UK companies want us to ‘crack on’ with leaving the EU, says Leadsom
Business Secretary says firms are positive about future after Brexit and that the ‘best years’ lie ahead
BRITISH companies want the UK to “end the current uncertainty” and “crack on” with leaving the EU, the new Business Secretary declares today.
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Andrea Leadsom says that firms she has met across the country are “overwhelmingly positive” about Britain’s post-Brexit future.
Distancing herself from the pro-EU outlook of her predecessor, Greg Clark, Mrs Leadsom describes herself as a “truly Brexit-backing Business Secretary” and says the country’s “best years for business” lie ahead.
Mrs Leadsom’s intervention is likely to rankle with business lobby groups such as the Confederation of British Industry, which campaigned against leaving the EU and whose director general, Caroline Fairbairn, has likened Boris Johnson’s pledge to leave “deal or no deal”, to threatening to “shoot my foot off ”.
It comes as this newspaper can reveal that HM Revenue and Customs is writing to all UK companies, as part of Mr Johnson’s plans to prepare the country for a no-deal Brexit.
Whitehall sources said that HMRC will contact “every known trader” telling them how to plan for the country’s expected departure from the EU on Oct 31.
The letters will coincide with the country’s biggest ever public information campaign to help ready the UK for leaving the bloc, with or without a withdrawal agreement with Brussels. Officials said the Cabinet Office was now in the “final stages” of signing off on the £138billion campaign, which will include television and radio advertisements, billboards, social media advertising and a dedicated government website.
Writing in this newspaper, Mrs Leadsom states: “One of my first engagements as Secretary of State was to meet with businesses from across the country to talk about the potential for UK growth, jobs and opportunity. I met large manufacturing firms that trade across borders, retailers operating in different markets and innovative small businesses that export their great, British products around the world. They were overwhelmingly positive about our future.
“It’s clear that business wants us to crack on, leave the EU and end the current uncertainty. But it should also be very reassuring to business to see that the whole machinery of government is stepping up a gear and accelerating the pace of our preparations.”
“I have been hugely impressed by the work I’ve seen going on here at [the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy] and across Whitehall. More than anything, I want businesses to see a team in the heart of Whitehall that’s helping them to get the best out of Brexit – talking up their trade at every opportunity.”
Mrs Leadsom’s comments are at odds with those of her predecessor, Mr Clark, who was sacked by Mr Johnson last month. The day before, Mr Clark insisted that Mr Johnson’s pledge to deliver Brexit on Oct 31 with or without a deal was a mistake.
“You have to do everything you can to have a deal. And so I think that the setting of a hard deadline – even if a deal was tantalisingly within reach – I think would be the wrong thing to do.”
‘The whole machinery of government is stepping up a gear and accelerating the pace of our preparations.’