Letter to LF MP - Brexit Nightmare, Jan 2021 V2

South East Cambridgeshire Labour
Alex Wood Hall, Norfolk St
Cambridge CB1 2LD
01223 563183
secambslabour@gmail.com
www.secambslabour.org.uk
Dear Lucy Frazer
24 January 2021
I was alarmed to read an article in today’s Observer newspaper entitled “A Brexit nightmare: the
British businesses being pushed to breaking point”. The report relates how British companies are
being advised by a Government Department to relocate to the EU. This is to avoid red tape and tax
charges.
One of the examples quoted is from a company in our South East Cambridgeshire constituency. It
tells of how the Managing Director of Horizon Retail Marketing Solutions, based in Ely, contacted
you for help. He says you put him in touch with a Civil Servant who then referred him on to a
Senior Trade Adviser. The Adviser said he could see no option but for the company to set up
abroad.
Horizon is now opening a new office in the Netherlands. This means they will be recruiting staff in
the EU at the cost of British jobs. And this is not a lone example.
This does not sound like the Britain that the Prime Minister spoke of, in which our businesses are
free to trade as they wish.
I am proud of this area being fertile ground for entrepreneurs and new business ventures. So, I’m
very worried that local businesses are already reporting that it’s so difficult to trade effectively.
Businesses need help, not more hurdles. Yet it seems they are faced with the costs of new red
tape and the problems caused by the Government’s failure to plan for the customs burdens.
I’m therefore writing to you as a matter of urgency to ask whether you support the advice being
given by the Department for International Trade to set up EU based companies? What action will
you and the Government be taking to get a grip on this before jobs are lost and our economy
suffers even more?
I look forward to your early reply.
Yours Sincerely
James Bull
Small Business Spokesperson, South East Cambridgeshire Labour