Choppy waters to navigate

Business Andy Willox

The powerful emotions sparked last week by the fishing element of the Brexit transition period deal serves as a timely reminder that there’re some choppy waters to navigate over the next year.

With only 12 months to go until we leave the EU, there’s a lot still to cover. And calls from businesses across the economy for clarity on what it will mean for their industry, and recognition of their particular issues, will only intensify.

Close to half of the businesses in Scotland’s vital £9 billion tourist trade, for example, have non-uk EU staff. So hoteliers and restaurateurs will need assurances that they’ll still be able to hire the workers they need.

In fairness, last week’s publication of the transition period terms definitely counts as progress. Many Scottish firms will have breathed a sigh of relief when they saw an agreement that will largely mean they can continue to operate broadly as they do now until the end of 2020.

But we need to look beyond these interim measures. Businesses need details so they can firm up business plans. Nine in ten small UK exporters have links with the EU single market, so it’ll be vital that future European trade links are both comprehensive and determined quickly.

What is also clear, however, is that this negotiation is going to require compromise. The real crunch will be the points on which we are ready to move in order to secure concessions. However the worry is – as is always the way when governments go all big picture – that it’ll be the interests of the big firms in a handful of glamour sectors that trump everything else.

Ministers need to take the pulse of the economy and country as a whole. If ever there was a time to listen to the most constructive voices, not just the loudest, this is it. l Andy Willox is the Federation of Small Businesses’ Scottish policy convenor