Brexit isn’t working and ‘freedoms’ could hit our rights - Yorkshire Post Letters

THE gap between what firms need to trade successfully with Europe and what this government is actually delivering with its approach to Brexit is widening.

West & North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce’s website is highlighting a national chambers’ call for five things: agreement with the European Union on reducing the cost and complexity of exporting food; easing VAT bureaucracy; reviewing the planned ban on EU CE safety-marked industrial and electrical goods; improving access to EU countries for business travel and work; avoiding the heavy-handed pursuit of customs paperwork and payments postponed last year.

The first four have one thing in common – they could only be delivered through a positive attitude and an ability to engage in constructive dialogue with our most important trading partner.

So far, Boris Johnson’s government seems incapable of that, and appointing Jacob Rees-Mogg as the oxymoronic-sounding “Minister for Brexit Opportunities” is unlikely to change things (The Yorkshire Post, February 9).

Nor is a “Brexit Freedoms Bill” likely to improve things for firms (The Yorkshire Post, January 31).

Given we have an increasingly hard right, authoritarian government using a Police Bill to criminalise protest and an Elections Bill to disenfranchise voters, suspicions that such “freedoms” might include undermining workers’ rights, watering down consumer and environmental protections, and lowering food standards are justified.

The chambers’ fifth ask – customs bureaucracy relief – serves to underline how Brexit has piled on red tape and costs to business… the exact opposite of what advocates such as Mr Johnson and Mr Rees-Mogg had promised.

Or, as the Public Accounts Committee puts it: “The only detectable impact so far [of Brexit] is increased costs, paperwork and border delays” The Yorkshire Post, February 9).

Against this backdrop, the chambers’ appeal is probably too modest.

Eventually, rejoining the European Union will resolve all these issues – and many more created by a Brexit that isn’t working.

Until then, negotiating the kind of Single Market and Customs Union access enjoyed by non-EU members would at least alleviate them. Sir Keir Starmer’s “Make Brexit Work” Labour Party, please note.

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