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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.”

Items bought in shops are becoming more expensive at the slowest pace in more than two years, according to latest industry figures which show that some prices are actually falling.

It means that goods, such as clothes and food, are becoming more costly but far less than before, according to the shop price index from the trade organisation for UK retailers, the British Retail Consortium (BRC), and retail behaviour researchers NielsenIQ.

Why have some prices fallen?

The shop price index for April said products other than food fell 0.6% in price compared to a year earlier, as clothes and shoe price tags fell due to ramped-up promotions. A month earlier, in March, prices had risen 0.2% since February.

Food inflation slowed to 3.4%, the 12th drop in a row and the lowest level since March 2022. It had been as high as 15.7% in April 2023.

Falls in fresh food inflation – such as butter, fish and fruit – were also due to competition among grocers for shoppers, as well as easing input costs like cheaper energy bills, the BRC said.

Overall shop price annual inflation eased to 0.8%, down from 1.3% in March, the lowest since December 2021.

The data doesn’t capture inflation in the services or manufacturing industries that consumers pay for.

BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson said: “While consumers will welcome the lower shop price inflation, geopolitical tensions and the knock-on impact on commodity prices, like oil, pose a threat to future price stability.”

“Retailers will continue to do all they can to keep prices down, but government has a role to play with pro-growth policies that allow businesses to invest in the customer offer.”

Where is overall inflation now?

The official measure of inflation, recorded by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), stood at 3.2% in March, the weakest level for two-and-a-half years as food prices fell but energy prices remained high amid tension in the Middle East and Ukrainian attacks on a Russian oil refinery.

Prices began to rise in 20201 after COVID-19 lockdowns halted supply chains which led to shortages of some goods.

This was compounded following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In response, western countries rushed to wean themselves off Russian gas imports, which caused a rise in energy costs.

Mike Watkins, head of retailer and business insight at NielsenIQ, said: “it is good news for shoppers that the cost of their grocery shop is starting to stabilise and that the prices of many non-food goods are now cheaper than a year ago.”

One of the government officials caught up in the Partygate scandal which engulfed Boris Johnson’s premiership is playing a key role in negotiating the future of The Daily Telegraph.

Sky News can reveal that former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara is among the advisors to RedBird IMI, the Abu Dhabi-backed vehicle whose acquisition of the broadsheet newspaper has effectively been blocked by the government in recent weeks.

Ms MacNamara, who was among those given fixed-penalty notices by police for attending lockdown parties in Downing Street during the COVID-19 pandemic, is working at Robey Warshaw, which is acing for RedBird IMI on its options for the onward sale of the media assets.

Her role at Robey Warshaw, where George Osborne, the former chancellor, is a partner, has not previously been disclosed, but sources close to the Telegraph process confirmed that she was actively involved in the discussions.

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Robey Warshaw has become one of the City’s most successful merger and takeover advisers since it was established by Sir Simon Robey, widely regarded as the most successful British investment banker of his generation.

Ms MacNamara was a highly regarded government official before leaving Whitehall in February 2021.

Among her roles, she served for more than a decade at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport – the same ministry responsible for ruling on the fate of The Daily Telegraph as RedBird IMI negotiates over the structure of an auction expected to kick off within weeks.

Her reputation was, however, tainted by last year’s report by Sue Gray – a senior civil servant at the Cabinet Office who is now a key member of Sir Keir Starmer’s team – which concluded that Ms MacNamara had brought a karaoke machine to a leaving party which was prohibited under social distancing rules at the time.

During the Covid inquiry, it emerged that she had been the subject of misogynistic messages sent by Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s top aide, to the then prime minister.

After leaving the civil service, Ms McNamara joined the Premier League, where she ran its policy and corporate affairs functions before stepping down after just two years.

She is understood to have been working at Robey Warshaw for several months.

Ms MacNamara is no longer bound by restrictions imposed by Whitehall’s Advisory Committee on Business Appointments.

Her involvement in the Telegraph process adds to the number of politically connected figures who are embedded in talks about the fate of the traditionally Conservative-supporting newspaper.

As well as Mr Osborne, that list includes Nadhim Zahawi, the former chancellor, who has been advising the Telegraph’s long-standing owners, the Barclay family.

Sky News revealed earlier this month that RedBird IMI and the DCMS were discussing amendments to the statutory instrument which dictates various elements of the Telegraph’s governance during the period in which the Abu Dhabi-backed vehicle holds a call option that was supposed to convert into ownership of the Telegraph and Spectator magazine.

An announcement about a workable structure could be made in the coming days, the Financial Times reported last week.

RedBird IMI is understood to believe that The Spectator could be worth £100m or more as a ‘trophy asset’ but that that valuation would be impaired if the magazine is sold in the same transaction as the newspapers.

Earlier this month, Sky News revealed that Raine Group, best-known in Britain for its roles in recent deals involving Manchester United and Chelsea football clubs, and Robey Warshaw were being lined up to advise on the next phase of the Telegraph’s ownership.

RedBird IMI, which is part-owned by US-based RedBird and majority-owned by Abu Dhabi’s IMI – which is backed by the UAE’s deputy prime minister and ultimate owner of Manchester City Football Club, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan – had argued that fears about its ownership of the Telegraph were unfounded.

The deal faced vehement opposition from Telegraph journalists and Conservative politicians from both houses of parliament.

RedBird IMI had sought to defuse controversy over the deal by offering legally binding assurances over editorial freedom, and in January restructured its bid to incorporate a new UK holding company which would own the Telegraph titles and Spectator magazine.

The takeover was rendered impossible, however, by the government’s adoption of legislative changes to prevent any ownership of British national newspapers by investors connected to foreign states.

Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, has said she is minded to refer the RedBird IMI takeover of the Telegraph titles to an in-depth inquiry by the Competition and Markets Authority.

The fate of the Telegraph has been up in the air for almost a year after Lloyds Banking Group seized control of its parent companies after the Barclays fell behind on debt repayments.

Since then, a number of bidders including the Daily Mail proprietor Lord Rothermere and the GB News shareholder Sir Paul Marshall have shown an interest in buying the titles.

Sky News revealed this month that Sir Paul was stepping down from the board of the parent company of GB News, the television news channel he has helped to bankroll, as he prepares a fresh bid for the Telegraph.

A trio of independent directors of the Telegraph’s holding company were parachuted in by Lloyds Banking Group last year after the lender seized control of the newspapers from their long-standing owners, the Barclay family.

However, the sale process was pre-empted by RedBird IMI repaying £1.16bn of loans owed by the Barclays to Lloyds, with £600m used to purchase the call option and the remainder as a loan secured against other family assets, including the online retailer Very Group.

Earlier this year, the independent directors appointed to oversee the sale of The Daily Telegraph were warned by Ms Frazer that the removal of the newspaper’s two most senior executives breached a government order – and that any subsequent transgression could result in a multimillion pound fine.

RedBird IMI, Robey Warshaw and the DCMS declined to comment.