‘There are only so many hits you can take as a business’: Both sides being hurt by fishing dispute
Brexit is done, and for many, there’s genuine relief it’s over.
But ongoing disagreements and post-treaty disputes are having real world costs to businesses who say they feel let down and misled by the Brexit process.
The row over fishing rights and the threat of retaliatory action from the French have already cost one oyster producer in Kent tens of thousands of pounds worth of business.
Meanwhile, Sky News has learned that the Department for Transport has asked a Kent lorry park that is due to close shortly, to stay open for a few months longer over Christmas to help with anticipated extra pressure on an already strained supply chain.
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France postpones sanctions over fishing row
“There are only so many hits, so many body punches you can take as a business and get back up and start again,” says James Green, director of The Whitstable Oyster Company.
Mr Green’s business is based in the picturesque north Kent town, famous for its oysters.
It has farmed oysters for generations and is responsible for about a third of the UK’s entire production.
But Brexit has already cost them dearly. New rules mean he can no longer export fully-grown market-sized oysters to France – those exports had accounted for around 50% of his orders, and that disappeared overnight.
James Green voted for Brexit but says he feels misled
He moved his focus to building up the domestic market, an encouraging albeit slow process, and continuing to export juvenile oysters to France.
This is still allowed because the juveniles are put back in the sea off the coast of France, to be harvested later by his buyers.
But last week as the post-Brexit fishing row intensified, French threats set him back further.
In a disagreement over how many licenses have been granted to French trawlers operating in British waters, France’s president Emmanuel Macron set an ultimatum, demanding the UK grant more or face retaliatory measures including British boats being banned from landing their catch in France and increased customs checks on exported British goods.
Such tightened restrictions might have included the removal of veterinary checks in France that are necessary for James to sell his oysters there. His buyers got nervous and cancelled orders – he lost roughly £25,000 worth in just a few days.
Mr Green’s business is based in the picturesque north Kent town of Whitstable
“With farms you can’t stop, you’ve got to continue otherwise the stock becomes unsellable,” he said.
“There are quite a lot of costs involved in continuing that process, so it’s frustrating.
“Coupled with COVID, coupled with Brexit, coupled with water quality from Southern Water, this is the fourth thing in the space of less than a year that has had a massive impact on our industry.
“You can’t just take away that main market overnight and expect these businesses to continue because they’re just not.”
Whitstable is famous for its oysters
Mr Green voted for Brexit in 2016, and said fishing rights were his key motivator. But the reality has not been as he was promised, and he said repeated reassurances that his exports would not be affected now feel misleading.
“I think the deal we got was very, very poor, very poor,” he said. “So I probably would change my vote, if I’m honest.”
The threats from France were deferred this week, paving the way for talks between Lord Frost, the UK’s chief Brexit negotiator and France’s Secretary of State for European Affairs, Clément Beaune.
Under the Brexit deal, French trawlermen who had traditionally fished between six and 12 miles off the coast of the UK would be allowed to continue to do so as long as they could provide proof they had fished there every year since 2016.
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While the French have said that too few licenses have been granted, the British have said that those not approved have not provided sufficient evidence.
But despite all the smiles and handshakes for the cameras, positions on both sides are still entrenched and no significant progress was made.
The context this side of the Channel is not just businesses suffering, but a supply chain already stacked up.
Some say a system still grappling with global delays and a shortage of lorry drivers can’t cope with much more pressure.
Mr Green’s business has farmed oysters for generations
Any further delays or customs checks at ports may well be seen and felt in lorry parks across Kent.
Sky News has learnt that the Department for Transport has asked one such site, Ashford International Truck Stop that was due to close shortly in favour of a new bigger site next door, to remain open for a few extra months over Christmas.
A sense perhaps that preparations are being made for extra seasonal pressure.
On the other side of the Channel there is another side to this story.
New rules mean Mr Green can no longer export fully-grown market-sized oysters to France
Laurent Merlin fishes for crab from Boulogne sur Mer. He has been fishing in British waters since the 1990s and his father did the same for years before him. But he hasn’t been granted a license yet and he’s getting desperate.
“It’s frustrating because it has now been 10 months that we’ve been waiting,” he said.
“If we get nothing, we will have to react. If we don’t we won’t be able to continue. French waters have been overfished, there are no fish left there.”
Officials will talk again in the coming days and while they’re talking, threats are unlikely to be actioned.
On different sides of these waters there’s different sides to this story, but ongoing disputes are costing.
A millionaires’ playground, Poole in Dorset boasts some of the most expensive properties in the UK, and has been called Britain’s Palm Beach.
Away from the yachts and the mansions of Sandbanks, however, Poole is also a beer drinkers’ paradise, with 58 pubs in the parliamentary constituency alone.
But now many of Dorset’s pub landlords have joined a bitter backlash against rises in business rates of up to £30,000 in Rachel Reeves’s November budget.
Across the UK, it is claimed up to 1,000 publicans have even banned Labour MPs from their pubs, after the chancellor axed a 40% rates discount, introduced during COVID, from next April.
The row over the rises, brewing since the budget, came to a head in a clash between Kemi Badenoch and Sir Keir Starmer in the final Prime Minister’s Questions of 2025.
“He gave his word that he would help pubs,” said the Tory leader.
“Yet they face a 15% rise in business rates because of his budget. Will he be honest and admit that his taxes are forcing pubs to close?”
The PM replied that the temporary relief introduced during COVID – a scheme the Conservatives put in place and Labour supported, he said – had come to an end.
“But it was always a temporary scheme coming to an end,” he said.
“We have now put in place a £4bn transitional relief.”
Mark and Michael Ambrose, father and son co-landlords of The Barking Cat, said the increases are a ‘pub destroyer’
But in the Barking Cat Ale House in Poole, facing an increase in business rates of nearly £9,000 a year, the father and son co-landlords fear the rises could mean last orders for many pubs.
“We’re sort of in the average area at 157%, but we’ve got a lot of local pubs that are increasing by 600%, and another one by 800%,” Ambrose senior, Mark, told Sky News.
“It’s a pub destroyer. Pubs can’t survive these kinds of increases. It’s not viable. Most pubs are just about scraping by anyway. If you add these massive increases your profit margins are wiped out.
“We struggle as it is. You can’t have that kind of increase and expect businesses to succeed.
“Fortunately, the customers understand. But they still don’t want to have to spend an extra 30 or 50 pence a pint.”
Son Michael added: “It’s all back to front. It’s really these bigger pub companies and supermarkets that need to be facing increased taxes. We can’t handle them. They can.”
Michelle Smith, landlady of the Poole Arms, the oldest pub on the town’s quay, dating back to 1635, said: “Our rates per value is due to go up £9,000 in April, so it’s quite a deal.”
Michelle Smith, landlady of The Poole Arms, said all her prices are going up
“And we had a rates increase just gone as well,” she added. “So our rates had already increased over £1,000 a month last April. So another hit is quite considerable really.
“Prices definitely have to go up with all the different price increases that we’ve got throughout: business rates, wage increases, the beer goes up from the breweries. Everything is going up.”
Backing the publicans, Neil Duncan-Jordan, who became Poole’s first ever Labour MP last year, has written to the chancellor demanding a rethink. He said he is prepared to vote against the tax rise in the Commons.
“They’ve got to listen,” he told Sky News.
“They’ve got to listen to the high street, to publicans, people who run social clubs and listen to problems that they’re facing and the impact that these changes have made.”
Mr Duncan-Jordan said he was prepared to support an amendment to the Finance Bill, which turns the budget into law and had its second reading in the Commons last week.
Despite being suspended for four months for rebelling against welfare cuts earlier this year, he said: “I was discussing this with some MPs just this morning and I’ll be happy to support those. Sometimes you just have to say what you think is right.”
As chancellor, Ms Reeves has regularly raised a glass to pubs and promised to protect them from rising costs.
But Sir Keir has faced the wrath of a publican before, when he was thrown out of a pub in Bath during COVID by an anti-lockdown landlord.
This time, without a U-turn by the chancellor on the business rates increases, pub landlords fear the government has them over a barrel.
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