Brexit has created a “mind blowing” nearly two billion extra pieces of paperwork for businesses – enough to wrap around the world 15 times.
If they were all laid end to end they would also reach to the moon and half way back again, an analysis of research by the Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade by the Liberal Democrats found.
Lib Dem trade spokesperson Clive Jones said it showed the scale of red tape plaguing British businesses since the UK’s withdrawal from Europe.
He said: “The Conservatives’ botched Brexit deal is suffocating businesses, tying them up in a Gordian Knot of red tape, as they try to export our fantastic British products and produce across the world. These figures are mind blowing.”
The party is calling on the government to negotiate a bespoke UK-EU customs union to free businesses from the bureaucracy – which has pushed up prices on the high street.
Marks & Spencer recently revealed that it has had to rent a warehouse just to store its piles of Brexit paperwork, that the retailer’s chairman said “nobody looked at in the first place”.
Archie Norman said “it is quite extraordinary… you wouldn’t believe it” that the retailer has to store thousands of pages of documents in a warehouse in the Republic of Ireland for six years after taking food across the border.
The official Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) also estimates that the size of the economy over the long term will be four per cent smaller than it would have been without Brexit.
The Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade found an estimated 2 billion additional pieces of paper had been used by those exporting to the EU since the UK left the bloc.
The Liberal Democrat analysis also calculated that those extra pieces of paper would reach the height of Mount Everest 66,751 times over, have to be extracted from 248,603 trees and be worth £19.5 million in A4 paper alone.
But the party said the true cost could be higher as its analysis assumed that each piece of paper was printed just once.
Mr Jones said every second spent filling out the forms was “time that these businesses could be using to think about expanding to help grow our economy. Which we all agree is very much needed.”
He added: “The extra red tape created by the botched Brexit deal is adding more financial strain on businesses as they waste time fumbling through this tangled web of even more red tape.
“The Labour government cannot put its head in the sand and pretend that these barriers do not exist. It is time they face up to reality and realise that unless we put this extra burden of red tape on a bonfire we will not get the meaningful growth needed to rebuild our public services and protect people’s finances. That means negotiating a bespoke UK-EU Customs Union by the end of the decade.”
The Department for Business and Trade have been approached for comment.
