Can Michael Gove ‘save Christmas’?

Michael Gove has been landed with the challenge of ensuring festive favourites are on supermarket shelves this December as supply chain disruptions threaten to “cancel” Christmas.

Boris Johnson had appointed the Cabinet Office minister to lead a cross-governmental group that will aim to “rapidly increase the number of HGV drivers and work with food suppliers” in order to tackle shortages in supermarkets and restaurants across the UK, reported The Times.

Announcing the launch of the National Economic Recovery Taskforce (Logistics) to cabinet members yesterday, the prime minister reportedly joked that he “didn’t want to have to cancel Christmas again”.

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The move comes as industry leaders warn consumers to prepare for long-term shortages owing to a lack of lorry drivers and food-processing workers, as the combined effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit take a heavy toll.

In a bid to tackle the ongoing problems, Gove’s team will “coordinate government departments responsible for the food chain” and is expected to “run along similar lines to the no-deal Brexit preparations apparatus”, said The Times.

Gove had a “similar role” in managing Brexit negotiations and no-deal planning, noted The Telegraph.

His appointment followed a bleak prediction from Marks & Spencer chair Archie Norman that supermarkets were facing a “bumpy ride” before Christmas.

Norman told LBC radio on Monday that a “fandango of bureaucracy” at EU borders was causing severe delays in the export of goods.

These rules are “due to be mirrored” on imports from Ireland and the continent from October, said The Guardian. But while Downing Street “is expected to announce whether it will delay the checks on goods coming in”, the paper continued, business leaders “say it is not the answer”.

“While further delays to controls on imported EU products may go some way to keep supermarket shelves stocked at a challenging time for the UK supply chain, supply issues are largely due to workforce availability,” said Nick von Westenholz, the National Farmers Union’s director of trade and business strategy.

“A delay would do little to address these problems, nor the long-term trade frictions we are experiencing.”

The British Retail Consortium and trade assocation Logistics UK, which represents freight firms, warned last month that the UK had a shortfall of about 90,000 HGV drivers, which was “placing increasingly unsustainable pressure on retailers and their supply chains".

Analysis of the latest Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey suggested that 14,000 EU lorry drivers left jobs in the UK in the year to June 2020, and that only 600 had returned by this July.