Filenews 5 October 2021
Problems in the British market's food and fuel supply chain are not a crisis, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a series of morning interviews from the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.
Empty shelves and empty pumps in the country are due to the lack of truck and tanker drivers and the wider shortages of manpower in various industries and positions in the supply chain.
Still, Mr Johnson said the situation is a "turning point" after Brexit as the UK and its businesses wean themselves "from the cheap labour" offered by migrants, while the economy starts moving again after the pandemic. He commented that the British economy is "like a giant waking up" and moving towards higher wages.
Mr Johnson refrained from guaranteeing that this Christmas there will be no product shortages in the market, while admitting the limited success of the foreign driver attraction programme. Specifically, he said that so far only 127 drivers have applied to receive the offered six-month work visa in the UK.
The Government hopes to immediately attract 300 drivers and another 4,700 by the end of the month, although the Prime Minister reiterated that the country "cannot return to the failed model of low-paid and low-skilled work".
His claim, however, that wages have started to rise as employers adjust to the new reality after Brexit has been questioned by analysts.
Torsten Bell of the Resolution Foundation said the data shows that in real terms wages remain stable, as any increases are absorbed by the increase in the cost of living.
At the same time, unable to market their meat, desperate breeders have begun to kill pigs. According to the National Farmers' Union, livestock farmers have no choice as they have no way of transporting pigs to slaughterhouses, but no space or sufficient food to keep them on their farms. Slaughterhouses also stress that there are huge shortages of slaughterhouses and butchers who know how to process animal meat.
