Tory minister on Question Time accidentally makes 'perfect case against Brexit'
A Tory Cabinet minister has been mocked after he was accused of accidentally making a perfect argument against Brexit.
Brandon Lewis was trying to explain how Northern Ireland’s Brexit deal will benefit the region by allowing it to be part of both the EU and UK markets.
The Northern Ireland Secretary told BBC Question Time there will be a “unique competitive advantage in the world” in Northern Ireland because it can trade with the EU’s single market.
But he neglected to mention that, before Brexit happened, the whole of the UK could trade with the EU’s single market already.
That only ended because we left the EU.
Mr Lewis is right in the sense that, once the UK has set its own rules or reached its own trade deals with other countries, Northern Ireland will be able to benefit from those - as well as the rules of the EU single market.
But there will also be checks and declarations needed on goods that are sent from Britain to Northern Ireland, making internal UK trade more difficult.
There are currently grace periods that allow many products to be sent from Britain to Northern Ireland without those hurdles.
But those will expire by July, adding paperwork to some trade and banning other goods like chilled sausages altogether.
Mr Lewis said: “The protocol means that as part of the UK, Northern Ireland is going to have this unique competitive advantage in the world.
“Northern Ireland has the business has the ability to trade in and as part of the United Kingdom, as well as through the single market with the EU.
“That’s going to mean if you’re a business who deals with the UK and EU, the place to invest and grow your business is in Northern Ireland.
“It benefits there from being part of the UK.”
Remain-backers and Labour MPs seized on the comments.
Labour MP Dame Angela Eagle said: “Which all of us had in the Single Market - could have had Brexit within the single market This Govt chose not to”.
Former Labour MP James Frith said: “Extraordinary explanation of the benefits of access to the single market, the EU and UK for Northern Ireland.
“A unique competitive advantage is right. And one we’ve just stamped on for ourselves. What a truly awful gaslighting government we have.”
Labour peer Andrew Adonis added: “Wouldn’t it be good if the whole of the UK has this ‘unique competitive advantage’! It’s called membership of the European Union”.
The answer is simple:-"We have got our country back".
No more corrupt EU tricks. All cons will be carried out by our own Government, ably "assisted" by the devolved Governments
Will look forward with interest as to how we will continue to try and blame the EU from here on...
Do you think Boris will escape from his lies and b...sh.t.
No chance. It will catch up with him in the end. Just like Trump. I hope so anyway.
He said there was no Irish Sea Border, no customs checks, and businesses could bin any extra paperwork.
Lord Empey: The Irish Sea border is outrageous, and the DUP leader still fails to accept her role in it
(Mrs Foster’s article can be read here: ‘We’re trying to fix a barrier created by London,’ January 16)
However one describes it, Northern Ireland is being treated differently from the rest of the United Kingdom. We remain in the EU single market and subject to all its rules and regulations and the jurisdiction of the EU court, over which neither we nor Westminster have any control.
Border control posts are being erected and both UK and EU officials are standing there ready to check incoming goods to ensure that they are compliant with EU regulations.
We now have to treat goods coming from Scotland, England and Wales as if the rest of the UK is a foreign country. Our economic border has now moved from Newry to Larne. Outrageous.
Repeatedly Arlene has stated that Northern Ireland must not be treated differently from any other part of the UK. Indeed, she made it her ‘blood red line’.
She blames London for creating a barrier between NI and the rest of the UK, but fails to accept her role in bringing about this disaster.
When Boris Johnson proposed the Irish Sea border on October 2 2019 (the day after he is pictured above at the DUP reception at the Tory conference), Arlene agreed with him, saying that his proposals were ‘a serious and sensible way forward’.
Why any unionist would contemplate supporting a proposal for a border of any description between different parts of the UK is beyond my comprehension.
Arlene feebly claims that her party would have had a veto over the implementation of Boris’s proposals because the NI Assembly and executive would have to agree before they were entered into. However, when Arlene agreed to this, there was no assembly or executive!
Remember, if the DUP had a veto so would Sinn Fein, so republicans could collapse the assembly at any time, thus rendering any DUP veto meaningless.
Fifteen days after Arlene’s support was given to the PM’s proposals — and having got what he wanted from her — he agreed the amended protocol with the EU, leaving out the so- called consent mechanism which Arlene was relying on!
It was so obvious that this would happen, that it was painful to watch Northern Ireland’s future being gambled away. The truth is that Arlene now leads the ‘Border in the Irish Sea Party’.
She has tried, and failed, to retro fit an argument for the DUP’s actions in 2019, but she is totally unconvincing and merely demonstrates how outmanoeuvred the DUP was by Boris.
They did have a veto in 2019 in Westminster, where the real decisions were being taken, but they bottled it and failed to stop the prime minister when they had the chance.
Reg Empey, Former Ulster Unionist leader, House of Lords, Westminster
Cheshire cheesemaker says business left with £250,000 'Brexit hole'
A commercial cheesemaker in Cheshire has been left with a £250,000 Brexit hole in his business as a direct result of the UK’s departure from the EU on 1 January.
Simon Spurrell said he has lost 20% of his sales overnight after discovering he needed to provide a £180 health certificate on retail orders to consumers in the EU, including those buying personal gift packs of his award-winning wax-wrapped cheese worth £25 or £30.
He says he had hoped to participate in the “sunny uplands” promised by the government post-Brexit, but has instead seen the viability of his online retail come to a “dead stop”.
“Our business had high hopes of continued growth in the EU market, after seeing the avoidance of the no-deal and announcement of a free trade deal.
“What has only become clear in the last week is that our successful B2C [business to consumer] online sales to EU consumers is now impossible to operate,” he said.
To save his business he will now have to switch a £1m investment he was planning to make in a new distribution centre in Macclesfield to the EU, with the loss of 20 jobs and tax revenue to the UK.
“It is a real shame because that means I’m now going to invest in France, provide French employment, and then contribute to the EU tax system, which was pretty much going against the whole reason that we were meant to be leaving.”
John Arbon Textiles in Devon was told by its courier company that its knitting wool, spun from local sheep fibres, would no longer be accepted with hauliers now trying to mitigate the risk of one package in their van or lorry causing their entire load to be delayed because they are missing a health certificate.
Labour accuses Boris Johnson of ‘dishonesty’ in denying Irish Sea border’s existence
Just over a year ago, Mr Johnson publicly insisted that despite what the words in his own withdrawal agreement with the EU said, “there’s no question of there being checks on goods going from Northern Ireland to Great Britain or Great Britain to Northern Ireland”.
On January 1, as the reality of the new Irish Sea border dawned, Northern Ireland Secretary of State Brandon Lewis insisted: “There is no ‘Irish Sea border”. He has repeatedly stood over that, most recently on Thursday night on BBC Question Time, despite products vanishing from shelves, delivery costs being increased and hauliers reporting chronic problems moving products from GB to NI.
When confronted by the Prime Minister’s public promise that there would be no checks, Mr Lewis visibly squirmed but said that he would have to see the whole quote in context before commenting on it.
A viewer asked Mr Lewis: “If it’s not a border down the Irish Sea, then what is it?”
Mr Lewis replied: “I’ve never seen it as a border down the Irish Sea”
Professor Anand Menon, an expert in Brexit, told Question Time: “You are having these kind of checks within a country...you can call it a border or not as you please but those checks will be there and they will be real and they’ll affect the nature of trade between GB and NI.”
“This dishonesty has robbed businesses of the time they needed to prepare, and left many in the dark about what they needed to do. It’s unhelpful and counter-productive for the Secretary of State to still indulge in that denial.”
A document leaked to the Daily Mirror shows that senior civil servants in Diane Dodds’ Department for the Economy have identified “deep and stubborn structural weaknesses” in the NI economy and warns that “the economic-drag of these longstanding issues stands to get worse as the impacts of Covid, Brexit and climate change are concentrated in these areas of weakness”.
After Brexit, Ireland and France cut out the middleman - Britain
CHERBOURG, France/DUBLIN (Reuters) - From his office overlooking Cherbourg docks, general manager Yannick Millet points to trailers destined for Ireland that belong to Amazon and FedEx, new customers and a signal of a potential big shift in post-Brexit trade.
Confronted by red tape and delays after Britain's messy exit from the European Union, Irish traders are shipping goods directly to and from European ports, shunning the once-speedier route through Britain.
"You see the shift in supply chains right here," he said.
All five operators connecting Ireland to mainland Europe have increased ferry services in the past nine months, with some bringing forward planned sailings and others moving larger ships away from quieter British routes to meet new demand.
Millet forecast Cherbourg would handle 9,000 trucks in January, equivalent to almost a quarter of what passed through the French port annually before the COVID-19 crisis.
For decades, the land bridge offered Irish traders the swiftest, most reliable route to continental Europe. It involves a short sea crossing between Dublin and Holyhead in Wales and then a hop between Dover and Calais. Every year 150,000 lorries would use the route.
But post-Brexit paperwork and delays in customs clearance are snarling up the process, adding hours or days to journeys and ratcheting up costs. Many companies are switching routes.
"This is a game-changer," said Chris Smyth, commercial director at Ireland's Perennial Freight. Demand was huge for freight space to ship to Cherbourg, Dunkirk, Rotterdam and Zeebrugge, he added.
Cherbourg's business before Brexit had been evenly split between Ireland and Britain. Now, the port would orient itself towards Ireland, Millet said.
"I thought traffic would double but it has tripled," he said. "The question now is whether the traffic volumes we see today will hold in the months to come."
AVOIDING THE MIDDLEMAN
Stena Line, the largest Irish Sea operator, has doubled its services on the booming Rosslare-Cherbourg route, temporarily cancelling some sailings to Britain after freight volumes fell 60% in the first half of January.
Irish Ferries has deployed a larger vessel out of Dublin and planned to add more weekly rotations next month, the Port of Cherbourg said. Brittany Ferries also brought forward a planned sailing linking France and Ireland.
Danish operator DFDS said the freight ferries plying its new 23-hour crossing from Rosslare to Dunkirk six days a week were "pretty much full". Route director Aidan Coffey said capturing 30% of "land bridge" traffic would make the route viable and DFDS might soon add up to two more sailings per week.
"We're blown away by the demand," Coffey said.
No one knows if the shift is permanent.
The Irish Maritime Development Office, a government shipping promotion body, said a return to pre-Brexit logistic chains would depend on the speed of customs formalities along the land bridge and that ferries linking Ireland and mainland Europe could not replicate its volumes.
Eddie Burke, a senior official at Ireland's transport department, said the route through Britain would undoubtedly come back into play again.
Ferry operators were taking decisions on capacity week by week, said Ole Bockmann, Stena's operations chief in Cherbourg. Reverting to land bridge routes was simple, he said. "We just take the ships off and go back to the old system."
RENAISSANCE
It gives ports like Cherbourg and Ireland's Rosslare a narrow window to persuade traders that the longer sea crossing between Ireland and mainland Europe is commercially viable for just-in-time logistics.
Eighteen months ago, Rosslare on the southeastern tip of Ireland was struggling. Its traffic volumes were stagnant while rivals were enjoying a 10-year run of growth.
Now its general manager, Glenn Carr, is fending off complaints about the number trucks passing through after freight traffic increased 500% in the first half of January.
Carr said the old perception that direct crossings from Ireland were too long for fresh food and just-in-time supply chains was changing. Many of the companies that had switched from the land bridge would remain, he forecast.
"I was talking to some multinationals only this week and the question they asked me was, 'Glenn, are you putting on more services?'"
An 18-hour ferry ride away, Cherbourg port's Millet said his immediate priority was responding to shipping companies demands for better restaurants and washrooms for truckers and ironing out quayside glitches in the loading of extra vessels.
"Brexit has for us been an opportunity to rethink our port," he said.
Set up shop in Europe, government advisers tell Brexit-hit businesses
British businesses that export to the continent are being encouraged by government trade advisers to set up separate companies inside the EU in order to get around extra charges, paperwork and taxes resulting from Brexit, the Observer can reveal.
In an extraordinary twist to the Brexit saga, UK small businesses are being told by advisers working for the Department for International Trade (DIT) that the best way to circumvent border issues and VAT problems that have been piling up since 1 January is to register new firms within the EU single market, from where they can distribute their goods far more freely.
Moss said it was now clear that Brexit was not about winning back control from the EU but investing in it to survive.
He had also spoken to an official at the Department for International Trade before making his decision and received the same advice. “When the government said it had secured free trade, it was obvious it was nothing of the sort,” said Betts. VAT issues, new charges on moving goods and more bureaucracy all added up to an “administrative nightmare”, he said.
Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, said: “Once again we see this government’s sheer incompetence and lack of planning holding British businesses back and slowing our economic recovery.
“They’ve got to get a grip on this now and stop leaving our businesses out in the cold.”
British homebuyers in Spain face post-Brexit frustration due to Franco-era security law
British would-be homebuyers in Spain are set to face disruption and delays of up to a year on property deals because of a Franco-era security law that due to Brexit they are no longer exempt from.
Britain's refusal to give the EU's ambassador full diplomatic status is a childish insult
Of all people in government Boris Johnson should be first to recognise the status of European Union representatives. His father, Stanley, was a European commission official for many years and the European taxpayer paid the prime minister’s school fees at the expensive Brussels International School and then Eton.
However, in a row that has been rumbling for a year alongside Brexit trade talks, the government is refusing to give full diplomatic status to the EU’s ambassador to the UK, João Vale de Almeida and his 25-strong mission. The Foreign Office claims it does not want to set a precedent by treating an international body in the same way it treats a nation state, with diplomats afforded the privileges and immunities under the Vienna Convention.
Britain has ambassadors to any number of international organisations from the OECD to the World Trade Organization, and expects them to have full diplomatic status – not paying local taxes, the CD number plate, and other assorted rights. The UK insists its head of delegation to the World Bank and the IMF also have ambassadorial status.
Our man in Brussels, Sir Tim Barrow, was previously UK ambassador in Moscow, and he is unlikely to take kindly to having his own status downgraded, which is the obvious reciprocal action the EU can take if No 10 – or is it Dominic Raab? – insists on this childish, petulant decision to refuse the normal diplomatic status that 142 countries around the world grant to EU delegations.
The bill for Boris Johnson’s Brexit is coming in and it’s punishingly steep
You would have to possess a heart of stone not to weep with laughter at some of those who are now suddenly complaining about Brexit. It is a bit late for Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party, those lusty sponsors of the great experiment with the UK’s prosperity, to be wailing that they have been betrayed. I smiled to see that Roger Daltrey, the Leave-supporting lead singer of the Who, has joined the chorus of rock stars furious that the post-Brexit visa rules will ruin their prospects of touring across the Channel. Mr Daltrey will have to sing Won’t Get Fooled Again to himself before moving on to Boris the Spider and I Can’t Explain.
It is particularly rending for the soul to witness the rightwing press discovering that the cause they so noisily championed is not the nirvana that they sold to their readers. They were cheering when Boris Johnson flourished the Brexit deal that he concluded on Christmas Eve and proclaimed: “This is a cakeist treaty.” The UK would be having the sweet stuff and eating it by gaining lots of shiny new benefits from being outside the EU while still enjoying the historical advantages of frictionless trade with its closest neighbours.
All those acquainted with Mr Johnson and his casual relationship with the truth will have taken that with a juggernaut of salt. Consider the prime minister’s specialist subject of cake. Anyone trying to take a fresh cream cake across the Channel now does so at the risk of having it impounded at customs because it is a dairy product. A Dutch TV report, which has since gone viral, shows border officials confiscating sandwiches from motorists arriving in the Netherlands from the UK. One driver agrees to surrender the meat in his sandwich, but pleads to be allowed to hang on to the bread. The frontier guard responds: “No, everything will be confiscated. Welcome to the Brexit, sir.”
Comedic tales of travellers being deprived of their snacks are the funnier side of an otherwise deadly serious story. The bill for Mr Johnson’s Brexit is coming in and that bill is a punishingly steep one. It is being paid by the fishing fleets in Scotland and the West Country that are tied up because they are unable to export their catch. It is being paid in a slump in activity at Welsh ports because the trade they used to handle is being diverted to France and Spain. It is being paid in billions of pounds worth of transactions disappearing from the City of London, which may not be much loved by all that many Britons but employs a million people, because the deal was so threadbare for the financial sector. It is being paid in car manufacturers shutting down some production because they can’t get parts across borders in time. It is being paid in tonnes of British meat exports rotting at European harbours. It is being paid by many UK businesses, especially the kind of smaller, exporting enterprises that the Tories always profess to love, which are being overwhelmed by the heavy burdens and high costs of the thin deal the prime minister rushed through parliament at the turn of the year.
British companies are being told by the British government that the way to survive is to lay off British workers and transfer their jobs to folk across the Channel
You will recall that it was one of the Brexiters’ signature promises that departure from the EU would be a liberating moment. A buccaneering free trade Britain would flourish as wealth creators were unshackled from the stifling regulatory chains of Brussels. What Brexit has actually done is impose a vast amount of cumbersome and costly new bureaucracy on exporters and importers. British companies have been put in a chokehold of regulations, customs declarations, conformity assessments, health and rules-of-origin certifications, VAT demands and inflated shipping charges. While some ministers talk about reducing worker protections in the name of “cutting red tape”, a move for which there is little demand even from employers, Brexit is ensnaring British businesses in writhing snakes of the stuff. I guess Jacob Rees-Mogg, he who thinks that fish unable to reach EU markets are “happier” knowing they are British, will claim that struggling British exporters should be patriotically proud to be throttled by red, white and blue tape.
Multinationals are not complaining so much because they are often wary of picking a fight with government and have resources, staff and facilities that make them better able to cope. The greatest burdens of Brexit are falling on smaller enterprises, collectively employing a lot of people, who trade with Europe. As my colleague Toby Helm reports in this newspaper, they are hurting badly. The post-Brexit world is so tough for many that the government’s own trade specialists are advising afflicted British entrepreneurs to relocate some of their operations out of the UK and to the EU. This has to be one of the greater absurdities of Brexit. British companies are being told by the British government that the way to survive is to lay off British workers and transfer their jobs to folk across the Channel.
Ministers like to insist that we’re experiencing nothing worse than “teething problems” as exporters and importers come to terms with the most radical change to the way we have traded with our neighbours since Margaret Thatcher pioneered the creation of the single market more than 30 years ago. For sure, snafus and bottlenecks at borders caused by faulty documentation may be smoothed out over time as companies become accustomed to dealing with so many complex new procedures. But a lot of these problems are not temporary rites of passage into a brave new world – these are permanent liabilities. A massive increase in border friction and all the expense that comes with it are baked-in consequences of Mr Johnson’s Brexit. The thicket of bureaucracy imposed on companies means enduring and added costs for their businesses. It does not feel like “teething problems” to them. It is more like root canal surgery performed without any benefit of anaesthetic. This was a predictable – and predicted – result of wrenching the UK out of the single market and the customs union. Thinktanks, some politicians, some business leaders and some newspapers, including this one, warned about the job-costing and investment-sapping consequences of erecting high new barriers to trade. But it is fair to say that this issue was never front and centre of the arguments that raged about Brexit. Evangelists for the adventure tended to dismiss the impacts on companies as mere minutiae compared with immigration levels or the meaning of sovereignty. Remainers struggled to find ways to make technical-sounding issues matter to the public. Among many voters and many politicians, the great benefits of being inside the single market were taken for granted right up until the moment when they vanished.
Some did understand that there would be a price to be paid. One of them was Boris Johnson. He knew enough about the importance of this issue to fib about it. On Christmas Eve, when he was hailing his agreement with the EU as a fantastic new chapter in our island story, he claimed that “there will be no non-tariff barriers to trade”.
This was self-evidently untrue even at the time that he said it. His government accepts that companies will collectively need to employ 50,000 additional customs agents in a post-Brexit world. Industry figures suggest that less than a quarter of that number had been trained by the time Britain left the single market.
The HMRC estimates that Brexit demands that British companies complete 215m additional, often highly complex, documents a year with a mirroring amount of extra paperwork also being generated by EU counter-parties. The cost of that alone on British businesses is thought to be around £7bn a year. If you make exporting and importing more difficult and more sluggish, at the same time as making cross-border transactions a great deal more costly, then it stands to reason that there will be less trade.
Faced with the heavy burdens imposed by Brexit, some companies will stop exporting to the EU because they can no longer find any profit in it. Other companies will move elements of their operations – and, in some cases, all of their business – out of the UK to inside the EU. Investment, jobs and tax revenues that would have benefited the UK will in future go to countries in the EU instead. This is already happening. Other companies will simply find that Brexit has left them unviable. Overwhelmed by the new costs, they will go to the wall. That will be especially so for those who were already struggling to survive because of the coronavirus crisis.
British business lost to European competitors. British entrepreneurs crushed. British jobs exported abroad. Welcome to the Brexit.
• Andrew Rawnsley is Chief Political Commentator of the Observer
Half of lorries 'return to Europe EMPTY': Trucks sent to Britain return to EU without goods over post-Brexit export fears as UK firms are 'told to set up hubs across the Channel' to help avoid disruption
The Road Haulage Association (RHA) says that far fewer containers filled with goods are leaving for the continent from the UK since Boris Johnson agreed a trade deal with Brussels. It came as UK businesses that export to the EU are reportedly being encouraged by trade officials to set up hubs across the Channel so they can avoid post-Brexit disruption. Richard Burnett, chief executive of the RHA, said: 'Most of the trucks that bring goods into the UK are not British and we've seen a noticeable reduction in hauliers wanting to make the journey'. Simon Spurrell (pictured inset right), the boss of a UK cheese producing company, told the BBC he was advised to set-up in Europe to avoid disruption to his EU exports. Another, Ulla Vitting Richards (pictured inset left) the boss of a clothing firm, told the BBC that they had been encouraged to link up with a distribution centre Germany in order to keep exporting to the EU.
This sort of journalism reminds me both why I bought the Grauniad in my 20's, and never since.
In 1 sense, i agree with a lot of it, particularly re the likely break-up of the UK.
Northern Ireland? We are forcing it to ally (economically) with Ireland. It is (just about) possible that the island of Ireland might unite to join a trading bloc with the UK, but politically that looks extremely difficult. We are effectively forcing part of the UK (N.I) to economically tie itself to the EU via Ireland. In the words of a prominent ex-Unionist, this time they really are being "sold down the river".
Scotland? Brexit provides a pretty much perfect advert for the Scot Nats. How can they lose the next vote?
Wales will stay. But then it always does
But the likes of the Guardian never provide a solution. We're not going back into the EU, certainly not in my lifetime. Not least because they wouldn't have us. It's a bit like campaigning for Charles 1st to have his head put back on.
People voted to join the EU 45 years ago. It took 41 years of campaigning to get a new vote. 4 years ago is nowhere near long enough for round 3.
I don't believe we should have left. But if there is 1 thing that is even worse, it is denying that there has not been a permanent change. voted for by the majority.
We need to live in the now.
STEPHEN GLOVER: The latest battle over Scottish independence will make Brexit look genteel
STEPHEN GLOVER: No sooner has this nation emerged from the ructions and divisions of Brexit than it seems likely to enter a period of political controversy that will be even more bitter and disruptive. We face the prospect - appalling to millions of people, including me - that the country of which we are citizens could cease to exist within a very short space of time, unless the Prime Minister demonstrates gifts of statesmanship we have so far only glimpsed. The Scottish National Party has declared that if it wins a majority of seats in May's Scottish Parliamentary elections - which polls suggest is highly probable - it will unilaterally call a second referendum on independence. Confronted by the threat of a wildcat referendum that apparently commands democratic support in Scotland, what should Boris Johnson do?
As I said, me personally I've not experienced any notable difference despite all the gloom & doom forecasts that the country would suffer food/medical/supply problems.
Some of these might affect you.
Brexit parcel price shock: 'I had to pay £30 for a gift'
A couple of weeks ago Lili Piraki, a London-based journalist, was surprised by a text out of the blue from delivery firm DHL.
She was delighted to hear a friend had sent her a present: a pair of gold earrings from Greece. She was less impressed that she would have to pay nearly £30 in taxes to receive the gift.
The extra charges are a result of new post-Brexit rules that came into force on 1 January.
Despite the free trade deal agreed before Christmas, which promised to smooth the UK's exit from the EU, new taxes and charges now apply to almost everything that goes back and forth between the two, including gifts, second hand items, products bought on Amazon or eBay and from private sellers.
After we reported recently on Londoner Ellie Huddleston's shock at beings asked to pay £82 to receive a £200 coat, dozens of you got in touch asking why they were being charged extra.
So we asked some experts to run through five readers' experiences to explain the new charges.
1. 'My model car cost £12 more'
Londoner Sascha Grillo was trying to add to his model collection by ordering a new car from a seller in Germany, but when he typed into the website that he wanted delivery to the UK, the price leapt up from £50 to £62.
"I was shocked, because I thought that with the Brexit deal, this wouldn't happen," he said.
"I thought day-to-day commercial transactions would remain the same, but this is not the case."
He decided not to buy.
Why was he charged more?
The free trade deal means there are no quotas or tariffs on the goods traded between the EU and UK, but that doesn't mean there are no extra taxes or costs.
Since 1 January the UK is no longer part of the EU VAT regime, so the UK government is applying VAT (sales tax) at 20% on goods from the EU, explains Gary Rycroft, a partner at Joseph A Jones & Co Solicitors.
In Sascha's case the new tax was applied at the "point of sale", in other words when he clicked to order. That is how the system is supposed to work on all goods worth under £135, says Martyn James from risk management firm Resolver.com.
UK VAT accounts for £10 of the extra £12 that Sascha was asked to pay. Sellers may also be charging higher delivery fees to cover any extra paperwork or border delays they may face.
2. 'I was charged an extra £123 for two handbags from Paris'
Karishma Neog, an IT professional based in Bristol, has a weakness for designer handbags. In the first week of January she ordered two, one for her and one as a present, from a retailer in Paris, spending £600 plus £25 for delivery.
When they arrived she was charged an extra £123.
"I had no inkling it was going to be the case," she says. There was no mention of it on the seller's site.
Why was she charged?
As with Sascha's cars, the charge was probably for UK VAT. But because Karishma's handbags were worth more than £135 she wasn't charged when she clicked to buy.
Instead, when you buy more expensive items the VAT is applied when the items reach you.
Michelle Dale from accountants UHY Hacker Young says the other possibility is that Karishma was charged customs duties.
If you're buying something that comes from the EU, the free trade deal means you won't pay any customs duties. But, while Karishma's bags came from a seller in Paris, they may not be made from French materials, they might not even be made in France.
The devil is in the detail when it comes to these "rules of origin" says Gary Rycroft. But they only apply to items over £135 that come from outside the UK and EU.
So if you're buying a pricier item, it is always worth asking if any additional customs charges will apply.
3. Gifts can come with a nasty surprise
Lili Piraki isn't the only one who was charged to receive a present. Even if the gift was wrapped and posted by a friend or relative it can still incur extra fees.
Some readers thought they'd avoided extra charges by posting before Christmas, but many deliveries ran late, and so - because they arrived after 1 January - came with an extra bill to pay.
The first thing Lili knew about the earrings from her friend was a series of texts from DHL asking for £28.85.
"I received a message from DHL saying in order to receive my gift I had to pay the taxes. I didn't even know anyone had sent me anything."
She checked all the details to be sure it wasn't a scam, and then paid the charges.
Why was she charged?
Gifts worth less than £39 don't attract any extra charges, explains Michelle Dale. But gifts over that, like gold earrings, are eligible for VAT and customs duties. And it's always the recipient who receives the bill.
4. 'Second-hand pottery on eBay was more expensive'
When former soldier Hamish Clarke was stationed in Germany in the 1970s he developed an interest in modern European pottery. He still adds to his collection, buying on marketplaces or direct from sellers in Germany and Belgium.
He spied four pieces of pottery he liked on eBay and agreed a price of €160 [£142] with the seller.
"When I tried to pay for it, it was asking for €191 euros," he says.
He wondered whether the charges might have been avoided if he had bought directly from the seller.
Why was he charged?
There's no way around the import VAT, says Michelle Dale, and it applies to second hand items as well as gifts, even if you've bought them from a private individual.
EBay already has its system set up to charge the extra VAT upfront. Amazon says VAT will always be charged at point of sale on its site too. But the system won't be running smoothly yet everywhere, warns Martyn James.
5. 'I was asked to pay £78 more for my £150 UK boots in France'
Jemima Brown ordered a £150 pair of boots from a UK company to be delivered to her home in Auvergne, France.
"A week later I received an email from La Poste telling me that when the parcel was delivered it would only be handed over if I paid the €88 [£78] import duty," she says.
The documentation said it was €43 for VAT, €30 for customs tariffs, and €15 handling fees.
She rang the company which said she could reject the delivery and receive a full refund.
Why was she charged?
Shoppers on the continent buying from UK firms face the same rules as UK shoppers do in reverse so Jemima would have had to pay VAT and customs charges, because the boots or the materials they were made from, originated from outside the EU.
Michelle Dale thinks Jemima was lucky to be able to reject the delivery so easily. Some firms are changing their terms and conditions so that customers have to cover the extra charges, even when goods are returned.
Gary Rycroft says if a retailer doesn't make it clear that you might face extra fees, you could argue that these were "hidden costs" that you shouldn't have to pay. But don't expect that to be an easy battle to win.
Seems like AstraZeneca might prove to be a rather surprising Brexit benefit in relation to vaccines.
Breathtaking arrogance from the EU. I take their point about Astra breaking their contract, but fail to see why this should mean that they put pressure on to take vaccines already contracted to the UK, and made in the UK.
Seems like AstraZeneca might prove to be a rather surprising Brexit benefit in relation to vaccines.
Breathtaking arrogance from the EU. I take their point about Astra breaking their contract, but fail to see why this should mean that they put pressure on to take vaccines already contracted to the UK, and made in the UK.
Comments
A Tory Cabinet minister has been mocked after he was accused of accidentally making a perfect argument against Brexit.
Brandon Lewis was trying to explain how Northern Ireland’s Brexit deal will benefit the region by allowing it to be part of both the EU and UK markets.
The Northern Ireland Secretary told BBC Question Time there will be a “unique competitive advantage in the world” in Northern Ireland because it can trade with the EU’s single market.
But he neglected to mention that, before Brexit happened, the whole of the UK could trade with the EU’s single market already.
That only ended because we left the EU.
Mr Lewis is right in the sense that, once the UK has set its own rules or reached its own trade deals with other countries, Northern Ireland will be able to benefit from those - as well as the rules of the EU single market.
But there will also be checks and declarations needed on goods that are sent from Britain to Northern Ireland, making internal UK trade more difficult.
There are currently grace periods that allow many products to be sent from Britain to Northern Ireland without those hurdles.
But those will expire by July, adding paperwork to some trade and banning other goods like chilled sausages altogether.
Mr Lewis said: “The protocol means that as part of the UK, Northern Ireland is going to have this unique competitive advantage in the world.
“Northern Ireland has the business has the ability to trade in and as part of the United Kingdom, as well as through the single market with the EU.
“That’s going to mean if you’re a business who deals with the UK and EU, the place to invest and grow your business is in Northern Ireland.
“It benefits there from being part of the UK.”
Remain-backers and Labour MPs seized on the comments.
Labour MP Dame Angela Eagle said: “Which all of us had in the Single Market - could have had Brexit within the single market This Govt chose not to”.
Former Labour MP James Frith said: “Extraordinary explanation of the benefits of access to the single market, the EU and UK for Northern Ireland.
“A unique competitive advantage is right. And one we’ve just stamped on for ourselves. What a truly awful gaslighting government we have.”
Labour peer Andrew Adonis added: “Wouldn’t it be good if the whole of the UK has this ‘unique competitive advantage’! It’s called membership of the European Union”.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/tory-minister-on-question-time-accidentally-makes-perfect-case-against-brexit/ar-BB1cZB6d?ocid=msedgntp
Lord Empey: The Irish Sea border is outrageous, and the DUP leader still fails to accept her role in it
(Mrs Foster’s article can be read here: ‘We’re trying to fix a barrier created by London,’ January 16)
However one describes it, Northern Ireland is being treated differently from the rest of the United Kingdom. We remain in the EU single market and subject to all its rules and regulations and the jurisdiction of the EU court, over which neither we nor Westminster have any control.
Border control posts are being erected and both UK and EU officials are standing there ready to check incoming goods to ensure that they are compliant with EU regulations.
We now have to treat goods coming from Scotland, England and Wales as if the rest of the UK is a foreign country. Our economic border has now moved from Newry to Larne. Outrageous.
Repeatedly Arlene has stated that Northern Ireland must not be treated differently from any other part of the UK. Indeed, she made it her ‘blood red line’.
She blames London for creating a barrier between NI and the rest of the UK, but fails to accept her role in bringing about this disaster.
When Boris Johnson proposed the Irish Sea border on October 2 2019 (the day after he is pictured above at the DUP reception at the Tory conference), Arlene agreed with him, saying that his proposals were ‘a serious and sensible way forward’.
Why any unionist would contemplate supporting a proposal for a border of any description between different parts of the UK is beyond my comprehension.
Arlene feebly claims that her party would have had a veto over the implementation of Boris’s proposals because the NI Assembly and executive would have to agree before they were entered into. However, when Arlene agreed to this, there was no assembly or executive!
Remember, if the DUP had a veto so would Sinn Fein, so republicans could collapse the assembly at any time, thus rendering any DUP veto meaningless.
Fifteen days after Arlene’s support was given to the PM’s proposals — and having got what he wanted from her — he agreed the amended protocol with the EU, leaving out the so- called consent mechanism which Arlene was relying on!
It was so obvious that this would happen, that it was painful to watch Northern Ireland’s future being gambled away. The truth is that Arlene now leads the ‘Border in the Irish Sea Party’.
She has tried, and failed, to retro fit an argument for the DUP’s actions in 2019, but she is totally unconvincing and merely demonstrates how outmanoeuvred the DUP was by Boris.
They did have a veto in 2019 in Westminster, where the real decisions were being taken,
but they bottled it and failed to stop the prime minister when they had the chance.
Reg Empey, Former Ulster Unionist leader, House of Lords, Westminster
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/lord-empey-the-irish-sea-border-is-outrageous-and-the-dup-leader-still-fails-to-accept-her-role-in-it/ar-BB1d0QWD?ocid=msedgntp
A commercial cheesemaker in Cheshire has been left with a £250,000 Brexit hole in his business as a direct result of the UK’s departure from the EU on 1 January.
Simon Spurrell said he has lost 20% of his sales overnight after discovering he needed to provide a £180 health certificate on retail orders to consumers in the EU, including those buying personal gift packs of his award-winning wax-wrapped cheese worth £25 or £30.
He says he had hoped to participate in the “sunny uplands” promised by the government post-Brexit, but has instead seen the viability of his online retail come to a “dead stop”.
“Our business had high hopes of continued growth in the EU market, after seeing the avoidance of the no-deal and announcement of a free trade deal.
“What has only become clear in the last week is that our successful B2C [business to consumer] online sales to EU consumers is now impossible to operate,” he said.
To save his business he will now have to switch a £1m investment he was planning to make in a new distribution centre in Macclesfield to the EU, with the loss of 20 jobs and tax revenue to the UK.
“It is a real shame because that means I’m now going to invest in France, provide French employment, and then contribute to the EU tax system, which was pretty much going against the whole reason that we were meant to be leaving.”
John Arbon Textiles in Devon was told by its courier company that its knitting wool, spun from local sheep fibres, would no longer be accepted with hauliers now trying to mitigate the risk of one package in their van or lorry causing their entire load to be delayed because they are missing a health certificate.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/cheshire-cheesemaker-says-business-left-with-250-000-brexit-hole/ar-BB1d188D?ocid=msedgntp
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/fury-at-brexit-tax-as-retailers-threaten-to-burn-goods-rather-than-pay-higher-costs/ar-BB1cZPwg?ocid=msedgntp
Just over a year ago, Mr Johnson publicly insisted that despite what the words in his own withdrawal agreement with the EU said, “there’s no question of there being checks on goods going from Northern Ireland to Great Britain or Great Britain to Northern Ireland”.
On January 1, as the reality of the new Irish Sea border dawned, Northern Ireland Secretary of State Brandon Lewis insisted: “There is no ‘Irish Sea border”. He has repeatedly stood over that, most recently on Thursday night on BBC Question Time, despite products vanishing from shelves, delivery costs being increased and hauliers reporting chronic problems moving products from GB to NI.
When confronted by the Prime Minister’s public promise that there would be no checks, Mr Lewis visibly squirmed but said that he would have to see the whole quote in context before commenting on it.
A viewer asked Mr Lewis: “If it’s not a border down the Irish Sea, then what is it?”
Mr Lewis replied: “I’ve never seen it as a border down the Irish Sea”
Professor Anand Menon, an expert in Brexit, told Question Time: “You are having these kind of checks within a country...you can call it a border or not as you please but those checks will be there and they will be real and they’ll affect the nature of trade between GB and NI.”
“This dishonesty has robbed businesses of the time they needed to prepare, and left many in the dark about what they needed to do. It’s unhelpful and counter-productive for the Secretary of State to still indulge in that denial.”
A document leaked to the Daily Mirror shows that senior civil servants in Diane Dodds’ Department for the Economy have identified “deep and stubborn structural weaknesses” in the NI economy and warns that “the economic-drag of these longstanding issues stands to get worse as the impacts of Covid, Brexit and climate change are concentrated in these areas of weakness”.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/labour-accuses-boris-johnson-of-dishonesty-in-denying-irish-sea-border-s-existence/ar-BB1d0edE?ocid=msedgntp
CHERBOURG, France/DUBLIN (Reuters) - From his office overlooking Cherbourg docks, general manager Yannick Millet points to trailers destined for Ireland that belong to Amazon and FedEx, new customers and a signal of a potential big shift in post-Brexit trade.
Confronted by red tape and delays after Britain's messy exit from the European Union, Irish traders are shipping goods directly to and from European ports, shunning the once-speedier route through Britain.
"You see the shift in supply chains right here," he said.
All five operators connecting Ireland to mainland Europe have increased ferry services in the past nine months, with some bringing forward planned sailings and others moving larger ships away from quieter British routes to meet new demand.
Millet forecast Cherbourg would handle 9,000 trucks in January, equivalent to almost a quarter of what passed through the French port annually before the COVID-19 crisis.
For decades, the land bridge offered Irish traders the swiftest, most reliable route to continental Europe. It involves a short sea crossing between Dublin and Holyhead in Wales and then a hop between Dover and Calais. Every year 150,000 lorries would use the route.
But post-Brexit paperwork and delays in customs clearance are snarling up the process, adding hours or days to journeys and ratcheting up costs. Many companies are switching routes.
"This is a game-changer," said Chris Smyth, commercial director at Ireland's Perennial Freight. Demand was huge for freight space to ship to Cherbourg, Dunkirk, Rotterdam and Zeebrugge, he added.
Cherbourg's business before Brexit had been evenly split between Ireland and Britain. Now, the port would orient itself towards Ireland, Millet said.
"I thought traffic would double but it has tripled," he said. "The question now is whether the traffic volumes we see today will hold in the months to come."
AVOIDING THE MIDDLEMAN
Stena Line, the largest Irish Sea operator, has doubled its services on the booming Rosslare-Cherbourg route, temporarily cancelling some sailings to Britain after freight volumes fell 60% in the first half of January.
Irish Ferries has deployed a larger vessel out of Dublin and planned to add more weekly rotations next month, the Port of Cherbourg said. Brittany Ferries also brought forward a planned sailing linking France and Ireland.
Danish operator DFDS said the freight ferries plying its new 23-hour crossing from Rosslare to Dunkirk six days a week were "pretty much full". Route director Aidan Coffey said capturing 30% of "land bridge" traffic would make the route viable and DFDS might soon add up to two more sailings per week.
"We're blown away by the demand," Coffey said.
No one knows if the shift is permanent.
The Irish Maritime Development Office, a government shipping promotion body, said a return to pre-Brexit logistic chains would depend on the speed of customs formalities along the land bridge and that ferries linking Ireland and mainland Europe could not replicate its volumes.
Eddie Burke, a senior official at Ireland's transport department, said the route through Britain would undoubtedly come back into play again.
Ferry operators were taking decisions on capacity week by week, said Ole Bockmann, Stena's operations chief in Cherbourg. Reverting to land bridge routes was simple, he said. "We just take the ships off and go back to the old system."
RENAISSANCE
It gives ports like Cherbourg and Ireland's Rosslare a narrow window to persuade traders that the longer sea crossing between Ireland and mainland Europe is commercially viable for just-in-time logistics.
Eighteen months ago, Rosslare on the southeastern tip of Ireland was struggling. Its traffic volumes were stagnant while rivals were enjoying a 10-year run of growth.
Now its general manager, Glenn Carr, is fending off complaints about the number trucks passing through after freight traffic increased 500% in the first half of January.
Carr said the old perception that direct crossings from Ireland were too long for fresh food and just-in-time supply chains was changing. Many of the companies that had switched from the land bridge would remain, he forecast.
"I was talking to some multinationals only this week and the question they asked me was, 'Glenn, are you putting on more services?'"
An 18-hour ferry ride away, Cherbourg port's Millet said his immediate priority was responding to shipping companies demands for better restaurants and washrooms for truckers and ironing out quayside glitches in the loading of extra vessels.
"Brexit has for us been an opportunity to rethink our port," he said.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/after-brexit-ireland-and-france-cut-out-the-middleman-britain/ar-BB1d03Sk?ocid=msedgntp
British businesses that export to the continent are being encouraged by government trade advisers to set up separate companies inside the EU in order to get around extra charges, paperwork and taxes resulting from Brexit, the Observer can reveal.
In an extraordinary twist to the Brexit saga, UK small businesses are being told by advisers working for the Department for International Trade (DIT) that the best way to circumvent border issues and VAT problems that have been piling up since 1 January is to register new firms within the EU single market, from where they can distribute their goods far more freely.
Moss said it was now clear that Brexit was not about winning back control from the EU but investing in it to survive.
He had also spoken to an official at the Department for International Trade before making his decision and received the same advice. “When the government said it had secured free trade, it was obvious it was nothing of the sort,” said Betts. VAT issues, new charges on moving goods and more bureaucracy all added up to an “administrative nightmare”, he said.
Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, said: “Once again we see this government’s sheer incompetence and lack of planning holding British businesses back and slowing our economic recovery.
“They’ve got to get a grip on this now and stop leaving our businesses out in the cold.”
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/brexit/set-up-shop-in-europe-government-advisers-tell-brexit-hit-businesses/ar-BB1d1JBr?ocid=msedgntp
British would-be homebuyers in Spain are set to face disruption and delays of up to a year on property deals because of a Franco-era security law that due to Brexit they are no longer exempt from.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/british-homebuyers-spain-face-post-135200204.html
Of all people in government Boris Johnson should be first to recognise the status of European Union representatives. His father, Stanley, was a European commission official for many years and the European taxpayer paid the prime minister’s school fees at the expensive Brussels International School and then Eton.
However, in a row that has been rumbling for a year alongside Brexit trade talks, the government is refusing to give full diplomatic status to the EU’s ambassador to the UK, João Vale de Almeida and his 25-strong mission. The Foreign Office claims it does not want to set a precedent by treating an international body in the same way it treats a nation state, with diplomats afforded the privileges and immunities under the Vienna Convention.
Britain has ambassadors to any number of international organisations from the OECD to the World Trade Organization, and expects them to have full diplomatic status – not paying local taxes, the CD number plate, and other assorted rights. The UK insists its head of delegation to the World Bank and the IMF also have ambassadorial status.
Our man in Brussels, Sir Tim Barrow, was previously UK ambassador in Moscow, and he is unlikely to take kindly to having his own status downgraded, which is the obvious reciprocal action the EU can take if No 10 – or is it Dominic Raab? – insists on this childish, petulant decision to refuse the normal diplomatic status that 142 countries around the world grant to EU delegations.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/britains-refusal-eus-ambassador-full-125624153.html
You would have to possess a heart of stone not to weep with laughter at some of those who are now suddenly complaining about Brexit. It is a bit late for Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party, those lusty sponsors of the great experiment with the UK’s prosperity, to be wailing that they have been betrayed. I smiled to see that Roger Daltrey, the Leave-supporting lead singer of the Who, has joined the chorus of rock stars furious that the post-Brexit visa rules will ruin their prospects of touring across the Channel. Mr Daltrey will have to sing Won’t Get Fooled Again to himself before moving on to Boris the Spider and I Can’t Explain.
It is particularly rending for the soul to witness the rightwing press discovering that the cause they so noisily championed is not the nirvana that they sold to their readers. They were cheering when Boris Johnson flourished the Brexit deal that he concluded on Christmas Eve and proclaimed: “This is a cakeist treaty.” The UK would be having the sweet stuff and eating it by gaining lots of shiny new benefits from being outside the EU while still enjoying the historical advantages of frictionless trade with its closest neighbours.
All those acquainted with Mr Johnson and his casual relationship with the truth will have taken that with a juggernaut of salt. Consider the prime minister’s specialist subject of cake. Anyone trying to take a fresh cream cake across the Channel now does so at the risk of having it impounded at customs because it is a dairy product. A Dutch TV report, which has since gone viral, shows border officials confiscating sandwiches from motorists arriving in the Netherlands from the UK. One driver agrees to surrender the meat in his sandwich, but pleads to be allowed to hang on to the bread. The frontier guard responds: “No, everything will be confiscated. Welcome to the Brexit, sir.”
Comedic tales of travellers being deprived of their snacks are the funnier side of an otherwise deadly serious story. The bill for Mr Johnson’s Brexit is coming in and that bill is a punishingly steep one. It is being paid by the fishing fleets in Scotland and the West Country that are tied up because they are unable to export their catch. It is being paid in a slump in activity at Welsh ports because the trade they used to handle is being diverted to France and Spain. It is being paid in billions of pounds worth of transactions disappearing from the City of London, which may not be much loved by all that many Britons but employs a million people, because the deal was so threadbare for the financial sector. It is being paid in car manufacturers shutting down some production because they can’t get parts across borders in time. It is being paid in tonnes of British meat exports rotting at European harbours. It is being paid by many UK businesses, especially the kind of smaller, exporting enterprises that the Tories always profess to love, which are being overwhelmed by the heavy burdens and high costs of the thin deal the prime minister rushed through parliament at the turn of the year.
British companies are being told by the British government that the way to survive is to lay off British workers and transfer their jobs to folk across the Channel
You will recall that it was one of the Brexiters’ signature promises that departure from the EU would be a liberating moment. A buccaneering free trade Britain would flourish as wealth creators were unshackled from the stifling regulatory chains of Brussels. What Brexit has actually done is impose a vast amount of cumbersome and costly new bureaucracy on exporters and importers. British companies have been put in a chokehold of regulations, customs declarations, conformity assessments, health and rules-of-origin certifications, VAT demands and inflated shipping charges. While some ministers talk about reducing worker protections in the name of “cutting red tape”, a move for which there is little demand even from employers, Brexit is ensnaring British businesses in writhing snakes of the stuff. I guess Jacob Rees-Mogg, he who thinks that fish unable to reach EU markets are “happier” knowing they are British, will claim that struggling British exporters should be patriotically proud to be throttled by red, white and blue tape.
Ministers like to insist that we’re experiencing nothing worse than “teething problems” as exporters and importers come to terms with the most radical change to the way we have traded with our neighbours since Margaret Thatcher pioneered the creation of the single market more than 30 years ago. For sure, snafus and bottlenecks at borders caused by faulty documentation may be smoothed out over time as companies become accustomed to dealing with so many complex new procedures. But a lot of these problems are not temporary rites of passage into a brave new world – these are permanent liabilities. A massive increase in border friction and all the expense that comes with it are baked-in consequences of Mr Johnson’s Brexit. The thicket of bureaucracy imposed on companies means enduring and added costs for their businesses. It does not feel like “teething problems” to them. It is more like root canal surgery performed without any benefit of anaesthetic. This was a predictable – and predicted – result of wrenching the UK out of the single market and the customs union. Thinktanks, some politicians, some business leaders and some newspapers, including this one, warned about the job-costing and investment-sapping consequences of erecting high new barriers to trade. But it is fair to say that this issue was never front and centre of the arguments that raged about Brexit. Evangelists for the adventure tended to dismiss the impacts on companies as mere minutiae compared with immigration levels or the meaning of sovereignty. Remainers struggled to find ways to make technical-sounding issues matter to the public. Among many voters and many politicians, the great benefits of being inside the single market were taken for granted right up until the moment when they vanished.
Some did understand that there would be a price to be paid. One of them was Boris Johnson. He knew enough about the importance of this issue to fib about it. On Christmas Eve, when he was hailing his agreement with the EU as a fantastic new chapter in our island story, he claimed that “there will be no non-tariff barriers to trade”.
This was self-evidently untrue even at the time that he said it. His government accepts that companies will collectively need to employ 50,000 additional customs agents in a post-Brexit world. Industry figures suggest that less than a quarter of that number had been trained by the time Britain left the single market.
The HMRC estimates that Brexit demands that British companies complete 215m additional, often highly complex, documents a year with a mirroring amount of extra paperwork also being generated by EU counter-parties. The cost of that alone on British businesses is thought to be around £7bn a year. If you make exporting and importing more difficult and more sluggish, at the same time as making cross-border transactions a great deal more costly, then it stands to reason that there will be less trade.
Faced with the heavy burdens imposed by Brexit, some companies will stop exporting to the EU because they can no longer find any profit in it. Other companies will move elements of their operations – and, in some cases, all of their business – out of the UK to inside the EU. Investment, jobs and tax revenues that would have benefited the UK will in future go to countries in the EU instead. This is already happening. Other companies will simply find that Brexit has left them unviable. Overwhelmed by the new costs, they will go to the wall. That will be especially so for those who were already struggling to survive because of the coronavirus crisis.
British business lost to European competitors. British entrepreneurs crushed. British jobs exported abroad. Welcome to the Brexit.
• Andrew Rawnsley is Chief Political Commentator of the Observer
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/the-bill-for-boris-johnson-s-brexit-is-coming-in-and-it-s-punishingly-steep/ar-BB1d2KW7?ocid=msedgntp
The Road Haulage Association (RHA) says that far fewer containers filled with goods are leaving for the continent from the UK since Boris Johnson agreed a trade deal with Brussels. It came as UK businesses that export to the EU are reportedly being encouraged by trade officials to set up hubs across the Channel so they can avoid post-Brexit disruption. Richard Burnett, chief executive of the RHA, said: 'Most of the trucks that bring goods into the UK are not British and we've seen a noticeable reduction in hauliers wanting to make the journey'. Simon Spurrell (pictured inset right), the boss of a UK cheese producing company, told the BBC he was advised to set-up in Europe to avoid disruption to his EU exports. Another, Ulla Vitting Richards (pictured inset left) the boss of a clothing firm, told the BBC that they had been encouraged to link up with a distribution centre Germany in order to keep exporting to the EU.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9182109/UK-firms-export-EU-told-set-hubs-Europe-avoid-post-Brexit-trade-disruption.html
STEPHEN GLOVER: No sooner has this nation emerged from the ructions and divisions of Brexit than it seems likely to enter a period of political controversy that will be even more bitter and disruptive. We face the prospect - appalling to millions of people, including me - that the country of which we are citizens could cease to exist within a very short space of time, unless the Prime Minister demonstrates gifts of statesmanship we have so far only glimpsed. The Scottish National Party has declared that if it wins a majority of seats in May's Scottish Parliamentary elections - which polls suggest is highly probable - it will unilaterally call a second referendum on independence. Confronted by the threat of a wildcat referendum that apparently commands democratic support in Scotland, what should Boris Johnson do?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9182267/STEPHEN-GLOVER-battle-Scottish-independence-make-Brexit-look-genteel.html
Brexit parcel price shock: 'I had to pay £30 for a gift'
A couple of weeks ago Lili Piraki, a London-based journalist, was surprised by a text out of the blue from delivery firm DHL.
She was delighted to hear a friend had sent her a present: a pair of gold earrings from Greece. She was less impressed that she would have to pay nearly £30 in taxes to receive the gift.
The extra charges are a result of new post-Brexit rules that came into force on 1 January.
Despite the free trade deal agreed before Christmas, which promised to smooth the UK's exit from the EU, new taxes and charges now apply to almost everything that goes back and forth between the two, including gifts, second hand items, products bought on Amazon or eBay and from private sellers.
After we reported recently on Londoner Ellie Huddleston's shock at beings asked to pay £82 to receive a £200 coat, dozens of you got in touch asking why they were being charged extra.
So we asked some experts to run through five readers' experiences to explain the new charges.
1. 'My model car cost £12 more'
Londoner Sascha Grillo was trying to add to his model collection by ordering a new car from a seller in Germany, but when he typed into the website that he wanted delivery to the UK, the price leapt up from £50 to £62.
"I was shocked, because I thought that with the Brexit deal, this wouldn't happen," he said.
"I thought day-to-day commercial transactions would remain the same, but this is not the case."
He decided not to buy.
Why was he charged more?
The free trade deal means there are no quotas or tariffs on the goods traded between the EU and UK, but that doesn't mean there are no extra taxes or costs.
Since 1 January the UK is no longer part of the EU VAT regime, so the UK government is applying VAT (sales tax) at 20% on goods from the EU, explains Gary Rycroft, a partner at Joseph A Jones & Co Solicitors.
In Sascha's case the new tax was applied at the "point of sale", in other words when he clicked to order. That is how the system is supposed to work on all goods worth under £135, says Martyn James from risk management firm Resolver.com.
UK VAT accounts for £10 of the extra £12 that Sascha was asked to pay. Sellers may also be charging higher delivery fees to cover any extra paperwork or border delays they may face.
2. 'I was charged an extra £123 for two handbags from Paris'
Karishma Neog, an IT professional based in Bristol, has a weakness for designer handbags. In the first week of January she ordered two, one for her and one as a present, from a retailer in Paris, spending £600 plus £25 for delivery.
When they arrived she was charged an extra £123.
"I had no inkling it was going to be the case," she says. There was no mention of it on the seller's site.
Why was she charged?
As with Sascha's cars, the charge was probably for UK VAT. But because Karishma's handbags were worth more than £135 she wasn't charged when she clicked to buy.
Instead, when you buy more expensive items the VAT is applied when the items reach you.
Michelle Dale from accountants UHY Hacker Young says the other possibility is that Karishma was charged customs duties.
If you're buying something that comes from the EU, the free trade deal means you won't pay any customs duties. But, while Karishma's bags came from a seller in Paris, they may not be made from French materials, they might not even be made in France.
The devil is in the detail when it comes to these "rules of origin" says Gary Rycroft. But they only apply to items over £135 that come from outside the UK and EU.
So if you're buying a pricier item, it is always worth asking if any additional customs charges will apply.
3. Gifts can come with a nasty surprise
Lili Piraki isn't the only one who was charged to receive a present. Even if the gift was wrapped and posted by a friend or relative it can still incur extra fees.
Some readers thought they'd avoided extra charges by posting before Christmas, but many deliveries ran late, and so - because they arrived after 1 January - came with an extra bill to pay.
The first thing Lili knew about the earrings from her friend was a series of texts from DHL asking for £28.85.
"I received a message from DHL saying in order to receive my gift I had to pay the taxes. I didn't even know anyone had sent me anything."
She checked all the details to be sure it wasn't a scam, and then paid the charges.
Why was she charged?
Gifts worth less than £39 don't attract any extra charges, explains Michelle Dale. But gifts over that, like gold earrings, are eligible for VAT and customs duties. And it's always the recipient who receives the bill.
4. 'Second-hand pottery on eBay was more expensive'
When former soldier Hamish Clarke was stationed in Germany in the 1970s he developed an interest in modern European pottery. He still adds to his collection, buying on marketplaces or direct from sellers in Germany and Belgium.
He spied four pieces of pottery he liked on eBay and agreed a price of €160 [£142] with the seller.
"When I tried to pay for it, it was asking for €191 euros," he says.
He wondered whether the charges might have been avoided if he had bought directly from the seller.
Why was he charged?
There's no way around the import VAT, says Michelle Dale, and it applies to second hand items as well as gifts, even if you've bought them from a private individual.
EBay already has its system set up to charge the extra VAT upfront. Amazon says VAT will always be charged at point of sale on its site too. But the system won't be running smoothly yet everywhere, warns Martyn James.
5. 'I was asked to pay £78 more for my £150 UK boots in France'
Jemima Brown ordered a £150 pair of boots from a UK company to be delivered to her home in Auvergne, France.
"A week later I received an email from La Poste telling me that when the parcel was delivered it would only be handed over if I paid the €88 [£78] import duty," she says.
The documentation said it was €43 for VAT, €30 for customs tariffs, and €15 handling fees.
She rang the company which said she could reject the delivery and receive a full refund.
Why was she charged?
Shoppers on the continent buying from UK firms face the same rules as UK shoppers do in reverse so Jemima would have had to pay VAT and customs charges, because the boots or the materials they were made from, originated from outside the EU.
Michelle Dale thinks Jemima was lucky to be able to reject the delivery so easily. Some firms are changing their terms and conditions so that customers have to cover the extra charges, even when goods are returned.
Gary Rycroft says if a retailer doesn't make it clear that you might face extra fees, you could argue that these were "hidden costs" that you shouldn't have to pay. But don't expect that to be an easy battle to win.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55752541
Breathtaking arrogance from the EU. I take their point about Astra breaking their contract, but fail to see why this should mean that they put pressure on to take vaccines already contracted to the UK, and made in the UK.
Lough Neagh eel fishermen will have to find new markets for a fifth of their catch due to Brexit and the operation of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
It means finding new buyers for 50 tonnes of eels, worth £500,000, just months before the start of this year's season.
The fish would traditionally have gone to Billingsgate Market in London and been sold as jellied eels.
But the complexities of Brexit mean that trade is no longer possible.
It comes as restocking Lough Neagh with juvenile fish becomes more complex and costly.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-55818519