Government must ‘get a handle’ on supply chain disruption, experts warn

The head of a cross-party group set up to scrutinise the UK’s post-Brexit trade deals said ministers must act now to avoid empty shelves at Christmas.

Aodhán Connolly, chair of the UK Trade and Business Commission, said: “Red tape and labour shortages from Brexit have exacerbated problems that are being acutely felt across production, processing, manufacturing, retail and of course logistics.

“The government needs to get a handle on this both in the short and long term.”

The warning comes after the likes of McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Nando’s all reported disruption to supplies in certain categories.

At a special session of the commission yesterday, representatives from across the supply chain predicted that challenges will persist until the end of the year and could be exacerbated by checks on goods coming from the EU that will be implemented from October.

British Frozen Food Federation chief executive Richard Harrow said the issue was related not only to a lack of drivers, but a skill deficit across the supply chain. He said: “We are actually facing what I can only describe as a perfect storm. Members who would normally be laying stock down now for Christmas say they don’t have the resources to do it.”

The British Retail Consortium warned that the strain on food manufacturing could result in production being moved out of the UK.

BRC director of food and sustainability Andrew Opie said that the sector was “just on the edge of coping” and cautioned that the Christmas period would be “incredibly challenging” in some categories.

He added: “Despite every effort that’s being made by food factories, we cannot recruit enough indigenous people here. They just do not want to do those roles for whatever reason.

“That leaves the government with a choice: does it want to maintain the level of food manufacturing as it stands at the moment in this country, or does it risk offshoring that production to other countries and then we import those finished goods into the UK?”

Opie also warned that retailers are already beginning to pass increased costs on to their consumers with food prices rising slightly in August.

“I think the government faces quite a stark choice here about where it wants to put its resources, where it wants to put its immigration policy and where it wants to put the economy, in terms of the products that are manufactured here in the UK,” he said.

A government spokesman said it had expanded a pilot scheme for six-month visas for overseas workers to 30,000 employees this year. However, it urged employers to “make long-term investments in the UK domestic workforce instead of relying on labour from abroad”.