SSPO Brexit burden
Non-alignment with EU will wrap seafood exporters in red tape
WALK past the Scottish parliament and you’ll see the European flag still flying, limply but defiantly: a reminder of the parliament’s cussed refusal to accept the need to bow to Brexit, at least in symbolic terms. As a two-fingered gesture to Boris Johnson, it probably makes political sense, but the reality is that, however many blue and gold flags the SNP administration raises, Brexit has happened and nothing is going to change that, at least in the short term.
But it is not just the fact that we have left the EU that is important, it’s the road the UK government is taking us down. Johnson has been very clear: he is not going to seek alignment with the EU.
The Prime Minister wants a loose arrangement which will see the UK ditch the rules and regulations which made trade with Europe so easy.
Taking this approach to its logical conclusion, it seems inevitable that all those sending seafood to the continent after the end of this year will face a significant range of new bureaucratic and financial burdens.
Those very regulations which Johnson wants to ditch were the rules that allowed us to send our salmon to Europe quickly and efficiently.
Instead, we are now likely to be looking at generating export health certificates (EHCs) for consignments of salmon sent over the Channel.
That means that every order in the £168 million worth of salmon dispatched to the continent each year will need new paperwork, signed off by either a vet or an environmental health officer.
About 300 consignments of salmon are sent to Europe every day from Scotland. It may be that every consignment will need an EHC, it may be that we can get away with one or two per lorry.
No one knows what this will all cost but conservative estimates, drawn up by the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation, suggest a bill for the salmon sector of between £1.3 million and £8.7 million a year.
The need for extra certification will inevitably bring delays and every salmon farmer knows that even a delay of a couple of hours can mean missing the opening hours at the fish market in Boulogne, and then another 24 hours before the (now probably discounted) salmon can be sold.
The SSPO is holding regular meetings with officials and ministers at the Department for Food and Rural Affairs in London, with ministers and officials in the Scottish government, with our counterparts in the caught sector and with hauliers and local authorities, to try to find a way around this problem.
But, given the UK government’s determination to make a break from EU rules and regulations – an impetus that is coming right from the top of government – no one seems optimistic that there is an easy way out of this.
After urging from the SSPO, the Scottish government has agreed to bring all the relevant bodies around the table in Scotland to find the best, practical steps to prepare for the change.
There is a general acceptance now that if we can’t change the direction of UK government policy, then we need to make sure everything is in place to deal with the extra bureaucracy and costs when they arrive.
We have 11 months to get this right because the UK’s transition phase with the EU will end on December 31 this year and, at that point, everything will change.
It will be scandalous if, by December, officials and ministers are still talking about this. It will be inexcusable if the new environmental health officers – who will be needed to process the extra paperwork – are not in place.
And it will be a travesty if the much needed move to an electronic version of the EHC system (which is being trialled at the moment) is not up and running across the board.
We have 11 months to get this sorted. It can be done. The right people can be hired, appropriate tweaks can be made to the system to make it as streamlined as possible, and the right pressure can be exerted on both the UK and the EU to ease the burdens as far as is possible.
Unfortunately, EHCs are just one of a number of thorny issues which need to be resolved between now and the end of the year.
The Northern Ireland Protocol, which could effectively make sending salmon to Northern
Ireland as complicated as sending it to France, represents such a potential trading minefield that no one knows how it will work.
We then have issues to work through on labelling, on the need for heat treated pallets, on protected geographical indicators and tariffs before we, as a sector, are ready for the end of this year.
Last year, we went through two false starts, in March and October, when we thought we might crash out of the EU without a deal.
Everyone got ready as best they could and then stood down as soon as each potential crisis was over.
This year it will be different. This time we know where we are going and we know when.
We know what it will mean and we know how difficult some of the key issues will be to resolve.
But at least we have certainty. One of the main – and entirely justifiable- gripes from businesses and organisations right across the UK last year was: we just need some certainty.
Well, now we have it. We have left the EU. We will be leaving its trading arrangements behind at the end of the year.
There is absolutely no time to waste, and no amount of flag flying or symbolic resistance from anybody, however well intentioned they may be, is ever going to change that.