of paperwork that's now involved in doing something that was so very straightforward beforehand has surprised everybody..."
He later said: "One very senior person, who deals with HMRC and filling these forms in, was amazed that we had done it so quickly in 21 days to actually complete a form. They couldn't believe that we'd managed it."
