BORIS Johnson is to spend up to £25 million to help companies deal with new post-Brexit customs arrangements between Britain and Northern Ireland despite repeatedly insisting there would not be "a border in the Irish Sea".

He told the DUP conference in 2018 that no Tory government would ever introduce such controls, saying they would damage "the fabric of the Union".

However, under the agreement he signed with the EU at the end of the current transition period on January 1, Northern Ireland will stay in the EU single market for goods, while the rest of the UK will leave, so there will be a range of new processes when shipping goods from GB to NI.

HMRC is now tendering for "an end-to-end service to support businesses with new administrative processes".

Tender documents note that HMRC "wants to test the market for a service that can identify and support the education of traders and carriers about their obligations".

It also wants a system that can make electronic declarations relevant to HMRC systems.

READ MORE: Boris Johnson says No-Deal Brexit would be a 'very good option'

It is called the Goods Vehicle Movement Service (GVMS) and will be largely used by haulage firms and ferry companies.

It will link customs, safety & transit declarations into a single "Goods Movement Reference" (GMR), which lorry drivers will have to present before their load can board a ferry.

The GMR will also be used to assess which loads will have to be subject to checks when they arrive in Northern Ireland.

The Government hopes to pilot GVMS by November and have it fully operational for January 1.

Johnson told the DUP conference in November 2018 "no British government could or should" sign up to putting a border in the Irish Sea between Britain and Northern Ireland.

"We would be damaging the fabric of the Union with regulatory checks and even customs controls between Great Britain and Northern Ireland on top of those extra regulatory checks down the Irish Sea that are already envisaged in the withdrawal agreement," said Johnson.

"Now, I have to tell you that no British Conservative government could or should sign up to any such arrangement," he added.

Johnson's predecessor Theresa May also repeatedly said the Tories would never agree to a border in the Irish Sea.

In March 2018, she told the Commons: "The plan C that the European Commission put into their draft legal text actually does not properly reflect or fairly reflect the joint report in December because in the joint report in December, of course, we set out those three stages with that backstop but also made clear that businesses here in Northern Ireland should be able to trade freely in the internal market of the UK in the future, ie no hard border, no border down the Irish Sea.”

Alyn Smith, the SNP MP and former MEP, said: "Too little, too late. From the shower of chancers who promised faithfully it was never going to happen and are now pretending it is someone else’s fault. UK politics really has seen the death of shame."