Daily Archives: September 20, 2021

Australia scrapped a submarine order with Paris in favour of a deal with Washington and London last week. The move ignited fury of the French with Emmanuel Macron first recalling the country's ambassadors to the US and Australia and then cancelling a meeting between Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly and her British counterpart planned for this week.

The French were particularly angry at US President Joe Biden and Australian leader Scott Morrison for what they described as a "stab in the back".

But, when addressing Britain's role in the newly forged alliance, French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said he was not surprised by the UK's "permanent opportunism".

He also branded Boris Johnson the "fifth wheel" in the diplomatic row, clarifying that he meant the UK Prime Minister is a "spare wheel".

France's Europe Minister Clement Beaune also suggested the UK was the "junior partner" which had accepted its "vassalisation" by the US.

French daily Le Figaro said the spat is the equivalent of an "Indo-Pacific Trafalgar" in an article headed 'Submarines: Biden torpedoes the Contract of the Century between France and Australia'.

The comments are likely to further exacerbate relations between France and the UK, already strained by Mr Macron's hard stance in the Brexit negotiations.

The pact between the UK, US and Australia has been widely seen as an attempt to counter the growing military assertiveness of China in the Indo-Pacific region.

Beijing swiftly denounced the initiative as "extremely irresponsible" and a threat to regional peace and stability.

READ MORE:France dismiss Brexit Britain's role in AUKUS alliance

Mr Johnson also urged Emmanuel Macron not to "worry" about the new military alliance.

Mr Johnson insisted Britain and France have a "very friendly relationship", which he described as being of "huge importance".

He added: "AUKUS is not in any way meant to be zero-sum, it's not meant to be exclusionary. It's not something that anybody needs to worry about and particularly not our French friends."

New Foreign Secretary Liz Truss touched down in New York alongside Mr Johnson as they both prepare to meet US President Joe Biden in Washington on Tuesday.

She launched a defence of the agreement, widely seen as a counter to increasing Chinese military assertiveness in the region, in an article for the Sunday Telegraph.

Ms Truss said Britain would always be a "fierce champion" of freedom and free enterprise around the world.

"It shows our readiness to be hard-headed in defending our interests and challenging unfair practices and malign acts," she added

She will also attend the UN summit, where she will come into contact with the French, though the extent of any conversations was unclear.

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The new Trafalgar! French sub row intensifies as UK branded 'fifth wheel' in brutal swipe - Daily Express

More than 60% of EU citizens stopped and questioned at ports by British border officials post-Brexit are from Romania, figures have shown, raising questions from lawyers about possible racial profiling.

Data issued by the government shows that in the first six months of the year 7,249 people were stopped either at airports, ferry ports or on Eurotunnel and Eurostar vehicle and train services.

The figures represent a fivefold increase on the same period in 2020 when free movement between EU member states remained in place for all who were legitimately seeking work in another country.

The stoppages are broken into two categories: those at airports, including Gatwick and Heathrow, those at UK ports including the likes of Portsmouth, Dover, Harwich and Holyhead, and what are known as juxtaposed controls conducted on French sites where British officials operate, including Gare du Nord for Eurostar, Coquelles for Eurotunnel and the ferry ports of Calais and Dunkirk.

Of those stopped in the first six months of 2021, 4,482 were from Romania, dwarfing the figures for neighbouring Bulgaria, from which 600 nationals were stopped, and the 400 questioned from Poland.

Nationals from northern European countries were barely hit by the new immigration controls, with just five Danish people stopped, 59 from Belgium and 144 from France challenged by border officials.

The law firm Bates Wells, which analysed the figures, said while the data could reflect disproportionately higher numbers of Romanians trying to enter the country after free movement had ended, they raised questions about possible racial profiling at the border.

Its legitimate to make general checks with a view to controlling illegal immigration but these latest figures beg the question of where there is an underlying agenda.

These types of stops can be traumatising, and there is a risk immigration officers may be targeting innocent people. Racial profiling is discriminatory and it needs to be nipped in the bud if its happening, said Chetal Patel, an immigration lawyer and partner at Bates Wells.

The government denied any race bias at the border. The claim that we have been racially profiling is false and unwarranted, said a Home Office spokesperson.

If someone arrives at our border, intending to work here without the right to do so, the public rightly expects us to prevent them from entering regardless of their nationality. These rules are applied fairly and solely on the basis of the individuals circumstances.

They added that the data refers to a time of restrictive Covid-19 measures, which meant all non-resident arrivals faced greater scrutiny on their arrival to protect against imported coronavirus cases.

The data, released on Gov.uk, does not offer a breakdown of the nationalities returning or coming to the UK for the first time in 2021.

Explanatory notes say not all individuals will have been detained in a holding room and some of those refused will subsequently be granted entry to the UK, others granted entry with immigration bail conditions, while others will be refused entry.

One explanation could be lack of awareness or confusion over the change in the rules on 1 January. Another possible reason for the high numbers of Romanians being stopped could be people who had settled or pre-settled status to remain in the UK returning after Christmas, Easter or lockdown absences.

As of 30 June, Home Office data shows Romanians were the second-largest category of applicants with 1.067 million from the country. Although 1.09 million Polish nationals applied for the settlement scheme, the data shows much lower stop figures.

While visas are not necessary for visits up to 180 days, or for those who were already living in the country with pre-settled or settled status, border officials were accused of being heavy-handed earlier this year after it emerged they were detaining EU citizens making short trips to visit friends, family or partners.

The Guardian reported in May that EU citizens were being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms.

There is clearly work to do in educating people on what to expect, so that they wont be caught out, said Patel.

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Over 60% of EU citizens stopped at ports by UK post-Brexit are Romanian - The Guardian

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has warned Britain that there will be no U.S.-U.K. trade deal unless Britain solves post-Brexit problems that risk destabilizing Northern Irelands peace

ByThe Associated Press

September 17, 2021, 11:12 AM

2 min read

LONDON -- House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned Britain on Friday that there will be no U.S.-U.K. trade deal unless the British government solves post-Brexit disagreements with the European Union that risk destabilizing Northern Irelands peace.

Britain and the EU are at odds over trade arrangements that have imposed checks on goods coming to Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K. They were agreed by both sides in their divorce deal, to keep an open land border between the north and EU member Ireland a key pillar of Northern Irelands peace process.

Britain says the new checks are onerous and wants to rewrite the agreement, but the EU says it will not renegotiate.

The United States, which played a key role in securing Northern Irelands 1998 Good Friday peace accord, has cautioned Britain against doing anything to undermine the peace settlement.

Pelosi, who is visiting the U.K., met Prime Minister Boris Johnson at his 10 Downing St. residence on Thursday. Johnsons office said the prime minister outlined the U.K.s concerns with the way the (Northern Ireland) Protocol is being implemented and the impact it is having on the people of Northern Ireland.

Pelosi told an audience at the Chatham House think-tank that a trans-Atlantic trade deal was very unlikely if the Good Friday Accord was destroyed. She said this is not a threat, its a prediction.

Pelosi welcomed the fact that Britain and the EU have agreed to keep talking in an attempt to resolve their differences.

Im so glad that more time has been given for the negotiations and the discussion, because they have to reach an agreement, she said.

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Pelosi warns UK not to imperil N Ireland peace with Brexit - ABC News

Goods imports from Britain to the Republic have fallen by a third as a result of Brexit while Irish exports to Britain have increased by 26 per cent.

The latest trade figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures reveal a significant Brexit impact on the Irish-British trade since the start of the year.

The value of goods imports from Britain was 6.3 billion, a decrease of 32 per cent or 2.9 billion compared with the same period in 2020.

The largest decreases were in the imports of food and live animals and machinery and equipment.

The CSO said several factors contributed to the large reduction in imports from the Britain, including the challenges of complying with customs requirements.

Marks and Spencer (M&S)said last week that post-Brexit rules and excessive paperwork has forced it to cut about 800 lines from its stores in the Republic, roughly 20 per cent of its total range of goods here.

The latest figures show Irish exports to Britain, in contrast, grew by 26 per cent or 1.7 billion to 8.2 billion during the seven-month period.

The largest increases were in the exports of chemicals and related products and machinery and transport equipment. Exports to Britain accounted for 12 per cent of total goods exports in July.

Brexit has also fuelled a major pick-up in North-South trade. The figures show imports from Northern Ireland increased by 800 million or 60 per cent to 2.1 billion when compared with the same period in 2020.

Exports to Northern Ireland, meanwhile, were up 45 per cent to 1.9 billion .

Under the Northern Ireland protocol, trade in goods with Britain is subject to customs checks. However, while Northern Ireland remains within the customs territory of the UK, it is simultaneously within the EU single market for the movement of goods.

Jarlath OKeefe, partner in indirect taxes at Grant Thornton Ireland said the July CSO figures for the import and export of goods have confirmed that there has been a significant increase in cross Border trade on the island of Ireland in 2021 following Brexit. This is due in part to businesses adjusting their supply chains to avoid the administrative burden associated with importing goods from Britain, he said.

This means goods moving between Northern Ireland and the Republic are not subject to customs checks.

Some British-based traders have apparently established bases in the North to facilitate trade with the Republic, while some companies in Republic have replaced imports from Britain with imports from the North.

Globally the CSO figures show the value of total exports fell by 5 per cent to 13.2 billion in July while imports fell by 12 per cent to 8 billion.

This resulted in a seasonally adjusted trade surplus of 5.1 billion, down 11 per cent on the previous month.

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Goods imports from Britain falls by a third since Brexit - The Irish Times

It came as a little surprise to anyone in the UKs logistics industry or at its ports when the government announced its decision to delay for the second time in a little over six months the introduction of post-Brexit import controls on goods arriving in Great Britain from the EU.

New checks on food and animal products imported from the continent will now not be brought in until 1 July 2022, a full year after they were originally intended to begin. The introduction of other requirements, including the paperwork that accompanies imports of food and animal products, has also been delayed from 1 October to next year.

Logistics firms, already suffering from a shortage of workers including HGV drivers and supply chain disruption, breathed a sigh of relief at the offer of more time. Particularly because the original implementation of extra controls on New Years Day would probably have piled further pressure on what is already shaping up to be a difficult Christmas season for traders, fraught with stock shortages and logistical challenges.

Yet there is a certain irony to the UK governments decision, given that it turned down pre-Brexit requests from several business groups for a longer transition period, to allow firms to adapt to new trading requirements. Ministers blamed the pandemic for the postponements, but the required border control infrastructure which in some cases the government itself is responsible for is well behind schedule and wouldnt have been ready on time.

The construction of inland border control posts, in places such as Dover and Holyhead, where there isnt space for a checkpoint next to the terminal, is being overseen by the UK government, along with devolved administrations in Wales and Scotland. Plans for a huge customs clearance park on fields at the White Cliffs site on the outskirts of Dover have recently been significantly downgraded, while building work wont begin until next spring. Meanwhile, the planning application for the inland border facility at Holyhead on Anglesey a key staging post for trade between the Irish Republic and Britain hasnt yet been approved by Welsh government ministers.

Port operators building their own border facilities have roundly criticised the governments handling of the funding process for the multimillion-pound infrastructure projects, where financial allocations were confirmed only a fortnight before Brexit. Many would argue theres little point in implementing import checks before the required facilities are ready. After all, it is entirely in the UKs gift to decide when to introduce them.

This raises the question: do delays to import checks matter?

Goods arriving from the EU, including food, still meet the same standards as when Britain was in the bloc, which means they havent suddenly become unsafe. That said, trade experts dont consider it a sensible long-term policy to have a relatively open border, which could be targeted by smugglers.

Yet not all have welcomed the further delay, and one industry body, the Food and Drink Federation, came out swinging. It criticised the postponement, stressing how businesses had invested time and money to prepare for new procedures, only to see them kicked down the road.

Meanwhile, exports to the EU from the UK have been subject to controls since 1 January this year. British produce travelling to the EU risks being stopped at customs, and any paperwork mistakes could result in a shipment being turned back. This will not happen to goods travelling the other way, which would put UK goods at a disadvantage.

UK food and drink exports to the EU tumbled in the first six months of the year, and there has also been a fall in shipments of other goods including medicinal and pharmaceutical products. Some fear the complexities of post-Brexit trading with the continent may lead to firms permanently stopping EU exports, a fall that is unlikely to be offset by trade with countries such as Australia and China.

Brexit minister Lord Frost last week announced plans to overhaul legislation automatically transferred to the UK after Brexit, including rules on genetically modified farming, medical devices and vehicle standards.

Regulatory changes are promoted as Brexit opportunities by the government, but may make it even harder for British firms to sell their goods to their closest neighbours.

A lasting reduction in exports is surely not the goal of the proponents of global Britain, but its one that they may find themselves having to accept.

The British economy still has fossil gas pumping through its veins. The consequences of this are expected to be laid bare this winter as the effects of the global gas crisis start to spread through homes, businesses and industry. Last week was a first taste of the financial pain that threatens to cripple Britains recovery.

Steelmakers have begun suspending work during the hours when energy prices have surged to successive record highs, and fertiliser factories employing almost 600 workers in the north of England have shut down altogether. More are expected to follow suit as colder weather drives energy markets higher, making it impossible for heavy industry to turn a profit or compete with rivals overseas.

For energy-intensive industries, the fallout of record energy prices has been swift and merciless. However, within months this financial pain will seep through the businesses that make up the wider economy, and into the homes of millions of consumers.

I hope you have some candles, remarked one well-regarded market analyst. It may have been a wry reference to the tabloid blackout cliches that last did the rounds in the middle of the last decade, but experts and industry leaders have never been more serious about the risks facing the UK this winter.

In the short term the government should follow the lead of governments across Europe that are already taking action to help hard-pressed households. In Spain, this has included a 3bn (2.6bn) tax raid on the energy companies that stand to benefit from record prices.

In the long term the government needs to end its reliance on the global gas markets by investing more in homegrown low-carbon electricity and green hydrogen. Going green has never made more financial sense.

The climate crisis has ratcheted up the pressure on big fashion industry players to mend their ways, and last week Primark and Asos, which both sell clothes by the truckload to young shoppers, announced plans to clean up their respective environmental acts.

It is not before time. For years MPs and green campaigners have been banging on about the environmental harm that is caused by the carbon emissions, water use and chemical and plastic pollution from a fashion industry that produces 100bn new items of clothing every year.

Asos has now set a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2030, by which point all its own-brand clothes would be made from recycled or more sustainable materials; that rate stands at just 30% today.

By 2030, all Primark clothes will be made from recycled or more sustainably sourced materials (today just a quarter are) and the low-price fashion chain is also promising to make them last longer.

The retailers ambitions are to be welcomed, although one suspects they are being driven by the responsible investing trend in the City rather than by shoppers appetite for greener clothes. Just look at Boohoo, whose customers have been all too willing to turn a blind eye to allegations of poor working conditions in clothing factories in the UK when they have needed a wardrobe fix.

But it is getting harder to ignore the elephant in the room. In an age where the mantra is sustainability, the fast fashion model which requires people to keep buying clothes when they have a wardrobe full of stuff at home, seems dangerously anachronistic.

Asos chief executive Nick Beighton said: The responsibility for a sustainable future lies with all of us, and businesses must lead the way.

Thats true. At this juncture the industrys famous creativity needs to be ploughed into drawing up the innovative supply chains and fabrics that will make it fit for the future.

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Global Britains cheerleaders may have to live with lasting damage to exports - The Guardian

In Franz Kafkas The Trial, a blameless citizen wakes up one day to find himself under suspicion for no good reason. It was, presumably, never the intention of the architects of Brexit to inflict a similar kind of psychological pressure on British citizens living abroad with non-UK spouses. But bureaucratic indifference and a signal lack of compassion are turning hitherto ordinary lives upside down in Kafkaesque fashion.

At the weekend, it was reported that a British woman needing to return to the UK with her French partner had been forced to come without him, much to the distress of their six-year-old son, who wants to know when he will see his father again. Before Brexit, of course, a family move such as this would have been straightforward. But in yet another example of performative cruelty when it comes to Britains borders, the Home Office has introduced a complex family permit to cover such cases. Thus, through no fault of their own, returning Britons who fell in love and settled down abroad are struggling to prove the genuine nature of their claim to have jointly resided with their partner in the EU.

According to multiple testimonies, the documentation requirements are proving both onerous and unclear, and the processing of applications is operating at a snails pace. In the case of the unfortunate Anglo-French couple, having waited in vain for two months for a Home Office response to their application, the woman was obliged to take her son and leave her partner behind in order to start a new job. No equivalent requirements apply to citizens moving back to the EU from Britain with a British spouse.

Numerous couples and families are finding themselves in similar predicaments. Last month, the Guardian highlighted the case of a heavily pregnant woman, married to a Spanish resident, who was unable to visit her very ill father. Unable to travel alone, her application for a family permit was initially turned down. Other Britons have waited months for applications to be processed, having committed to jobs and school places, only to find themselves in bureaucratic limbo. The distress and anxiety caused in situations such as this have been compounded by the knock-on effects of the pandemic, which have made the process of scrutiny even longer. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking in relation to a 29 March deadline for applications by non-UK spouses for pre-settled status in the country. To make such an application, a couple must first be in possession of a family permit. At the very least, given the chaos, the March deadline should be put back.

It was always inevitable that Brexit, by unravelling intricate threads of interconnection established during the course of decades, would be disruptive. But Boris Johnsons government offered repeated reassurances that everything possible would be done to ease the transition for those who had shaped their lives, loves and aspirations within the framework of the EU. For Britons living with their partners who for sometimes urgent reasons need to return home, this promise is not being honoured.

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The Guardian view on families separated by Brexit: wheres the compassion? - The Guardian

The retail phenomenon of 2021 is not a new fashion craze, electronic gadget or childrens toy. The most discussed items in todays shops are empty shelves. And as the problems have grown, the arguments have raged: was it Brexit? Is it the pandemic? Is it a UK problem or a worldwide issue?

In fact, though both the pandemic and the new restrictions on EU trade and free movement have contributed to shortages on the shelves and to companies cutting their production despite demand, the roots of this market failure predate both by decades.

Worse, the crisis of labour across the UK affecting businesses from haulage to food, farming, retail and construction is now so deep that better wages alone will not dig us out of it.

To understand the underlying causes, take a look at the informal lorry parks just off our motorway network, or the laybys along the main roads to Englands ports. I visited one such HGV parking place just off the M25 last year to interview hauliers making deliveries for major transnational retail and e-commerce businesses. The park was a rough field of grit and mud laid out around a block of open-air showers with cattle-trough sinks and a small transport cafe. The signs were in Russian as well as English, acknowledging the fact that more than half of the scores of lorries parked there were driven by migrants from Ukraine and Belarus, working for Lithuanian-registered EU companies.

Some of the drivers had been on the road, far from home, for six months or more. They slept in their trucks week after week, washed themselves and their clothes by the roadside, and often went to the toilet by the roadside too. Cooking a meal over the naked flame of a camping gas stove in the lee of a juggernaut with 800 litres of diesel in its tank counted as a rest. Their pay was pitifully low and the cost of a proper trucking hotel not accounted for in it.

HGV driving work is highly skilled and used to be characterised by direct employment and strong unionisation. It is also highly regulated, for good reason a fully laden 44-tonne truck with a driver who has not been properly rested can quickly turn into a killing machine. Rules to protect both drivers and public safety may exist, but in the truckers experience enforcement is lax, particularly in the UK. One Ukrainian driver told me he feared being stopped and fined when forced to break the rules in Germany, France or Austria, but not so much in the UK, which he believed closes its eyes.

British haulage companies, still trying to run on the old-fashioned principle that a driver ought to get home for a couple of days of family life at least once a month, told me they could not compete. They are increasingly required to bid for haulage contracts on new Uber-style platforms run by e-commerce sites that set the price and precise timeslots for warehouse collection and delivery in a one-way auction.

The technological revolution in the 1980s and 1990s, with its electronic tracking and advanced traffic-control software, led to dramatic upheavals. It enabled industries to switch to a globalised system of just-in-time ordering with hugely extended supply lines. The jobs have also been made to bend to the iron brutality of 24/7 computer-controlled efficiency.

The pattern is the same in other sectors now suffering acute labour shortages. Harvesting crops has always been tough, dirty work; gangs of workers used to do it for relatively contained hours over short periods of the year or in shifts around school hours. Now rolling 12-hour-plus shifts, seven days a week, are common.

Meat factories used to treat working late or at weekends as optional overtime for extra money. Now workers are expected to sweat at an abattoirs capital intensive plant, for as long as it takes the owners to supply supermarket orders, for a flat hourly rate.

Conditions, as much as pay, underlie the refusal of British workers to do these jobs. They are not, as some cabinet ministers would have us believe, idlers who prefer their paddleboards to a bit of graft, but industry has made these vital jobs incompatible with any normal settled life. Only desperate people, from poorer countries, will take them, and then only long enough to earn what they need to establish a better life back home, or long enough to learn English and move up the employment ladder in Britain.

These conditions have depended not just on migration but on an unending cycle of new migration, drawing people in from ever-further east, as successive eastern European nations improve their living standards and their workers no longer seek what hauliers call tramping. Recruiters are now finding their new cheap HGV drivers not in Poland, Hungary or Romania, but in the former Soviet Central Asian states of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Greater automation has always been held up as the answer to labour problems. Short of HGV drivers? Dont worry, driverless trucks are round the corner. Not enough workers to harvest your crops or slaughter your pigs? Invest in machines to do it. Experience gives the lie to this wishful thinking.

Walk behind a state-of-the art lettuce or leek-harvesting rig all gleaming investment with computerised grading systems, integrated veg-washing conveyor belts, and dazzling floodlights and you will still find dozens of workers, bent double from before dawn to well after dusk, pulling food from the earth. Stand in a supermarket packhouse and watch arrays of digital cameras calculate in seconds the percentage of blush to green on apples as they pass down an automated line (so those not rosy enough are thrown into a bin), and youll still find armies of tired people operating the system.

New technology has indeed created a distribution system that is miraculous in its sophistication and in the returns it gives to capital, but it is built on a fatal flaw. Workers are not automata in some Fritz Lang Metropolis-type dystopia. And automation itself doesnt eradicate the mindless jobs but has a way of creating new forms of drudgery with every leap forward.

This is not a world in which the market keeps labour supply and demand in balance. It is a dysfunctional market in which a handful of large companies dominate each sector. Their buying power is so great that suppliers faced with a need to pay higher wages cannot pass the cost on. Successive governments have used immigration as a wages policy, to put downward pressure on earnings rather than tackle this tendency to oligopoly. Now the government wants immigration to stop, the problems it papered over have been exposed.

Decades of anti-union legislation has tilted what was always an unequal relationship between workers and capital even further in the latters favour.

The solution requires a breaking of the structures which reinforce and accelerate this power imbalance, and an overhaul of the relationship between labour and capital, so that work not only pays but is human too. Yes, it will reduce corporate profits. But ignore the social costs of a hyperlean supply chain, and you may find you have created a system so economically efficient for business that it collapses altogether.

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The empty shelves crisis isnt just down to Covid and Brexit its been decades in the making - The Guardian

The European Affairs Committee announced it is to start hearing evidence on the "overall impact to date of Brexit and of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU on trade in goods in both directions". It will scrutinise how businesses have been affected by the new trading relationship with the continent since the start of January.

Peers will scrutinise if the deal brokered by Lord Frost has caused added barriers to trade for businesses both in the UK and in the EU.

They will also examine whether firms are prepared for extra customs checks due to be introduced next year.

Last week Lord Frost announced a number of border controls due to be imposed will not be introduced until January at the earliest.

It is the second time the UK has pushed back the timetable for implementing the customs checks.

READ MORE ON OUR BREXIT LIVE BLOG

They were originally meant to be implemented in the spring before being pushed back until October to allow businesses more time to adapt.

Announcing the extension, Lord Frost said last week: "The pandemic has had longer-lasting impacts on businesses, both in the UK and in the European Union, than many observers expected in March.

"There are also pressures on global supply chains, caused by a wide range of factors including the pandemic and the increased costs of global freight transport.

"These pressures are being especially felt in the agri-food sector."

Peers say they will use their investigation to understand the impact the checks will have once implemented.

"The Committee is interested in both the impact of further delays to import controls and in preparedness for their introduction from January and July next year, particularly in the context of current challenges facing supply chains due to labour shortages," a statement from the Lords said.

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"Although the introduction of many checks and controls has been delayed to 1 July 2022 (the third time the Government has delayed these checks), the requirement for full customs declarations from 1 January 2022 remains a significant milestone."

The House of Lords committee will hear evidence from a range of sources on the impact of the trade deal.

Businesses have warned the UK's decision to delay customs checks on goods arriving from the EU is having a detrimental impact on British firms.

They say that while UK exports to the continent face checks at the border, those looking to ship from the continent to Britain are able to do so without added bureaucracy.

Minette Batters, the head of the National Farmers Union, said last week: While our exporters have been struggling with additional costs and burdens, EU competitors have been given extended grace periods by our own Government to maintain access to the UK market relatively burden free."

Ian Wright, the chief executive of the Food and Drink Federation, added: "It actually helps the UKs competitors.

"The asymmetric nature of border controls facing exports and imports distorts the market and places many UK producers at a competitive disadvantage with EU producers."

The findings of the inquiry will be published later this year.

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Brexit-bashing peers launch House of Lords inquiry into checks and controls with EU - Daily Express

Even for for parsimonious art buyers like me, new Brexit rules mean paying at least 10% of a paintings value just to have the right to move it between two countries Photo: Russell Watkins/Department for International Development

We are almost a year into full-fat Brexit, and I have grim news from the art buying frontline. I appreciate that in the great scheme of things, a former art dealers struggles to import cheap old paintings into the UK are insignificant beside empty supermarket shelves and Nandos running out of chicken. But I feel compelled by my recent art shipping disasters to warn fellow collectors and dealers to avoid my mistakes. Ive learned the hard way so you dont have to.

First, with admittedly a degree of Remain nostalgia, lets remember how it used to work. I could buy a painting in, say, Spain, and have it collected, packed and delivered via a courier like Fedex to my home in Scotland within a week. There were no customs checks, and no export or import duties. It was as challenging as a Jeff Koons multiple.

Now, however, a painting I bought in Spain in April is still at Barcelona airport. It turns out that Spanish customs levy a special export duty on antique cultural goods leaving the EU. The duty starts at 5% for paintings worth up to 6,000, and ramps up to 30% for anything above 600,000. There is no time limit for how long a work has to have been in Spain to qualify for the levy (in my case, a portrait by the British artist Allan Ramsay only imported into Spain in the 1990s). And Spanish customs are scrupulous when it comes to making sure all the paperwork is in order. The art in Spain, it seems, stays mainly off the plane.

If and when the painting makes it to the UK, an import duty of 5% will then apply. Even for parsimonious art buyers like me, this means paying at least 10% of a paintings value just to have the right to move it between two countries. But if you try and ship your art as I do, via firms like Fedex, youll be chargedat least at firstthe higher standard rate of UK import duty of 20%. For while antiques and art qualify for a reduced import duty of 5%, most couriers dont have their systems set up to invoice for anything other than the standard 20% rate. In fact, UPS now says it wont ship antiques at all. So remember to make time, probably a day in all, to patiently explain to over-worked call centre staff the mysteries of UK tariff codes (for paintings, 9701100000 is the one you want).

The UK customs check will add up to a week to your shipmentand perhaps worse. When the tracking information went mysteriously quiet for a painting I bought in Portugal, I received a cheery email from Fedex informing me that after customs checks at Stansted Airport it appears the goods have been lost. Fedex began a search but after a week I began to fear it had been stolen; after all, everything coming in from the EU now has to have its value declared. In desperation I took to Twitter to circulate a photo of the painting, a 17th-century portrait of a lady attributed to John Michael Wright. Two days later, the picture arrived.

But to be honest, I rather wish it had not. The portrait is not as beguiling as Id hoped, and is more Studio of Wright than Wright himself. It has gone straight into what my wife calls the Cupboard of Shame. Actually, it used to be a cupboard; its now the Room of Shame.

So my first piece of post-Brexit art buying advice is: Bendor, buy more carefully. The second is, hire a professional art handling firm to take care of everything from start to finish. It will cost more and take longer. But thats just Brexit.

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Comment | 'The art in Spain stays mainly off the plane': grim Brexit news from the art buying frontline - Art Newspaper

Alok Sharma insists gas supplies are secure

Boris Johnson has warned that post-Brexit trade complications with Northern Ireland cant go on forever, as his government considers whether to override parts of its agreement with the EU.

Speaking from New York on Monday, the prime minister said he was not trying to stoke the situation up for political purposes, insisting he just wanted common sense to prevail.

Critics, however, suggest that his government signed up to an agreement it knew would cause trade friction between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile, Mr Johnson has admitted the energy crisis could last for months, as ministers scramble to protect businesses and consumers from a sharp increase in gas prices, brought about by a surge in global demand and a shortage of wind power in the UK this summer.

Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng will meet gas industry bosses on Monday to discuss the issue, after wholesale costs spiked 70 per cent in August alone. Four energy firms have gone bust in recent days, with others warning they could follow suit.

Farmers might have to kill their own animals due to a shortage of space and feed, the chairman of the National Pig Association (NPA) has warned.

Rob Mutimer told the PA news agency: If the situation doesnt change, its going to spiral completely out of control.

And the only end game there is we as farmers are going to end up slaughtering our livestock - not for the food chain but to put them into rendering, to dispose of carcasses like what happened in foot and mouth.

And thats a terrible situation to be in.

Rory Sullivan20 September 2021 14:03

France is still a close ally and friend of the UK despite the recent diplomatic fallout, No 10 has insisted.

Tensions between the countries grew after Australia ditched a submarine deal with France in favour of an agreement with the US and the UK.

The British governmeny has insisted the Aukus deal was in no way intended to be exclusionary.

Speaking on Monday, a Downing Street spokesperson said: France remains a close ally and friend of the UK, and we are proud of the relationship we have with France.

We will continue to work closely with them. We work extremely closely in many areas - Mali being a good example, on counter-terrorism operations and in many other areas, and that work will obviously continue.

Rory Sullivan20 September 2021 13:45

The prime minister has said that post-Brexit trade complications with Northern Ireland cant go on forever.

Speaking from New York, Boris Johnson said: I hope everybody knows this isnt something that the UK government is trying to stoke up for our own political purposes.

On the contrary, we want to fix this, we want common sense. We want no barriers in the UK for trading in our country and its crazy at the moment that weve got the protocol being enforced or being used in the way that it is.

Critics, however, suggest that his government knew full well that the Brexit agreement it signed would lead to trade friction between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Mr Johnsons latest comments on Brexit come the day before he meets US president Joe Biden, who has been clear that the British government should do nothing to imperil peace in Northern Ireland.

Rory Sullivan20 September 2021 13:23

Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, will update the House of Commons on the energy crisis around 3.30pm.

Liam James20 September 2021 13:05

The government is not considering a delay to the 20 a week cut to Universal Credit despite the additional cost households will bear from rising energy bills.

Downing Street said the uplift to Universal Credit was always temporary and was designed to help claimants through the economic shock and the toughest period of the pandemic.

The end of the uplift is set for 6 October.

Liam James20 September 2021 12:56

Downing Street was asked if there was a contingency plan to help CF Industries, the UK's biggest supplier of CO2, which recently closed two large fertiliser plants in Teesside and Cheshire which produce CO2 as a byproduct.

A spokesman for the prime minister said: "We have a highly diverse source of supplies but, as I say, Kwasi Kwarteng has spoken to the company involved over the weekend and will consider any contingency plans as appropriate."

Liam James20 September 2021 12:41

No 10 said the government was not thought to be considering an end to the energy price cap.

Alok Sharma yesterday suggested the cap could be subject to change if gas prices were to continue rising.

A spokesman for the prime minister today said: The price cap remains in place, as I say, to protect consumers from sudden increases in global gas prices and it will save them money this winter.

Pushed on whether the cap could change between October and the next review date in April 2022, he added: I'm not aware of any proposed change to the price cap.

Liam James20 September 2021 12:26

Labour has hit out at the government over the energy crisis, accusing it of fundamental failure.

Ed Miliband, the shadow business secretary,said: A basic dutyof governmentis to ensure secure, affordable energy supplies for businesses and consumers.It is a fundamental failure of long-term government planning over the last decade that we are so exposed and vulnerable as a country and it is families and businesses that are paying the price.

The government must take all necessary steps to ensure stability for customers and do everything in its powers to mitigate the effects of this crisis on businesses and consumers.

Rory Sullivan20 September 2021 12:00

Former prime minister Gordon Brown has hit out at vaccine wastage in wealthy countries, as poorer nations continue to struggle to obtain enough doses for their populations.

He sent a recent study, which suggests 100 million doses will be wasted by rich nations by Christmas, to US president Joe Biden ahead of a jabs summit on Wednesday.

It is unthinkable and unconscionable that 100 million vaccines will have to be thrown away from the stockpiles of the rich countries, whilst the populations of the worlds poorest countries will pay for our vaccine waste in lives lost, Mr Brown said.

Rory Sullivan20 September 2021 11:44

Keir Starmer should welcome former leader Jeremy Corbyn back to the Labour Party, the leading left winger John McDonnell has said.

He doesnt have to endorse everything Jeremy believes in or says or has said, Mr McDonnell toldThe Independent. He just has to demonstrate that actually Jeremy is a valuable member of our party like everybody else, and use his talents. Jeremy could mobilise for Keir Starmer.

The former shadow chancellor also warned that the upcoming Labour conference could be the current leaders last chance to unite his party.

Heres Andrew Woodcocks exclusive:

Rory Sullivan20 September 2021 11:23

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Boris Johnson news live: Brexit trade issues with NI cant go on forever, says PM as energy crisis deepens - The Independent