Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Pay higher wages - even if it increases the price of meat:

UK food firms beg ministers to let them use prisoners to ease labour shortages
Meat processors and others say they must have more day release workers as they cannot find enough staff
Zoe Wood Consumer affairs correspondent
@zoewoodguardian
Mon 23 Aug 2021 06.00 BST

Desperate food manufacturers are pleading with the government to be able to call upon prisoners to solve a labour crisis blamed on the double blow of Brexit and Covid.

The Association of Independent Meat Suppliers, which represents butchers, abattoirs and processors, said it had a call set up with the Ministry of Justice on Monday that would explore how its members could recruit more current inmates and ex-offenders.

To fill vacancies companies are trying to draft in prisoners via a scheme that allows inmates to undertake paid work on day release. They are also contacting charities for ex-servicemen and women to try to drum up staff.

Tony Goodger of the meat suppliers' association said some of its members already had inmates on the release on temporary licence programme working for them and found them to be an asset. It had also been in contact with the Career Transition Partnership, which helps former service personnel into work, and had been able to point some of them to members with job vacancies; however, the "numbers are low", he said.

"Much of the food industry is facing a recruitment crisis," said Goodger. "The advice we have received from the Home Office is that the UK's domestic labour force should take priority. However hard we and many of the members have tried, staffing remains a challenge."

Goodger said that last week he had contacted HMP Hollesley Bay in Suffolk, but the rehabilitation officer said there was such a big demand for inmates "we've reached our quota and we are not allowed to let any more out to go to work".

The British Meat Processors Association (BMPA), whose membership includes the UK's meat processing companies, said businesses were "leaving no stone unturned" to find workers, including contacting the Prison Service.

The prisoner day-release scheme was curtailed during the pandemic but individual prisons have been reintroducing it in recent months.

The shortage of workers is not just in food production – a shortfall of about 90,000 HGV drivers is leading to gaps on supermarket shelves. In a letter to Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and freight trade group Logistics UK have warned that consumers will suffer unless the government intervened.

The worker shortage is having a knock-on effect on the hospitality trade, which is also struggling to recruit enough staff, and absences caused by Covid-19 or the need to isolate are adding to problems. Last week Nando's had to close a 10th of its restaurants due to a shortage of chicken.

The British Poultry Council warned one in six jobs – nearly 7,000 roles – were unfilled as a result of EU workers returning home and that the situation could hit the supply of turkey this Christmas. The BMPA also has more than 10,000 vacancies to fill.

In the letter to the business secretary, first reported by the Sunday Times, the business groups warned that the shortage of HGV drivers is "placing increasingly unsustainable pressure on retailers and their supply chains".

"So far, disruption has been minimal thanks to the incredible work by retailers and their suppliers. Retailers are increasing pay rates, offering bonuses and introducing new driver training schemes, as well as directly supporting their suppliers in the movement of goods, but government will need to play its part."

They are asking the government to increase the number of HGV driving tests taking place and to provide temporary visas for EU drivers. David Wells, the chief executive of freight trade group Logistics UK, said it could not solve the problem on its own and said the situation is likely to become more acute in the runup to Christmas when retailers relied on "timely and plentiful deliveries".

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "Helping prisoners find jobs during their sentence and after release makes it much less likely they will reoffend. We will support all industries with skills shortages where possible, and are working towards bringing levels [of release on temporary licence] back up towards pre-pandemic levels as restrictions allow."

I specifically remember that FT piece about how meat processing had been entirely re-shaped by free movement. There were lots of small abbatoirs etc and the industry basically consolidated into large meat-processing plants, the companies owned houses/flats around the plant and employed people - primarily from Eastern Europe - on pretty unsociable 12hours on/12 hours off shifts while renting them cheap shared housing. It was basically an industry that was entirely built around people coming to work in for 2-3 years, save up lots of money and leave. From that article, no-one in the industry knew what it would look like but they all thought that wasn't sustainable.

Similarly the day release scheme is meant to be a way for prisoners to learn skills and gain employment when they're released - Timpsons is famously good for this - and from that article I'm not sure that's how the industry is using it. It sounds like they're using it just for cheap labour.

And again this was a sector where we became aware how essential it was in terms of supplying food to people during covid - despite in the UK, US, Germany and I'm sure elsewhere there being several workplace outbreaks. It is, again, time to follow through and pay those essential workers more money.

Separately - re. animal lunacy there's now a big story about a former marine who set up an animal rescue charity in Afghanistan and growing calls for the animals to be rescued and airlifted out of Kabul. The Defence Secretary has, very sensibly, said he won't prioritise pets over people - but noted that the Afghan employees are eligible to come to the UK. But I saw a Guardian journalist (the Guardian! ) who said he's had any more emails, DMS etc on rescuing the animals than any other subject this summer

[Josquius]

Increasing the price of meat is inevitable (and not entirely a bad thing). In Switzerland a lot of people are semi-vegetarian, I ended up that way myself, purely because the price of meat is just so high.

How this can be handled politically knowing British people's love of chicken nuggets now...especially considering its quite the overnight blow to the industry....


Something that annoys me in this article though, you see it all over, is speaking of unemployment in national terms. It just doesn't work that way. There being a shortage of hospitality workers this summer in Bournemouth does fuck all for unemployed ex steel workers in Teeside. These aren't the sorts of job that people completely uproot their life and move across the country for, especially with the current state of the housing market and transport system.

[The Brain]

Average animal fan VS average people enjoyer.

[Syt]

Clearly the UK needs to bring back workhouses. 

[Sheilbh]

Increasing the price of meat is inevitable (and not entirely a bad thing). In Switzerland a lot of people are semi-vegetarian, I ended up that way myself, purely because the price of meat is just so high.

How this can be handled politically knowing British people's love of chicken nuggets now...especially considering its quite the overnight blow to the industry....

Agree on paying more for meat - the UK pays a very low amount for food compared to most of the rest of Europe and it feels inevitable we will have to pay more for.

I don't really buy that it's an overnight blow - this has been coming for years in terms of Brexit and they had at least a year after the WA had been agreed when the outcome was known. It feels more like an industry that basically put its head in the sand. I have sympathy for smaller producers who should have been supported by the government and industry bodies - but there's been time to prepare and lots of other industries did prepare/change their operations to avoid an overnight blow.

Something that annoys me in this article though, you see it all over, is speaking of unemployment in national terms. It just doesn't work that way. There being a shortage of hospitality workers this summer in Bournemouth does fuck all for unemployed ex steel workers in Teeside. These aren't the sorts of job that people completely uproot their life and move across the country for, especially with the current state of the housing market and transport system.

Sure - there are regional unemployment and employment stats - but I'm not sure how useful they are when we're still in the middle of the covid disruption. All the numbers I think are a bit weird and influx.

Edit: Incidentally from the FT piece I read - an example job advert. I wonder why they're struggling to attract workers:


I can see why it might not appeal to many people

The writer also has a piece about the wider food industry including drivers and bascially the way we got here that I think is spot on:

The story of Britain's empty shelves, like that of its unpicked strawberries and unprocessed chickens, is the story of how migration combined with a weakly regulated labour market and hugely powerful retailers have allowed some goods and services to become unsustainably cheap. The system shaved money off our shopping bills, but it wasn't resilient. Remain voters are right to say Brexit helped to cause the current crisis, but wrong to say everything was fine wihtout it. Brexit voters are right to say migration helped suppress driver pay, but as the Netherlands shows, Brexit wasn't the only way to resolve it.

The labour shortages are a moment of reckoning. If we just use them to bicker about Brexit, we'll drown out the real lessons in the noise.

I also wonder if this links to the ongoing puzzle of low productivity in the UK (as well as some of the statistical weirdness) - because that market doesn't sound like one that would reward investments in productivity.

[garbon]

Did Remain voters say everything is fine?

[Josquius]

Yeah, I don't think it was said that everything is fine. More they failed to really hammer home the problems and how brexit was a vote to make these worse.

Overnight change- on a societal level I mean. Sure industries have saw it coming for 5 years (which is still a pretty short amount of time) but we've gone from no changes, everything is as it was, to everything is fucked pretty much over night. The government is very lucky they had covid to hide behind with this and really mask the effects.

Split shifts should be banned incidentally. Links in with the driver shortage too and how they aren't paid for non-driving time. As I said before rather than a lack of acccess to European workers this is the big brexit-related factor in the driver shortage (plus the covid related lack of testing), the amount of time lorries are having to sit idle for customs checks.

[Sheilbh]

Did Remain voters say everything is fine?

It's a comment about now - not 2016 - and I see plenty of people online whose basic view is everything was more or less fine until Brexit ruined it (the Lord Adonis faction) and the only way back is to bring back Tony Blair (and/or David Cameron-style Toryism) and re-join the EU. Which, I'd suggest, is exactly a return to migration plus weak regulation and powerful business as an economic model.

But I think that was a not unreasonable proportion of the Remain vote too. It was the people who were most swayed by David Cameron and George Osborne - for example Raab is likely to lose his seat so needs to find a new one by the next election, but I'd suggest that his constituency Esher and Walton probably falls in the "everything was fine" category that just wanted things to carry on plus four more years of Cameroonism.

[garbon]

Is there not a difference between 'everything is fine for me' and 'everything is fine'? I'm not sure I've ever met a person who thinks 'everything is fine' in the terms we are discussing.

[Sheilbh]

Sure but I think there's quite a lot of people where those two are entirely the same. As I say I think people who really liked David Cameron. The more Remain-y affluent suburbs who vote Tory and Remain strike me as probably like that. I think there are lots of people whose small-c conservatism (or New Labour nostalgia) is in large part motivated by their own personal comfort at that time.

I've never met a person who like Cameron (or Johnson for that matter) - but I know they exist because they've won three elections including the only Tory majorities in almost 20 years.

Edit: It's why I mentioned Esher and Walton - it's about 60% remain, one of the 100 least deprived constituencies in the country, typically about 50-60% of the vote is Tory. I think all of that is broadly connected and the venn of "everything is fine for me" and "everything is fine" is probably basically a circle.

[alfred russel]

In this era of politics, it seems more important to win through getting people to hate the opposition than love you.

Boris Johnson is too much of a buffoon to hate with a very strong passion--unless you generally hate all tories. I saw a video of him bumbling with an umbrella that was endearing. No one has ever not laughed at him running through children playing rugby.

[Zanza]

UK manufacturers to win big concession on post-Brexit quality mark
Government set to allow businesses to continue to use EU certification for another year

The UK government is set to grant a major concession to British business by extending the deadline for companies to adopt a new "UKCA" safety and quality mark for their goods after Brexit.

The one-year extension for UK products to continue using the EU's "CE" safety mark came after businesses warned that they would not be ready for the planned post-Brexit shift away from EU markings at the end of 2021.

The decision, which will be announced on Tuesday, will give vital breathing space for UK manufacturers, which had warned over risks to the British supply chain if they could no longer use products made overseas.

Under the UK plans, companies will be given until January 2023 to apply for the new UKCA marks, according to a person briefed on the move.

The person added that the coronavirus pandemic had made it more difficult for businesses to prepare for the change, which requires manufactured products to be tested and carry UKCA certification to replace the EU's CE mark.

Each UKCA-marked product needs to be approved by British authorising bodies, which has caused a backlog of applications for key components.

Trade groups, including automotive makers, lift manufacturers and building supplies groups, warned that the UK does not have sufficient capacity to handle the huge demand for the testing of products.

They also warned the government that EU-based suppliers were in many cases not ready to obtain a UKCA mark in order to supply goods to the UK market, raising the risk of serious gaps in British supply chains.

Businesses said that where EU companies supplied only a small number of goods or components, they were not willing to bear the costs of certifying those products for a handful of UK businesses.
UK certification applies to the processes used to make the parts as well as the parts themselves, adding further complications.

"We haven't got capacity in many areas such as construction products and pyrotechnics," said Fergus McReynolds, director of EU affairs at manufacturers trade group Make UK.

"The UK is facing a crunch running up to the end of the year as more companies race to apply. Supplies will also be cut off if overseas supplying businesses are not ready. The question is then how to incentivise them to use the CA markings."

Trade bodies are also working with officials to help streamline the process to convert existing CE marks to the new UK certification system.

Sam Lowe, trade expert at the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank, said that the since UK was unlikely to diverge from EU goods rules in practice in most areas, it made sense to continue to allow CE marked goods to be sold in the UK, both now and far into the future

This was also the case because CE marks are to be recognised in Northern Ireland in perpetuity under the terms of the UK-EU agreement covering trade between Northern Ireland and the EU after Brexit.

Russell Beattie, chief executive of the Federation of Environmental Trade Associations, welcomed the government move. "We are keen to work closely with the government to work through these undoubtedly complex issues," he added.

The UK business department was not immediately available for comment.

Another story on regulatory autonomy after Brexit. I expect further extensions, which hurts the companies that already spent to get the UKCA certificate.

[Josquius]

We voted brexit for extra red tape and we won't rest until we get it!

[Sheilbh]

Absolutely furious about this animal sanctuary in Afghanistan. Apparently the PM has over-ruled the Defence Secretary and given clearance for the 200 animals and the assorted volunteers to be airlifted; from a Guardian reporter: "As one person who works for an MP said to me the other day: "We've had more emails demanding we save the Afghan dogs than emails demanding we save the Afghan people. It's very disconcerting.""

It's a shameful and morally indefensible decision. There's been a (successful) campaign to raise money to charter a plane. I did see one of the organisers noting that after they've rescued the animals there'd be space for 138 people - after the animals

Just nuke the country - at least it'll get Geronimo the alpaca and all these lunatics

[The Brain]

Jesus Christ.