James Martin: 'Restaurants are facing a perfect storm - started by Brexit being a complete disaster'
Yorkshire chef James Martin has said the hospitality industry is facing a “perfect storm” which was started by the impact of Brexit.
The number of EU workers in UK hospitality jobs fell by 37 per cent between 2019 and 2024 as new restrictions were imposed.
Speaking to The Yorkshire Post Magazine, Mr Martin said: “Brexit was a complete and utter disaster for hospitality because it stopped the movement of Europeans and Eastern Europeans travelling, and vice versa. I used to go work in France and you can’t do that anymore. They used to come over here and work.
“Then, obviously, Covid hit and hospitality got absolutely mullered. Off the back of that, you look at energy, you look at National Insurance, the minimum wage, everything has just skyrocketed.
“Energy costs have gone through the roof, we are the highest-rated VAT in Europe in terms of hospitality. Nobody’s listening, all these hospitality businesses are going bust and you’ve got one million youngsters unemployed.
“The key to employment from 16 up to 18 or 19 used to be working in hospitality to earn money. That’s gone. There’s no one answer to it, there’s no one fix. Yes, a cut to VAT would help but that’s not going to help the cost of seabass and energy and everything else.”
A report published earlier this year by Oxford University’s Migration Observatory said of the impact of Brexit on the hospitality industry: “The new immigration system greatly restricts options for EU nationals to work in lower-skilled occupations. Between November 2019 and December 2024, employments of EU citizens fell most in sectors such as hospitality (-37 per cent) and administrative services (-30 per cent).”