Brexit border checks to ‘add billions’ to consumer bills

Published

7 months ago

April 30, 2024

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Border checks on food and plant imports will add billions of pounds to the cost of doing business with the European Union, industry figures have warned.

From today European imports considered a “medium risk” to UK biosecurity will face physical inspection as part of a new border regime introduced almost eight years after the Brexit vote, and delayed five times in two years.

Plant and animal inspectors will examine a proportion of imported goods including fresh meat, fish, and dairy produce, a process that importers fear will disrupt supply chains, particularly for time-critical fresh goods.

The physical checks come three months after the introduction of new documentation for imports, including health certificates that require vets and plant inspectors to sign off consignments.

With importers also facing a charge for each consignment that comes into the UK irrespective of whether it is stopped for inspection, the government admits it will add more than £330m to annual business costs, and add 0.2% to food inflation over three years.

The Cold Chain Federation, which represents cold and frozen goods importers, believes government estimates are low, and puts the cost in billions.

“We think there’s going to be a billion pound’s worth of extra cost put onto food coming through Dover port alone, if you expand that to the rest of the country you’re looking at all sorts of money, so it won’t be 0.2%, it will be substantially more than that and the consumer will see that increase,” chief executive Phil Pluck told Sky News.

“Restaurants, delicatessens, fish and chip shops could well be affected by what’s currently happening today and the consumer, in the very near future will start to see some of those food products going up in price.”

The government insists the checks are necessary to keep food and plant-borne diseases including African swine fever out of the UK, and the cost of introducing the checks is “negligible” compared to the impact of a major disease outbreak.

Christine Middlemiss, the UK chief veterinary officer, said: “Now that we’re out of the EU and we can have our own biosecurity regime, we treat independently with other countries around the world so it’s important we’re managing our own biosecurity risks at the moment we’re at medium risk of incursion of a disease called African swine fever which is present in Germany and Italy and a number of countries in Europe.”

Smaller independent food importers fear they will be disproportionately affected by the new border regime as they lack the scale to mitigate costs or set up European subsidiaries to handle the process.

Stefano Vallebona came to the UK 40 years ago from Sardinia and began providing London’s top restaurateurs with high-quality European produce. He says the new red tape will discourage small suppliers from doing business with the UK and ultimately reduce choice.

“All the pasteurised cheese, they already have extra European certificates, and when you talk to suppliers they’re not so keen, probably because they’re too small, because it’s new and it’s time consuming, so we’re going to have less speciality products.

“We will have less interesting cheeses, less interesting meats, and probably more power to the supermarkets and less to independents because it’s going to be harder.”

European importers say the health checks are of limited value as they replicate the EU processes that the UK helped create for four decades, and have lived with for the last eight years without any additional processes.

Piotr Liczycki, managing director of Polish haulage firm Eljot International Transport, which specialises in meat imports, estimates his customers will pay around £1m in fees to the UK government this year.

“Nobody can explain what’s the difference between midnight and when the Brexit rules start up. It’s completely the same stuff, from the same factory, with the same quality, nothing has changed,” he told Sky News.

“Polish groups and poultry plants are wondering why the UK government didn’t enforce a solution like we have with Japan, or South Korea. You send us a couple of officials from Defra, they check the plant, do inspection, and say this plant is compliant with all our regulations so we give you permission to send goods for six months or a year.”

Cabinet Office minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe said: “It is essential that we introduce these global, risk-based checks to improve the UK’s biosecurity. We cannot continue with temporary measures which leave the UK open to threats from diseases and could do considerable damage to our livelihoods, our economy and our farming industry.”

Business

Cambridge college puts O2 arena lease up for sale

Published

1 hour ago

November 22, 2024

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Cambridge college puts O2 arena lease up for sale

Cambridge University’s wealthiest college is putting the long-term lease of London’s O2 arena up for sale.

Sky News has learnt that Trinity College has instructed property advisers to begin sounding out prospective investors about a deal.

Trinity, which ranks among Britain’s biggest landowners, acquired the site in 2009 for a reported £24m.

The O2, which shrugged off its ‘white elephant’ status in the aftermath of its disastrous debut in 2000, has since become one of the world’s leading entertainment venues.

Operated by Anschutz Entertainment Group, it has played host to a wide array of music, theatrical and sporting events over nearly a quarter of a century.

The opportunity to acquire the 999-year lease is likely to appeal to long-term income investment funds, with real estate funds saying they expected it to fetch tens of millions of pounds.

Trinity College bought the lease from Lend Lease and Quintain, the property companies which had taken control of the Millennium Dome site in 2002 for nothing.

The college was founded by Henry VIII in 1546 and has amassed a vast property portfolio.

It was unclear on Friday why it had decided to call in advisers at this point to undertake a sale process.

Trinity College Cambridge did not respond to two requests for comment.

Business

Surprise fall in retail sales a sign economy is slowing

Published

4 hours ago

November 22, 2024

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Surprise fall in retail sales a sign economy is slowing

Budget fears and unseasonably warm weather led to consumers spending far less than expected last month, according to official figures.

In a sign of a slowing economy, retail sales fell a sharp 0.7%, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

The fall was larger than expected. A drop of 0.3% was forecasted by economists polled by the Reuters news agency.

Money blog: Energy bills to rise in January

Clothing stores were particularly affected, where sales fell by 3.1% over the month as October temperatures remained high, putting shoppers off winter purchases.

Retailers across the board, however, reported consumers held back on spending ahead of the budget, the ONS added.

Just a month earlier, in September, spending rose by 0.1%.

Despite the October fall, the ONS pointed out that the trend is for sales increases on a yearly and three-monthly basis and for them to be lower than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Retail sales figures are significant as household consumption measured by the data is the largest expenditure across the UK economy.

The data can also help track how consumers feel about their financial position and the economy more broadly.

Another signal of a slowing economy was the latest growth figures which showed a smaller-than-expected GDP (gross domestic product) measurement.

Consumer confidence could be bouncing back

Also released on Friday was news of a rise in consumer confidence in the weeks following the budget and the US election.

Market research company GfK’s long-running consumer confidence index “jumped” in November, the company said, as people intended to make Black Friday purchases.

It noted that inflation has yet to be tamed with people still feeling acute cost-of-living pressures.

It will take time for the UK’s new government to deliver on its promise of change, it added.

A quirk in the figures

Economic research firm Pantheon Macro said the dates included in the ONS’s retail sales figures could have distorted the headline figure.

The half-term break, during which spending typically increases, was excluded from the monthly statistics as the cut-off point was 26 October.

With cold weather gripping the UK this week clothing sales are likely to rise as delayed winter clothing purchases are made, Pantheon added.

Business

Post Office scandal: At least eight convictions linked to Capture software being investigated as possible miscarriages of justice

Published

7 hours ago

November 22, 2024

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Post Office scandal: At least 8 convictions may be linked to second IT system used by Post Office

At least eight convictions predating the Horizon Post Office scandal are being looked at by the body investigating potential miscarriages of justice, Sky News has learned.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has confirmed it is examining multiple cases of former sub-postmasters affected by Capture software.

The computer accounting system was used in the early 1990s, prior to Horizon being introduced to Post Office branches from 1999 onwards.

Horizon was at the centre of the Post Office scandal and saw hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly convicted of stealing from their branches.

The Kroll report, commissioned by the government earlier this year, found that Capture had bugs and glitches and there was a reasonable likelihood it had caused cash shortfalls too.

Lord Beamish, the former Labour MP Kevan Jones, has been supporting victims and is calling for the government to extend current legislation to automatically quash convictions.

The Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act was passed in May but does not include Capture victims.

Lord Beamish told Sky News he has raised the issue with the justice secretary and called for a House of Lords debate.

“The government are going to have to take this seriously,” he said. “We can’t have a situation where we have a two-tier system where people get exonerated from Horizon and the Capture cases are either forgotten or have to go through a very lengthy legal process to get their names cleared.”

He added he had “little faith” in the CCRC’s “ability to deal with cases”, after multiple Horizon cases were referred to the body years ago.

“The problem with these cases is the lack of evidence… that has been destroyed or lost – so actually proving some of these cases through that process will be very difficult.

“Therefore I think a blanket exoneration like we had with Horizon I think has got to be discussed and considered for these cases.”

The CCRC told Sky News it has five cases under review “in which the Capture IT system could be a factor”.

It also said it is “seeking further information” on eight cases referenced in the Kroll report.

The CCRC added that the time taken for a case review to be completed was dependent on the “complexity” of each case “and how readily available information about it is”. In a statement, it admitted: “The availability of information can be a particular hurdle in older cases.”

Chris Roberts’s mother, Liz Roberts, was convicted in 1999 of stealing £46,000 from the Post Office and spent 13 months behind bars.

Liz, who was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease, passed away earlier this year.

Chris said she was jailed four days before he turned 17, and he used to have “nightmares” that she was “going to die in there”.

“There was no evidence of any financial gain because they went through everything. And obviously the money wasn’t in our accounts because it didn’t exist,” he added.

Despite being offered “three deals” by the Post Office to plead guilty, Liz refused and was sent to prison.

Chris believes that the 2019 High Court win by Horizon victims was a missed opportunity for the Post Office to look back at Capture cases.

“It would have been worth something then because my mum would have died knowing that everybody else knew she was innocent,” he said.

“My dad would have died knowing that the love of his life wasn’t vilified as a criminal.”

Chris wants his mother exonerated and “those actively responsible” to “stand up in court… and justify themselves”.

A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson said: “We were horrified to learn about the issues with the Capture system and are working closely across government to thoroughly examine Kroll’s independent report and consider what action should be taken.

“We continue to listen to postmasters and others who have been sharing their views on the report’s findings since its publication last month.”