Five years after Brexit, M&S is still struggling with the unnecessary added costs and delays it heaped on the retailer, the boss of its food division has said.
Before Brexit, there were “simple” requirements for transporting thousands of individual fresh products on the “relatively short distance across the Irish Sea every day” to stores in the UK and Republic of Ireland, said M&S Food MD Alex Freudmann.
“But tonight our trucks travelling to the Republic of Ireland were loaded yesterday, and sat idle for 16 hours before the driver set off, now armed with over 200 pieces of paper,” he said.
“Paperwork takes hours to complete and demands detail as niche as the Latin name for the chicken that is used in our Chicken Tikka Masala. And that is just for the products we are able to send to our Irish stores. Sausages, burgers and some fresh sandwiches can no longer be sent from the UK at all.”
Writing an opinion piece for The Telegraph, Freudmann railed against Brexit rules which were “developed in a pre-digital era and therefore rely on paper documents, physical checks and inspections”.
“Today, almost everybody working in our depots is under the age of 50 and has grown up with computers,” he said. “New starters at our depots look at us with bewilderment on day one when we have to ask them to pick up a pen and piece of paper to do the job.”
Freudmann said the Windsor Framework had eased movements to Northern Ireland but came “with huge cost and complexity, not to mention the ridiculousness of the labelling requirements that French brie and Italian parmesan destined for the UK and made to EU standards must have ‘Not for EU’ printed on the packaging”.
He said M&S was calling on the government to work with the EU to stop ‘Not for EU’ labelling requirements being extended across Great Britain. “There is no difference in food standards between the UK and the EU, so why do the rules pretend that there is?”
Freudmann also criticised the “unnecessary bureaucracy involved in moving lasagne from London to Dublin, as well as importing chorizo from Spain”.
“Each certificate, bizarrely, needs a signature from a vet – costing well over £1m a year in vet fees and adding hours of admin time,” he said.
He said M&S therefore supported the government’s plan to negotiate a veterinary agreement with the EU, and offered “whatever help we can to aid the negotiations”.
“Five years on, it is time to put an end to the Brexit bureaucracy that burdens both UK and Irish businesses,” Freudmann said.
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