UK firms plan mass exodus if May allows no-deal Brexit
Business group warns that companies are getting ready to
shift operations abroad
Phillip Inman, Toby Helm, Daniel Boffey and Michael Savage
Sat 26 Jan 2019 21.00 GMT Last modified on Sun 27 Jan 2019
00.56 GMT
The British Chambers of Commerce has warned that its members
are getting ready for Britain to crash out of the EU.
The British Chambers
of Commerce has warned that its members are getting ready for Britain to crash
out of the EU. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters
Thousands of British companies have already triggered
emergency plans to cope with a no-deal Brexit, with many gearing up to move
operations abroad if the UK crashes out of the EU, according to the British
Chambers of Commerce.
Before a crucial week in parliament, in which MPs will try
to wrest control from Theresa May’s government in order to delay Brexit and
avoid a no-deal outcome, the BCC said it believed companies that had already
gone ahead with their plans represented the “tip of the iceberg” and that many
of its 75,000 members were already spending vital funds to prepare for a
disorderly exit.
It said that in recent days alone, it had been told that 35
firms had activated plans to move operations out of the UK, or were stockpiling
goods to combat the worst effects of Brexit.
Matt Griffith, director of policy at the BCC’s west of
England branch, said that many more companies had acted to protect themselves
since May’s Brexit deal was decisively rejected by MPs in the Commons earlier
this month.
He said: “Since the defeat for the prime minister’s deal, we
have seen a sharp increase in companies taking actions to try and protect
themselves from the worst effects of a no-deal Brexit. No deal has gone from
being one of several possible scenarios to a firm date in the diary.”
Labour MP Yvette Cooper has revealed to the Observer that
two major employers in her West Yorkshire constituency – luxury goods
manufacturer Burberry and confectioner Haribo – had both written to her,
warning of the damaging effects of no deal on their UK operations. Burberry employs
750 people in Castleford, and Haribo 700 across her constituency.
Cooper is pushing for a Commons amendment – likely to be
voted on in Tuesday’s debate – that would pave the way for Brexit to be delayed
until the end of this year.
Yvette Cooper has revealed
that two major firms in her constituency have warned her about the effects of
no deal.
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Yvette Cooper has
revealed that two major firms in her constituency have warned her about the
effects of no deal. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA Wire/PA Images
Last week some of the UK’s largest employers – including
Airbus, Europe’s largest aerospace manufacturer, which employs 14,000 people in
the UK and supports another 110,000 through supply chains – warned of
potentially disastrous effects of no deal on its UK activities.
Tom Enders, the boss of Airbus, said: “Please don’t listen
to the Brexiters’ madness, which asserts that because we have huge plants here
we will not move and we will always be here. They are wrong.”
Ever since the vote to leave the EU in 2016, business groups
including the BCC and the Confederation of British Industry have lobbied
ministers, arguing that our exporters need access to the EU’s customs union,
which allows goods to be imported tariff-free.
But the prime minister has insisted that the UK must leave
both the customs union and EU single market if it the referendum result of 2016
is to be fully respected.
Business concerns are growing as Downing Street braces for a
series of Commons ambushes over Brexit this week. As well as moves to delay the
date of leaving beyond 29 March, MPs worried about a cliff-edge exit or a hard
Brexit are also planning to force a series of “indicative votes” in parliament
on a range of alternative ways forward. These include a Norway-style
arrangement and a second referendum.
Some ministers, including Amber Rudd, the work and pensions
secretary, and Richard Harrington, the business minister, have signalled they
could quit if May does not allow them to back plans to delay Brexit by granting
all Tory MPs including ministers a free vote on the issue.
Meanwhile, some pro-Brexit cabinet ministers are pushing the
PM to submit her own amendment pledging to renegotiate her Brexit deal, in a
bid to win over Tory Brexiters and the Northern Irish DUP. Concerns are growing
within the Tory party that the impasse may end in a snap election.
Today, writing in the Observer, cabinet minister David
Lidington says he shares the concerns of those worried about no deal and says
the government intends to put a revised deal back to the Commons for another
“meaningful vote” next month. “Once we have a blueprint for a plan that can
secure the support of the House, the prime minister will go back to the EU,”
Lidington writes. “MPs will then have another meaningful vote as soon as
possible.”
Meanwhile European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker
has warned Theresa May in a private phone call that shifting her position in
favour of a permanent customs union is the price she will need to pay for the
EU revising the Irish backstop.
He said without a major shift in the PM’s position, the
current terms of the withdrawal agreement were “non-negotiable”. Details of the
call, contained in a leaked diplomatic note, emerged as Juncker’s deputy, Frans
Timmermans, told the Observer that there had been no weakening of the resolve
in Brussels in support of Ireland, and accused the Tory Brexiters of a
“cavalier” approach to peace. “Let me be extremely clear: there is no way I
could live in a situation where we throw Ireland under the bus,” Timmermans
said.
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