Global Cold Chain News opinion
Much is being made of reducing burdensome red tape now that we have left the EU. It was an argument made repeatedly during the Brexit debate that European-driven rules and regulations suffocated enterprise and prosperity. Brexit would see Britain cast off the bureaucratic shackles as soon as possible.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, has already set out plans to review the working time directive. But this ignores the fact that EU membership did not prevent the UK from having the continent’s most liberal labour market. Brexit fantasies seem to continue.
The real tangle of red tape faced by business is now at the EU border, where Brexit imposes cumbersome new procedures. The cost is already being paid, as fish and other animal products rot before they can be cleared for continental markets. UK online shoppers now find themselves presented with tax bills when goods ordered from EU suppliers arrive at the front door.
And it’s proving to be harder and harder to get an EU haulier to deliver to the UK becuase of requirements to provide tens of thousands of pounds in guarantees to cover VAT or potential tariffs on arrival in Britain. Red tape has strangled the fish and seafood exports where speed of delivery is vital for fresh and live seafoods.
The drag on growth is inevitable. There were warnings dismissed by Brexiteers as scaremongering. Ministers now hardly dare admit that such problems exist.
So we are in the absurd position of government indulging in the rhetoric of releasing business from a burden of imagined bureaucracy to avoid taking responsibility for the real burden, imposed by this Brexit-obsessed government. Ideological fiction now trumps economic reality.
