Minister on defensive over fall in UK trade withEU

THE UK Government has “pulled out all the stops” to help firms do business with the European Union post-Brexit, Cabinet Office Minister Lord Frost has said as he was tackled over a sharp fall in exports to the bloc.

Urging caution over the figures for January showing a marked decline, the Tory frontbencher, who negotiated the UK’s trade deal with Brussels, told peers “a unique combination of facts” made it inevitable that were would be a dip.

The Cabinet Minister made his comments as he was pressed over recent figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which revealed overall goods exports from the UK fell by £5.3bn, 19.3 per cent, in January as the Brexit transition period came to an end.

It was driven by a £5.6bn, or 40.7 per cent, plunge in exports of goods to the EU, the ONS said. Imports also fell, by £8.9bn overall (21.6 per cent), while imports from the EU dropped £6.6bn (28 per cent), the figures showed.

The falls in imports and exports are the largest since records began in 1997, the ONS said, as a £200m, 1.7 per cent increase in non-EU exports failed to make up for the decline within the bloc.

The end of the transition period coincided with the spread of a new strain of Covid-19 in the UK, causing lorry drivers to need tests to cross the border at the English Channel.

Another national lockdown was also imposed at the beginning of the month. Since then, other measures have shown that trade levels have in part recovered.

Speaking at Westminster, Lord Frost said: “A unique combination of facts has made it inevitable that we would see a reduction in trade with the EU in January and we should use caution in drawing any conclusions from the initial figures.”

Prominent Brexit critic and Labour former Cabinet Minister Lord Adonis suggested there should be a Swiss-style deal on agri-food shipments to assist trade.