UK abandons £110mn post-Brexit border project

The UK government has quietly abandoned a program to create a frictionless post-Brexit trade border, despite spending £110 million (€126 million) on a contract with Deloitte and IBM, drawing criticism from trade and tax experts.

Ministers in the previous Conservative government promised in 2020 to create the “world’s most effective border” by 2025 as part of post-Brexit plans to smooth the flow of goods between the UK and the rest of the world, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.

The “single trade window” (STW) was intended to create a one-stop digital platform for traders to submit import and export paperwork. More than 40 other countries operate such a system.

However, the project was paused in spring 2024 after encountering delays and higher than expected costs.

Government responses to Freedom of Information requests, seen by the FT, now show that there has been no money spent on the project since January 2025, with the UK Treasury writing that the programme had been “brought to an early closure”.

The halting of the STW comes as a string of delays and IT failures have hobbled the introduction of post-Brexit border arrangements, which the National Audit Office estimated in 2024 will cost £4.7 billion (€5.4 billion).

The UK tax agency HM Revenue & Customs confirmed last month in separate FOIs that the project currently had no HMRC staff assigned to its delivery and that the contract with Deloitte and IBM “has been closed”.

Trade experts expressed disappointment at the development, warning that it would make trading more difficult for UK exporters.

Chris Southworth, secretary-general of the UK branch of the International Chamber of Commerce, said the STW had limited benefit to business as it focused on joining up disparate Whitehall systems rather than addressing the more important task of exchanging information with the private sector and other countries.

“The UK have wasted a lot of money on the single trade window. Pakistan did theirs for one-third of the price and are beginning to interoperate with China,” he said.

TaxWatch, the think-tank that made the FOI requests, also criticised the government for a lack of transparency over the status of the project.

Mike Lewis, director at TaxWatch, said: “For all intents and purposes the single trade window has been cancelled without HMRC or Deloitte and IBM having delivered anything after spending over £110mn on it. But neither HMRC nor ministers appear to wish to admit this.”

News.Az 

By Ulviyya Salmanli