New stats suggest that more than three-quarters of companies think the Brexit deal has not helped their business – and Twitter can’t hold in its exasperation.
The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has released the results from a new survey.
It concluded that as many as 77% of the companies trading under the UK’s post-Brexit trade deal with the EU and who are BCC members say they have not seen any expansion or uptick in sales.
More than half of respondents who trade with the EU also said they had experienced problems following new rules about exporting goods while 45% said they had issues trading in services.
The government did promised an “oven-ready” deal for all businesses more than two years ago – but for many of the small and medium-sized companies who are part of the BCC, there’s been a whole range of issues.
Restrictions on business travel, problems administering EU rules on VAT and inconsistent application of custom rules have all slowed down trade.
In a further blow to post-Brexit Britain, two-thirds of the group’s members said they want to remain using the EU’s CE mark of product quality rather than the UK’s new UKCA.
And while the deal meant UK goods could avoid EU tariffs, firms had to follow additional customs and regulatory checks along with other “non-tariff barriers” now the country was outside the single market.
The BCC’s director general Shevaun Haviland explained: “Businesses feel they are banging their heads against a brick wall as nothing has been done to help them.”
“The longer the current problems go unchecked, the more EU traders go elsewhere and the more damage is done,” she added.
Now, the group has put forward five urgent recommendations to improve the deal for companies, calling for the government to conduct the 2026 review of the trade agreement sooner rather than later.
The lobbying action from the BCC comes shortly after the Centre for European Reform revealed that Brexit had cost £40 billion in lost tax revenues.
And YouGov polls from November show that public support for Brexit has dwindled to its lowest levels recorded so far.
So, it’s not surprising that Twitter lit up with accounts essentially rolling their eyes...
Even MEP and former chair of the Brexit Steering Group Guy Verhofstadt spotted some of the less flattering headlines about the UK’s current economy too, and jumped on the Twitter bandwagon.
