Despite leaving the EU confusing businesses with form-filling, fees and a new world of incredible complexity: Rishi Sunak says he wants to “go further and faster in using the freedoms that Brexit has given us to reduce the amount of EU regulations and red tape that hinders our growth.” Liz Truss sounds even more zealous: she now wants to scrap all the regulations in UK law that exist as a legacy of our time in the EU by the end of next year, so we can “make the most of our new freedoms outside the EU”. . Six years ago, Truss – unlike Sunak – enthusiastically campaigned for Remain but is now more than happy to eat her words. “I was wrong and I’m ready to admit that I was wrong,” he recently told the BBC. “Some of the signs of disaster have not happened and instead we have unleashed new opportunities.” This “some” is a very characteristic use of language. The peace process in Northern Ireland and the power-sharing deal it produced – perhaps the greatest achievement of British politics since Thatcher – have been seriously destabilized. The UK is an increasingly lonely, sometimes downright strange presence on the world stage. Most of Europe, indeed, seems to think we have gone collectively mad. And then there is the impact on our daily lives. In the face of Westminster’s mixture of silence and forced optimism, Brexit is having a measurably dire effect on almost all of us. A recent survey conducted by pollsters Ipsos showed that the proportion of Britons who believe the UK’s exit from the EU has made their daily lives worse has risen from 30% in June 2021 to 45% now, including slightly less than a quarter of the people who voted leave. Amidst the aftershocks of our national lockdowns, these growing problems are becoming increasingly apparent. And so, to fill the information vacuum left by our politicians – and, indeed, most of the media – this strange, hot summer seems like a good time to outline just a few of the seemingly endless downsides of Brexit. Starting with… Nadra Ahmed, president of the National Care Association.
Labor shortages
Britain in 2022 is a land of long waits, spiraling queues and that ever-present feeling that there aren’t nearly enough people employed to keep everything running. Our staff shortages stretch from pubs to hospitals: one of the most worrying examples is what is happening to adult social care, which is already reeling from the pandemic. To state the blindingly obvious, despite its self-evident importance, healthcare is a low-paying, low-status line of work that tends to have high turnover rates. As the number of older people increases, so does the prevalence of often chronic health conditions, which means we need more and more care workers. But Brexit has thrown an already battered part of our social fabric into even greater crisis. It was devastating. We have lost many of our European colleagues. They felt unwanted, unsafe and undervalued Nadra Ahmed, National Care Association “It was devastating,” says Nadra Ahmed, the president of the National Care Association, which represents small and medium-sized care providers. “It has made an already declining situation much, much worse. We have lost many of our European colleagues. They decided they didn’t want to stay anymore. They felt unwanted, insecure, undervalued.” Two years ago, he tells me, 5.2% of those starting new jobs in adult social care were foreign nationals. Now, that percentage is less than 2%. Under pressure from care employers, the government recently relaxed strict visa restrictions for care workers, but staffing problems continue to grow. To make matters worse, Brexit-related labor shortages in other areas of work are turning people away from care in increasing numbers, with obvious consequences. In May 2021, the vacancy rate in adult social care was 5.9%. In April this year it reached 10%. For people who need residential care, the effects can be grim. “Many providers have stopped taking people from high-need hospitals because they don’t have the staff to cope,” says Ahmed. “Or they have booked a percentage of the beds in their services. If you have a 30-bed service, you can reduce it to 25 beds so you have the right staffing ratio.” And what does this mean for people who need care? “Well, they’re often stuck in hospital, so you hear about all the issues in the NHS with this awful term ‘bedblocking’. They are people sitting in NHS hospitals who are medically fit for discharge but can’t be placed anywhere because no service can provide the care.” Ali Capper inspects the blossom on her apple trees on her farm in Worcestershire. Photo: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
What Brexit means for British food growers
Britain is seemingly short of food, hunger is an increasingly visible problem and empty supermarket shelves are now an ingrained part of everyday life – but we also throw away tonnes of produce. Ali Capper owns a farm in Worcestershire that grows apples and hops. When the harvest peaks from late August to mid-October, he needs about 70 part-time employees. “We’re pretty small and medium in that regard,” he says. “There are soft fruit growers who will employ 1,000 to 1,500 for the summer and vegetable growers who need more than 2,500 to 3,000.” Since 2017, getting enough employees has been an annual headache. “If you don’t have a workforce, you can’t harvest your crops and you don’t have a business,” he says. “It’s that simple. And we had two years where we had to walk through the crops: that’s how we describe it. You have to start prioritizing. You leave the less good, or the marginal, or the second option: the crop that might don’t have the highest performance.” What percentage of its products is thrown away? “I’m not going to play crystal ball this season,” he says. “But in previous seasons, we’ve probably left as much as 25% behind. This is really painful.” Where does that leave the business? “Well, I would say that in fresh produce, a lot of businesses are questioning their sustainability.” Since the referendum, the composition of its workforce has changed dramatically. It used to be shared between people from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, many of whom came back three or four seasons running and became special selectors. Now, workers come from countries like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Ukraine and Russia – and recent spasmodic events in the latter two countries have led to more people only coming for a single period, which has led to a drop in productivity . There is also, Capper says, a growing issue with some of the export companies she deals with, as evidenced by a Worcestershire-based hop merchant she knows who is set to set up a new warehouse in Poland. “Hops is an international business,” he says. “If he’s bringing in hops from Australia or America and wants to pack them with hops from the UK and send everything to Europe, he’s paying double tax. The only way to avoid this is to import hops directly into Europe. So we will see traders focused on Europe and not here. And that means UK hops will be forgotten.” Empty supermarket shelves at an Asda in Cardiff in 2021. Photo: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images
Brexit is also terrible for food imports
Before Brexit happened, Truss famously alerted the Conservative party conference to the fact that the UK was importing two-thirds of its cheese – which was, she half-shouted, “a disgrace”. She is, therefore, clearly exasperated by the seemingly endless entanglements that British buyers of European dairy products now face – and, for that matter, many other EU foods besides. Food importers face many of the same bureaucratic nightmares as exporters (in the words of Specialty Food magazine, “with Brexit now officially in full effect, cheesemakers across the UK are struggling with cost and supplier issues in the import of European cheeses”). This is one of the reasons why the refrigerated aisles of many UK supermarkets are often so sparse. Also note: the UK government was due to introduce new EU food import controls this summer, but their arrival has been delayed for the fourth time. If they ever do, the import of European products will be even more problematic.
What happened to other businesses
At the end of June, the EU published figures showing that between 2020 and 2021, UK exports to the rest of Europe fell by 14%. Covid was part of what had happened – but, as a senior European commissioner said, the dip was also due to “red tape for almost every product sent between our markets” and checks on “thousands of goods carried out on a daily basis” – as well as a sudden mess of VAT, import duties and increased charges for transporting goods from Britain to the Continent. You can pay for a two-day service by taking things back and it will take nine days nowKenneth Mackenzie, founder of menswear brand 6876 Since 1995, Kenneth Mackenzie has run a high-end casual menswear business called 6876, based in London. Before Brexit, a resident of Berlin or Paris could count on buying their clothes on exactly the same basis as someone in the UK. But since Britain left the EU, it has lost somewhere between 60%…
