To say the UK shellfish industry has been betrayed would be an understatement but it doesn't completely absolve the fishermen who actively campaigned for and voted for Brexit when a tiny bit of research would have shown all the claims that they would be better off outside the EU were either highly unlikely or palpable nonsense. The EU have not changed any regulations and there can be no excuse for not understanding the rules which governed their own business.
Assurances that we would be part of the single market by Gove and others would mean Britain becoming a rule taker - totally against the 'take back control' slogan. It was never a possibility and once Theresa May and her adviser Nick Timothy made the decision to leave the SM and the CU the fate of shell fishing was almost sealed. Johnson then chose the hardest possible Brexit short of no deal at all and basically that was it.
It’s clear that many, perhaps most, didn’t realise their products would automatically be banned from the EU meaning a lot are headed for closure. Government funds are keeping some of them going but that can’t last forever.
Some of them may have been persuaded to think leaving the EU would revive their flagging businesses by the pro-Brexit newspapers. The Telegraph was in the vanguard of it all and fishermen might be forgiven for thinking a national newspaper, a serious broadsheet, would have researched what the impact of Brexit would be. But they didn’t.
Now The Telegraph is printing reports like this one from their Europe editor James Crisp:
A thread on Brexit, British mussels and the New Zealand trade deal, which I’m told is ‘another nail in the coffin’ of a suffering industry.I love mussels by the way.— James Crisp (@JamesCrisp6) October 22, 2021
Crisp is their man in Brussels, and says “EU exports became impossible after Brexit took effect on January 1 because the UK was treated as a non-EU country under Brussels’ public health rules.”
But this is all a bit late. Britain isn't being treated as a third country as a punishment but because we asked, no, demanded, to be treated as one. The EU offered every possible status as a non member, a third country, some of which might have alleviated some of the problems of the shellfish industry. But no, we had to have sovereignty to decide our own rules and we are now where we are.
Suggestions in Crisp's report that the British market might be persuaded to increase consumption of shellfish is risible, at least in the short term. Supermarkets are full of frozen fish fingers and fish cakes. We don’t cook fish or eat it like the Europeans do or in the same quantities and certainly not shellfish and it’s inconceivable that will change overnight.
Another option he suggests is the government building purification facilities in this country but that would add delays and mean many of the shellfish would be uneatable by the time they reach the market as the industry keep pointing out.
Crisp argues that “while it is entirely up to EU to set rules for access to its own market, this is self defeating for EU restaurants etc market is there, established, complements existing growers.”
He wants his hake and eat it too. To be outside the market but also be inside it at the same time.
This whole thing has taken nine months to discover, to thrash about for a non existent solution, only to conclude that the industry is virtually finished. It may limp on in much reduced form for a year or two and some might survive in the long term, but it won’t be the industry they knew until the end of last year.
Crisp's piece is as much about the New Zealand trade deal (just an agreement in principle at the moment) coming down the track in what looks like a second betrayal. His article is headlined: "New Zealand trade deal 'another nail in the coffin' of UK mussels industry, British shellfish sector was devastated by loss of its major EU market after Brexit and now faces cheaper imports."
NZ apparently have a thriving mussel industry producing about 100,000 tonnes of product each year, worth about £130m. Crisp points out that UK mussels exports to New Zealand already face no tariffs during which time NZ has created a huge industry. Their mussels will soon be headed this way with the gradual removal of tariffs over the next three years They are apparently "not as tasty as our blue mussels but they are more convenient as they are frozen and they are cheaper." What a surprise.
The article ends with a quote from trade expert Sam Lowe, of the Centre for European Reform.
He says, “The real problem isn’t so much the additional competition from some islands on the other side of the world, rather that it is happening at the same time as them being closed out of selling to their biggest export market.”
To which Crisp offers no comment, presumably because of shame, after all his employer led the charge to make sure they were closed out of their biggest export market.
In fact this goes right to the heart of Brexit. He thinks the EU should permit imports of UK mussels because there is a ready market in Europe, but the same holds good for frozen New Zealand shellfish coming to Britain.
There is no escaping the reality that if you want totally open trade you need to be competitive. If not, if you have no comparative advantage, you will not survive and your industry will disappear. That might suit some people but doing it overnight to something as fundamental as your food industry does not seem like a good idea to me, either in the short or the long term.
I worry that other industries will go the same way. Next year new import checks will start which will raise the cost of intermediate parts used in British finished products and make them uncompetitive. New UKCA standards and markings will be another issue for many.
The slow puncture will go on for a very long time but eventually there will be no air left.
