Saturday 21 August 2021

Brexit v reality

“Alex Veitch, general manager of public policy at Logistics UK, said the thousands of EU drivers who left the UK due to Brexit and the pandemic were vital to the movement of goods around the country and beyond.”

The BBC reported yesterday that:

"The UK should grant 10,000 EU lorry drivers visas to solve a labour crisis that has led to shortages of goods on British supermarket shelves, a lobby group says.

Logistics UK, which represents freight firms, says Brexit and Covid-19 caused lorry drivers to leave the UK, but a temporary visa could lure them back.

It said a similar visa scheme granted 30,000 permits for agriculture workers".

The UK GOvernment has rejected this stating the industry should invest and recruit UK drivers. There have been no HGV tests for 18 months.

Its almost as if the Government wants things to be has hard as possible for ordinary Britons, those with money will be able to afford inflated prices for good with limited availability, whilst the rest of us will have "adequate" food.

Analysis of the latest ONS Labour Force Survey for the second quarter suggests that 14,000 EU lorry drivers left jobs in the UK in the year to June 2020, and only 600 had returned by July 2021.

"Logistics is facing a long-term shortage of staff, which has been made much worse by the loss of our EU workforce," he said.

"While we wait for new recruits to complete their training, which can take up to nine months, the logical solution would be to introduce a temporary visa scheme to keep the vehicles moving. After all, there is no point in picking and packing food if there is no one available to move it to buyers."

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