"Technology alone is not going to solve that border problem, it needs to be around other arrangements as well," Karen Wheeler, who left her role as Director General of Britain's Cross Government Border Delivery Group last week, told an event in London.

"In any case, the technology is not in place any time soon, the sorts of arrangements that would be necessary. All of those are all fine but actually what you would need to do is ensure that industry, the traders, the road hauliers and the end-to-end supply chains were actually geared up for this as well.

"That is more than likely to take longer potentially than putting technology arrangements in."

Copyright Reuters, 2019