I am a great admirer of professor Chris Grey and make a point of reading his blog which has a new post every Friday morning. I recommend it as a source of perhaps the clearest thinking and analysis on all things related to Brexit. He is also active on Twitter and I'm grateful to him for giving me the idea for this post. Grey is a professor of Organisational Studies and it shows. This is his post:
What is so depressing is that whatever data you put into the site, so far as I can see there isn't a single thing showing that your personal or business life is going to be better or easier when the transition ends in even the tiniest of ways. Not one single thing. https://t.co/p9XKpoAhJv— Chris Grey (@chrisgreybrexit) August 14, 2020
His comments are about the new Check, Change, Go campaign featuring another one of Cumming's highly favoured three word slogans. Grey points out that if you try feeding data about a fictitious company or individual into the linked government website you cannot find a single benefit. It is all about mitigating problems.
What caught my eye was the comment in the Cabinet Office post which, as you can see, reads:
"This means that the UK economy can prosper under rules and regulations designed around the needs of our industries."
And the reason it stood out was that I had just been reading a paper titled: Manufacturing and Brexit by UK in a Changing Europe. It has a whole section from page 21 about thhe advantages of regulatory alignment with Europe:
"There are two key questions for manufacturers when it comes to Brexit and the regulatory framework. First, the UK government has asserted the benefit of being able to diverge on standards (although as of now, there are few details about what divergence they are considering), but how o manufacturers see the pros and cons of regulatory divergence versus continued regulatory alignment? Second, how will checking and enforcement of standards be carried out? The answers to these questions vary by sector."
But reading it one struggles to find any sector which is pressing for divergence. The authors cite automotive where Aston Martin said that divergence would be “semi-catastrophic” and the aviation business:
In summary, the aerospace industry feels that divergence from European regulations would add cost and complexity to UK manufacturing and threaten exports. Given that, for example, in 2018 the UK exported some £34 billion in aerospace products, this would potentially deal a serious blow to the UK economy.
Pharmaceutical companies say it "would create significant costs" and delay new medicines coming on to the UK market. For chemicals the situation is said to be "complicated" because since 2007, the main EU regulation for the industry has been the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals Regulation (REACH) and the main regulatory body is the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). The report concludes:
In a no-deal scenario, the combined UK chemicals, pharmaceuticals, rubber and plastics industry is forecast to suffer a 22% decline. Even with a free-trade agreement the decline is forecast to be 18%, while with an agreement that keeps the UK closely aligned with the EU, including in regulation, the impact was thought to be just -1%.
The industry estimates that [divergence] will immediately add over £1 billion of costs to UK and EU chemicals companies. ECHA has a budget of €100m a year and also draws on the expertise and resources of member states’ regulatory bodies, whereas the HSE currently spends only £2.2m on regulating chemicals, with future estimated running costs rising to £13m. It also took ECHA five years to become fully staffed.
We already know of concerns by the NFU and the UK Food and Drink Federation of diverging from EU rules on food standards.
It is not clear which "future" industries are going to "prosper" by having rules and regulations designed around their needs but the present ones see no benefits at all. In fact new rules and regulations will tilt the level playing field - but not in our favour.
I worry that this is all being done by men like Cummings, Oxbridge humanities graduates, who have only a vague notion of what industry is, still less its "needs."
Anyone who understands how industry works will know that rules and regulations are essential for safety, security or to avoid environmental damage or worker or consumer exploitation. The continentals love regulation because it enables them to market goods that they can sell as complying with the highest quality standards and also avoid being sued for causing accidents or damage afterwards.
All the Brexiteers I hear, talk of the burden of regulations but forget they are common standards designed to improve our lives and protect the planet and which industries themselves help to draw up.
I thing the Check, Change, Go campaign has already been accused of focusing on the nebulous "benefits" and "opportunities" although they are never spelled out, without warning of the inevitable disruption that is coming in January whatever happens.
It is yet another demonstration that Johnson and Co have an uphill task themselves. If they don't warn of the problems they will be much worse and if they do, even the leavers might begin to question why we are doing Brexit at all.
