Upcoming post-Brexit controls to drive food prices, warns logistics industry

New post-Brexit controls coming into effect from next January will further drive up the price of food and risk supply-chain disruption, the food and logistics industry has warned.

The concerns emerged after the UK government this week published proposals to charge a flat-rate inspection fee of up to £43 on each consignment of food coming from the EU. Since the EU-UK trade deal came into force in January 2021, the UK government has not imposed full border checks on food imports from the bloc but has announced its “firm intention” to phase in controls from this October.

Industry bodies argue the proposed charges, which range from £20 up to £43, will hit smaller firms and UK families at a time when they are already grappling with rampant food-price inflation, Financial Times reported.

Nichola Mallon, head of trade at Logistics UK, the haulage trade body, said the charge was “very concerning” given current price pressures.

“It is too high and, if introduced, will add to inflationary pressures and is likely to lead to market distortion in the movement of goods,” she said.

Shane Brennan, the director of the Cold Chain Federation, added that the proposals made little sense at a time when the government was actively discussing imposing price controls on UK supermarkets to keep down the cost of staple foods.

“It is crazy that one week the government is holding a crisis meeting in Downing Street to discuss out-of-control food inflation and the next is willing to nod through a multimillion new import tax on EU food imports,” he said.

The concern from the logistic industry comes weeks after a report highlighted how Brexit food trade barriers have pushed up household bills by £250 on average, adding that cost of food in the UK had rocketed by 25 per cent since 2019.

According to researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE), households have paid £7bn since Brexit to cover the extra cost of trade barriers on food imports from the EU, .

The cost of food in the UK had rocketed by 25 per cent since 2019, the researchers calculated, adding that the cost would have gone by 17 per cent in the absence of post-Brexit trade restrictions.

“Between December 2019 and March 2023 food prices rose by almost 25 per cent. This analysis suggests that in the absence of Brexit this figure would be eight percentage points (30 per cent) lower,” the report found.