Thread by @lewis_goodall

On Brexit, James Buchan, Chief Exec of Scottish Seafood Association tells the Scottish Affairs Select Committee: “I’m not going to say it any other way: for our members it has not been the best deal- it’s a sad state of affairs.”

James Withers, Chief Exec, Scottish Food and Drink Federation adds: “There have been catastrophic decisions taken to create enormous non-tariff barriers. We have ended up with a trading regime which is complex, costly, slow, prone to break down at its best.”

Withers continues “At its worst some food exporters have been shut out of the EU market altogether in Scotland and the rest of the UK. Unfortunately it’s the very predictable outcome of trying to test a multi billion £ trading system in real time in the middle of a pandemic.”

Withers excoriating about the UK government’s approach: “We asked, we pleaded for a grace period. Those pleas fell on deaf ears...Instead we got a deal on Xmas Eve, a final border operating model on NYE and a lot of businesses feel they were thrown to the wolves the next day.”

“If we listed everything what has gone wrong we’d just run out of time. It’d be dark very soon...The biggest single challenge we have right now is denial, denial from the UK government in particular on the scale of the problem.”

“We can’t accept that these are just teething problems, or even the statement from @DefraGovUK this week that trade continues to flow smoothly because it doesn’t. It’s not flowing smoothly and it hasn’t done for five weeks.”

Elaine Whyte, Exec Sec Clyde Fishermen’s Association: “Our EU markets took 40 years to build up. We can’t just go to the Far East, we can’t go there overnight...there are big issues about customers going to Norway and Ireland for the same product.”

Withers: “I know the PM on Xmas Eve said there weren’t any non tariff barriers. Well there are and they’re huge. The reality is now we’ve got a third country delivery system which was never built for the UK. Never built for those moving perishable products from Scotland.”

.@scotfoodjames: “It’s easier to send red meat to New Zealand at the moment than it is to send it 30 miles across the English Channel.”

“Buyers, loyal customers of ours built up over 40 years are already going elsewhere. Seafood buyers are going to Norway and Denmark instead of Scotland. Red meat buyers are going to Spain and Ireland instead of here...if that continues it will cost us millions and cost us jobs.”

Buchan: “Everything was run right to the wire. The Catch Certificate Portal, one of the most important parts of the documentation process, did not go live until 28th December. And then it was full of glitches. Full of problems. It was a carcrash.”

Withers: “my sense is there’s only been two measure as to whether Brexit has been a disaster 1) empty supermarket shelves 2) pileups of lorries in Kent. Reality is we haven’t seen empty shelves yet because inward checks haven’t started yet. And there are no pile ups because...”

“...68% of lorries are carrying fresh air right now as volumes are so thin...The border operating model is 168 pages, it’s complex and was published on Hogmanay. And it’s been updated since...we were doomed from the start.”

.@scotfoodjames:”This is not just a seafood issue. Our red meat grade volumes are sitting about 25-30% of normal. We can’t export fresh mince into the EU, we can’t trade live sheep to Northern Ireland, we can’t export seed potatoes to the EU...these are nightmarish consequences.”

Speakers note that were it not for Covid and the fact that so much demands has been suppressed as a result of European hospitality being effectively shut down, that the new export system would have collapsed completely.

Withers notes potential for this to get worse: " If you start needing export health certificates for a wider range of products (say all butter shortbread) and the EU are consulting on that, then we have an absolute nightmare on our hands."

"If you take the existing disfunction and unworkability of the system and spread it wider and faster it will infect the rest of the system and trade. And the last five weeks have been bad enough."

You cannot overestimate what an appalling situation this is. This from Buchan: "We knew we were leaving the customs union and the single market for more than a year. We're now having to ask for six months grace. We should have had that in place six months ago..."

"...so that we had the problems ironed out, not waiting for the car crash to happen. Because that's exactly where we drove to it. We ran this to the wire. Everyone."

Similar themes from today's Welsh Affairs Committee hearing. Some "highlights" of the post-Brexit bureaucratic nightmare many biz are facing:

-Deliveries being stopped because of blue rather than black ink on paperwork
-Exports have been stopped because of export health...

...certificates without a stamp in the right place on the form
-One lorry containing meat worth £100,000 rejected due to a carcass falling off a hook.
-One exporter noted only required 2 pieces of paperwork to export- now 48.

-Costs have also gone up – e.g. for SME’s wanting to send a sample of food from the UK to Sweden has increased from £30 to £85.

This isn't doom mongering, or problems bedding in, this is the new commercial reality UK firms are having to face in their biggest market.

Questions for nationalists on the basis of this evidence too. What happens to Scottish goods if they have to face two sets of checks at the English border and short straits? Even if Scotland rejoins EU, those checks will be there on the enormous market of the rUK.

But most urgent answers needed from from Brexiters and ministers who for a long time assured us of seamless trade. Biz is imploring that grace periods are reintroduced, that political will is found to deal with these problems.

Anyone blithely dismissing these issue as teething problems needs to examine the testimony of these two select committees today. Problems which exist not only in Scottish and Welsh businesses but English ones too.