It was a quiet week over Christmas in the bunker with just eleven additions to the brexit downside dossier, ten on the downside and one upside. The government used the seasonal festivities to quietly announce what you might think of as the important and even momentous decision to “retain the metric system”.
This followed a consultation which began in June 2022 with a statement setting out the objective for the UK to “take back control of its measurement system” now that we have left the EU, as part the government’s plans to “capitalise on the benefits of Brexit”.
To say the consultation was decisive would be a considerable understatement. Of the 100,980 responses from citizens, businesses, academia, healthcare, trading standards, and other organisations, just 1,273 wanted either to have more choice (870) or go the whole hog and adopt an entirely imperial system (403). The rest – 99,635 or 98.7% – preferred the status quo or even less choice, by using a totally metric system.
And so, after “careful consideration” no less, the government said in its response that it was not going to make any changes “at this time”. In short, it’s another sign we are taking back control and capitalising on the benefits of Brexit by, errr … (checks press release) carrying on doing precisely what we were doing before.
It was left to Kevin Hollinrake, MP for Thirsk and Malton, and junior minister at the trade department to make the humiliating announcement which he sneaked in at the very end of a press release about British winemakers being allowed to sell champagne in 568ml (pint) bottles as well as 500ml and 750ml.
The Daily Mail’s Peter Hitchens described that move as striking “a blow against metric commissars who loathe our traditions”. Indeed, I’m sure we all recall coaldust-covered miners trudging home after a 12-hour shift, barefoot to save the soles of their boots, stopping only to buy a pint of Pol Roger from the old corner shop, eh?
Food
Cheesemakers, those who export to Canada anyway, face a difficult new year. It turns out Canadian cheesemakers aren’t too keen on seeing more imports from Britain and have persuaded their government not to extend an EU agreement on cheese, meaning British exports of cheddar and the like will face a 245% duty as of 1 January, making them practically unaffordable.
It’s a demonstration that even our closest allies don’t make exception for friends when it comes to matters of trade.
In the same report we also discovered that one cheesemaker, Coombe Castle International, based in Wiltshire, has had to set up a Dutch company in order to sell its products into the EU and is now contributing to taxes in the Netherlands. MD Darren Larvin said:
“Brexit has not brought any opportunities – no good has come of it.”
The Telegraph, warns that food shortages are “alarmingly likely” in 2024 blaming climate change, transportation issues and global conflicts but also suggesting that supplies will be “further impacted” (and not in a good way) by new checks on goods entering the UK from the EU at the end of January, under the government’s new border target operating model.
Professor Chris Elliott, of Queen’s University Belfast said: “We are virtually totally dependent on other countries for most of our fresh produce, our fruit and our vegetables” so, helpfully, our own government (our own government!) is making importing more difficult, more costly and slower.
Manufacturing
A Belgian owned maker of insulation panels based in Stoke-on-Trent will have to spend about £400,000 in the UK next year retesting its CE approved products to comply with the new UKCA mark, which still applies to construction materials. Simon Blackham, senior technical manager at Recticel said the tests would simply repeat ones the products have already undergone in the EU and would have to be paid for ultimately by British customers.
Simon Storer, CEO of the Insulation Manufacturers Association, says the challenges are being replicated at other firms, many European owned:
“The unintended consequences are significant and incredibly damaging.”
Brexiter Sir Bill Cash has warned that new EU rules could have a “significant impact on toy producers in the UK.” His warnings comes as the EU considers proposals to amend current regulations, banning toys containing harmful substances, including carcinogenic, mutagenic or reprotoxic chemicals (CMRs).
If adopted the changes will force toys sold to the continent to come with a ‘toy passport’, adding to burdensome regulations faced by UK businesses, over which they have no influence, in what’s known as the ‘Brussels effect’.
The economy
Analysis by The Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) suggests that increased uncertainty about future trade conditions between the UK and EU after the 2016 referendum raised UK import price indices from the EU by 11% and consumer prices by 0.6%. Their report claims that the effects are “likely to be persistent, as post-referendum agreements have reduced trade policy uncertainty, but have not eliminated it”.
The Scottish government has estimated that the value of Scotland’s exports to the EU have slumped by nearly £2bn since Brexit. Exports fell from £16.950bn in 2019, to £14.970 in 2021 – 12% in two years. Over the same period exports to the rest of the UK rose by £1.89bn – from £46.695bn to £48.585bn. Exports to Holland saw the biggest drop, crashing by over 25%.
Transport
The Daily Express, perhaps Britain’s premier if slightly batty anti-EU tabloid, was upset that the UK was unaccountably “left out” of the EU’s plans to develop a pan-European transport network known as TEN-T. A framework agreement between the European Parliament and the European Council was approved earlier this week by the European Commission.
The Express has railed (no pun intended) against EU interference for decades but now seems to be demanding it, presumably in response to the HS2 fiasco.
Citizens
The latest EU citizen to suffer mystifying Home Office red tape is an Italian environmental technology investor who obtained a ‘permanent residency’ card after Brexit and has lived in this country for 14 years. The Guardian reports that she is one of “potentially tens of thousands” of EU citizens who were unaware the government had changed the rules in 2019 requiring them to apply for a different scheme, called EU settlement and now discovers she could be removed from the UK.
Government
Among a lot of other bad decisions, Dominic Cummings’ push to acquire a share in the failing satellite business OneWeb in 2020 after the UK lost access to the EU’s Galileo sat-nav system, has turned into a cautionary tale about picking winners.
The £400mn put into the company by the UK government is now said to be worth just £200mn.
Northern Ireland
A House of Lords inquiry says Northern Ireland companies “should not be additionally burdened by the need to search for the ways in which new or existing legislation is creating regulatory divergence” that could impact their business.
It recommends the government should provide a “central portal of divergence” to track and share instances of upcoming or possible divergence in regulations between the UK and EU, which one assumes, can only mean more unnecessary costs for the taxpayer.
Upsides
There was one upside this week and that comes from the think tank, The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) which predicts that the UK economy will grow faster than France in the coming years, making it almost 20% larger by 2038, and narrowing the gap with Germany, according to The Times.
However, the CEBR also says UK growth was stagnant in Q3, and “looking ahead, this feeble growth trajectory is set to persist. Indeed, CEBR expects the economy to experience a technical recession across Q4 2023 and Q1 2024”.
So, not all good news then?
