Businesses are struggling when they should be bouncing back from the pandemic.
The catastrophe of Brexit has been further exposed today with news that manufacturing in the UK is doing worse than at any point in the last 13 months.
According to a survey of manufacturing businesses, they are being hit on several fronts with the number of new export orders dropping for the sixth time because of problems related to Brexit with Duncan Brock, group director at the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply, saying:
“Pipelines of work from overseas also took a hit and fell for the sixth time in just over half a year as Brexit customs added to the impacts on UK supply chains.”
This is the second report in days which has exposed the disastrous effect Brexit is having on British industry.
Another study revealed that, while most other advanced economies have seen strong recovery in trade as they bounce back from the past two years of Covid, UK exports remain below pre-pandemic levels.
Commenting, SNP MSP Paul McLennan said:
“Time and time again the Brexit-obsessed Tories were warned about these dangers but they pushed on regardless with this self-inflicted catastrophe.
“Now these wholly avoidable problems are mounting up by the day.
“As we emerge from the past two dreadful years of the pandemic, British industry should be motoring again – just like every other similar advanced economy – but there is one key difference.
“No other country voted to leave the world’s biggest trading bock and to put up trade barriers.
“These issues are not some abstract theory.
“These trade blows represent real businesses, real jobs, and real families left to struggle through a spiralling Tory cost of living crisis.
“Scotland did not vote for Brexit but it was imposed on us and now it is causing real difficulties for businesses – and that translates to real hardship for people across the country.
“And it was all so completely avoidable.
“The people of Scotland will have the opportunity to send a message to Boris Johnson by rejecting the Brexit-obsessed Tories in the local elections on May 5.”
