Hardly looks like a genuine ‘Brexit dividend’

SIX years after lobbying for Brexit on the grounds that it would free us from restrictive and costly EU bureaucracy, Minister for Brexit Opportunities Jacob Rees-mogg has issued a plea for ideas as to what exactly might be changed to make things better.

While this is welcome in one sense, it does suggest that before the Brexit referendum and in the subsequent years, neither he nor his fellow cabinet members who lobbied for the leave campaign had many ideas as to what they wanted to change that would make life better for normal people.

For farmers, there is no end of red tape and bureaucracy; as Gareth Williams wrote in his 2011 ‘Working Smarter’ report, “The regulatory framework surrounding the farming industry is one of the most diverse, both in the number and variety of regulations and the complexity of individual pieces of legislation – 3,000 pages of information – can be sent to Welsh farmers every year…”

So there are many areas of unnecessary red tape that the farming industry would welcome abolishing or making more proportionate, but we would need to be very careful that any changes do not compromise our ability to export Welsh goods to our essential export markets in the EU and further afield. But most are areas of responsibility devolved to Wales, and so have nothing to do with Rees-mogg’s new portfolio.

But the reality is that, whether you farm in England or Wales, Brexit seems only to have whetted the appetite for costly regulations which are already more restrictive than in EU countries.

For example, our rules on animal movements are generally far more restrictive than was ever required under EU regulations, but moves are underway to make them even more onerous.

But the greatest impact of Brexit has been the additional rules UK exporters must now comply with rules which are costing UK industries billions of pounds: For agriculture, exports volumes of lamb, beef and dairy products have fallen 20%, 12% and 11% respectively since 2020.

When interviewed about such difficulties, Dover MP Natalie Elphicke MP blamed EU red tape - yet the UK knew such red tape would kick in when it chose its hard Brexit policy. And when asked to identify Brexit dividends, the MP could only refer to the £100 million investment in the port of Dover to cope with additional border checks and the 650 extra staff needed to do that work.

This hardly looks like a genuine ‘Brexit dividend’, especially for the vast majority of UK constituencies which do not have ports and will have to pay through taxes and economic losses for this so-called ‘dividend’.

As the FUW indicated in a recent submission to the Senedd Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs (ETRA) Committee, the UK Government’s own figures do not suggest anything like a Brexit dividend: Their impact assessment implies that the recently signed (but not yet agreed by Parliament) Uk-australia trade deal will result in a fall in the gross output of Wales’ red meat industry of at least £29 million, due to increased Australian imports; meanwhile, as discussed in a recent FUW meeting with Economy Minister Vaughan Gething, the UK Treasury has reduced the funding that would normally have come to Wales, its farmers and rural communities from the EU by almost £1 billion.

As indicated in the FUW’S evidence to the ETRA Committee, if the UK Government and its MPS want to secure Brexit dividends, they must first of all restore Welsh funding and stop the work of seeking the very worst outcomes that Brexit has to offer for Wales and the UK.