Corporations cry out for help as ruling British Conservatives meet Business news

By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press

MANCHESTER, England (AP) – UK CFO Rishi Sunak on Monday pledged to create an economy based on “good work, better skills and higher wages” as the ruling Conservative Party tried to take Britain’s economic turmoil as the growing pain a thriving, self-reliant post-Brexit economy.

Sunak cited the UK’s low unemployment rate of less than 5% as a sign that it is leaving the pandemic disruption behind. After Great Britain leaves the European Union, Great Britain will use “the agility, flexibility and freedom of Brexit” to create a dynamic high-tech economy.

For some, Sunak’s optimism in a speech to a conference of the ruling Conservatives was staggering. It came as the combination of coronavirus and Brexit sent shock waves through the UK economy, soldiers were drafted to alleviate fuel shortages, and companies scrambled to recruit enough staff.

Since the last personal conference of the Tories two years ago, the party under Prime Minister Boris Johnson has won a huge parliamentary majority. But the UK has also been hit by a coronavirus pandemic that killed more than 136,000 people in the UK, the highest death toll in Europe after Russia. The country also left the EU last year, ending its seamless economic integration with a trade bloc of nearly half a billion people.

In recent weeks, a shortage of truck drivers due to factors such as pandemic disruptions and a post-Brexit exodus of European workers has disrupted UK supply chains, leaving some empty shelves in supermarkets, chicken-free fast food chains and no fuel pumps. After more than a week of gas shortages, numerous soldiers began driving tankers on Monday.

One important factor is post-Brexit immigration regulations, which mean EU citizens can no longer live and work in the UK without a visa. In addition to truck traffic, the shortage of staff also affects hotels, bars and restaurants, sectors that once depended heavily on European labor. Some hotels in the northern English city of Manchester, where thousands of Conservatives will meet until Wednesday, have emailed their guests apologizing for the staff shortage.

Agriculture has also been hit hard as slaughterhouses say they lack butchers. Angry farmers, some disguised as pigs, greeted Conservative delegates outside the conference center on Monday, calling on the government to “save our bacon”.

“Pigs are being secured,” said Vicky Scott, a pig farmer from East Yorkshire in northern England. “There are farmers who have to decide which pigs to kill on the farm, that’s barbaric. (They go) to landfills, a complete waste. It’s a shame.”

Like businesses across the economy, UK farmers are calling on the government to take on more EU workers to alleviate the shortage.

Johnson has done this for truck drivers and poultry farmers, offering foreign hauliers 5,000 emergency visas and 5,500 chicken and turkey workers. However, the government has opposed easing restrictions on low-skilled workers, saying Britons should be trained to take the jobs.

“The way forward for our country is not just to pull the big lever of uncontrolled immigration,” said Johnson on Sunday. He said the UK was ending “a broken model of the UK economy based on low wages and skills and chronically low productivity”.

Some economists point out that more immigration does not automatically mean lower wages. And while the government insists that wages go up, many conservatives worry about the impact on voters’ wallets of a new tax hike to fund health and welfare, rising energy costs from a global rise in natural gas prices and a cut in welfare benefits for millions who start this week.

In the run-up to the four-day conference, which takes place under strict security precautions, government opponents protested in Manchester. Police said five people were arrested Monday after a former Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, was charged outside the convention center and hit with a traffic cone.

Police were also called to the conference hotel after a guest speaker said they had been attacked by a Conservative delegate. There were no arrests, but the party said the man accused of the attack had been expelled from the conference and suspended.

Sunak, whose Treasury Department has spent billions in the last 18 months to help workers and businesses as the coronavirus lockdown puts the economy on hold, hinted that more tax hikes could come and said the UK must cut its skyrocketing debt.

“Yes, I want tax cuts,” he said. “But for that, our public finances have to be put back on a sustainable basis.”

To spur growth, he pledged programs to help young people get skilled jobs and more investment to help turn the UK into a technology and science superpower.

Sunak’s approach received mixed responses.

David Willetts, president of the business think tank Resolution Foundation, said Sunak is “right that in the long run it is innovation and investment that increases productivity and pay.”

But farmers like Scott say these long-term plans are of little help to them now.

“I agree that we should train our workforce in the UK,” she said. “But we should have done it months, years ago.”

Follow all AP stories on post-Brexit developments at https://apnews.com/hub/Brexit.

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