The challenges that the industry is facing can be put into three clear categories. First, there are the educational issues about understanding the process. Clearly, that involves an awful lot of parties, from the person wanting to move the goods, to the person who physically moves the goods and then to the person who receives them. There are so many moving parts, so that was very tricky at the beginning.
It is important to point out that the survey found that the majority of issues were a result of an initial misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the new rules, whether that was on the part of the person moving the goods or the person selling the goods. The situation seems to be getting better although, do not get me wrong, there is still a raft of paperwork with many elements.
The second area involves specific systems elements. When different industries have tried to use the systems—whether it is the customs systems or the TSS system for moving into Ireland—there are specific technical issues, depending on which industry is involved. Issues have been raised and, slowly but surely, they have been worked through. In the beginning, there was an awful lot of repetition on forms although, as I say, individual industries have picked out issues and worked with DEFRA or the relevant authority to try to improve that. Slowly but surely, that is getting better.
The third element is the process element, which is perhaps more complicated. I will again use SPS groupage as an example of that. Initially, along with our members, we worked with DEFRA and the department of agriculture, environment and rural affairs to work on individual consignments being sealed on one vehicle. In the past, if you had a sealed load, you had to seal the vehicle, but we have come up with a process where you can put individually sealed loads on a truck. The truck can then be opened and the different loads checked.
That is the beginning of a solution for the process element, but we need to further streamline that and make it more efficient because, ultimately, that is what logistics and transport are all about. They are about moving goods in the most efficient manner possible. If more paperwork is required and more barriers are put in place, that increases the time that it takes to move the goods, which increases costs. That is ultimately where we are moving to.
On what support the UK Government or Scottish Government can give, I mentioned that we have asked the UK Government for an extension to the grace period. With specific on-the-ground issues, when guidance is produced, our members have found that it tends to involve lists. We want operational-specific guidance. That will depend on what industry is involved. The more that we can make the guidance operationally focused, the easier it is for an operator—whether it is someone selling a good or someone moving a good—to go into that guidance and read it. Unfortunately, at the beginning, partly because of the late timing of everything, there were reams and reams of information that nobody had a hope of trying to understand.
On Scottish Government guidance, we would like funding for one-to-one support for industries, if at all possible. Rather than just have people go to a website to try to understand the data, the Government could offer a telephone service—again, it would be sector specific—to give businesses one-to-one support to help them to understand the issues. That would be a bit like what the Scottish Government has done previously in focusing on trying to get businesses to export more. Scottish Enterprise has set up support relationships, and that is the sort of thing that we would ask for.