If ever there was a time to drop laissez-faire economics in favour of some Whitehall planning it is now. With businesses rapidly running out of stock and the clock ticking on securing imports for Christmas, it would seem sensible for ministers to sit down with the worst-affected industries and work out a plan.
Yet the business community says it is being told to sort itself out, even as the lack of vital components – some of them stuck in China and some at British ports – forces them to lay off staff.
No wonder the number of employees on furlough has plateaued, when the expectation was that the 2 million people being paid to stay at home in June would rapidly fall as the scheme neared its end in September.
Furlough is a boon for companies that have no work for their staff until imports can flow. Some carmakers have scaled down the number of weekly shifts while others have said they will shut down for weeks at a time.
Of course the shortage of semiconductors is not peculiar to the UK. Every major industrialised nation reported similar shortfalls after the world’s main chip manufacturers – in Taiwan, Japan and China – found themselves forced to close down after Covid-19 outbreaks.
However the situation is worse in the UK because we had allowed our vital supply lines to become stretched even before the pandemic, with a reliance on overseas workers whom Brexit sent packing.
According to Tesco chairman John Allan, the lack of food on supermarket shelves can be directly linked to an estimated 100,000 shortfall in drivers. He said Britain’s biggest supermarket was struggling to keep up with current demand for food, let alone build up stocks for Christmas.
Richard Walker, Iceland’s managing director, said the shortage of HGV drivers in the UK meant that 30-40 deliveries to its stores were being cancelled every day.
He called on the government to take a sensible approach to Brexit, or the “self-inflicted wound” caused by our hardline approach to EU citizens living and working in the UK was likely to make the situation worse.
The simple solution would be to add lorry drivers to the essential and skilled worker list. Such a move would signal that the government wants to help.
The Road Haulage Association said there were initiatives under way across the haulage industry to train a new cohort of drivers, but a winter meltdown was on its way unless the UK could attract “oven-ready lorry drivers, right here right now”.
The idea of a visa waiver presumes, it must be said, that there are thousands of lorry drivers itching to work for low pay and poor conditions in the UK when there is a driver shortage all over Europe.
The dearth of drivers is not as critical in France, Germany and Spain as in the UK, but still, the UK’s hostility…
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