The threat to your lavatory paper supply won’t be from coronavirus

Aside from prescription medicines, of all the household products that most people would fear will run out, it is surely lavatory paper that tops the list. And the panic-buying of it is not as irrational as it might appear.

Put simply, we don’t make much of it. This country is one of Europe’s biggest importers of lavatory paper and disposable nappies (which use pulp paper). Around 85 per cent – or 1.1 million out of 1.3 million tonnes – of all the toilet tissue used in the UK annually is imported, according to the Confederation of Paper Industries.

The real question, as the urge to prep for the coming coronavirus outbreak takes hold, is how likely is the UK to run out? Australia, which is reliant on Chinese supply chains that have been crunched by draconian factory closures, has already seen panic-buying to the point where the government has introduced controls. Shopkeepers have had to call the police in to break up fights over the last few rolls available, such are the indignities of rushing to preserve one’s dignity in a crisis.

For now, no one expects European countries to face that kind of crunch because the levels of factory closures possible in Xi Jinping’s China are much less acceptable over here. The odds are that the paper mills of Scandinavia will keep on turning, and the UK will still be adequately catered for – so long as nobody panics.

Which is, of course, the problem. Back during last year’s no-deal Brexit preparations, Government advisers told me quietly that “the one thing I’d stockpile, if I was you” was loo paper, given the UK’S vulnerability to supply chain disruption. This, of course, I rapidly shared with Telegraph readers.

Lavatory paper is bulky, so if everyone buys two or three extra packets, very quickly you start to see wide empty spaces opening up on supermarket shelves, which only redoubles the panic. If there’s no loo paper, even the most sanguine shopper will ask, then what next? Simultaneously, this shakes confidence in government assurances that there is enough of everything to go round – meaning that promises of plenty made in good faith in the morning media can be rendered worthless by the afternoon.

Which brings us back to Brexit. As things stand, the Government under Boris Johnson is charging much harder towards the Brexit finish line than that of his predecessor Theresa May, overtly threatening a no-deal Australian-style outcome if the EU does not come to heel. The transport industry is very clear that this risks bringing back the spectre of long delays at the ports, clogging up the Channel Tunnel as hauliers battle with mountains of new paperwork and customs and safety declarations.

If that happens, there remains a serious risk that the Australian-style Brexit might include some Australianstyle loo-paper shortages. Those coronavirus stockpiles might come in handy yet. follow Peter Foster on Twitter @pmdfoster; read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion