Small firms need assurances on future EU relationship

From: Mike Cherry, National Chairman, Federation of Small Businesses.

FOUR years on from the referendum, small firms are desperate to know what our future relationship with the EU will look like.

As we emerge from this recession, businesses are hoping to see swift progress as talks intensify in the coming weeks. It’s been encouraging to hear negotiators stress that they are pushing for an ambitious deal.

The mechanisms that small firms need to trade successfully – simplified import and export paperwork, support with e-commerce, help with protecting intellectual property rights, measures to enable mobility of staff, and recognition of professional qualifications – should be threaded throughout this and all future free trade agreements (FTAs). We are also keen to see the introduction of a Small Business Chapter explicitly outlining measures to protect and promote the small firms that make-up 99 per cent of our business community. The UK has said it wants to see a Small Business Chapter in the US-UK deal. We need to see them doing likewise where the EU deal is concerned.

Our research shows that SMEs don’t tend to get the most out of FTAs because they find them difficult to navigate. The first step is an ambitious EU-UK FTA that has the needs of our 5.8 million small businesses considered throughout. The second is to ensure they have the resources and in-person support needed to fully benefit from it. And of course the infrastructure needs to be there. Whatever changes do come in, we need to know that HMRC, our ports and travel networks are in the right place to handle them.

From: Gordon Lawrence, Sheffield.

GRAHAM Rawlings (The Yorkshire Post, June 26), Chair of Selby For Europe, clearly belonging to an organisation that cannot accept a democratic vote and has no qualms in embracing the idea of a federated European super-state, argues forcefully, in his letter, why the Government should extend our negotiations beyond the December deadline.

Let’s be honest, the Brussels bureaucracy is perfectly happy to continue the deadlock, hope maybe for a change in government, vacuum up our money, have full access to our fishing grounds and markets and seize the opportunity during the extension of making our escape even more challenging.

We would be playing into the hands of the EU in any extension – much to the delight of Graham Rawlings and the hard core Remainer bloc.