Why Britain’s SMEs are losing Irish customers in the post

Andrew Duff’s prescription for affiliate EU membership for the UK is compelling if controversial (“Starmer must plot a bold route back to Europe for Britain”, Opinion, December 5).

But there is an earlier, wholly uncontroversial step the UK could take to ease trade with the EU.

For reasons not clear, the UK Post Office has refused to implement the necessary systems to comply with the new EU customs rules that applied to the UK after Brexit. The UK government appears uninterested.

Consequently at An Post, the Irish postal service, we have to return thousands of items daily back to Great Britain as they fail EU customs’ checks. Predominantly these are items sold by British small and medium-sized enterprises online and delivered through the UK Post Office.

The level of disruption for SMEs has caused many of them to simply not bother trading with Ireland, a full member state of the EU (and where the EU customs rules have been introduced first). Trade from Great Britain to Ireland through postal channels has fallen by 52 per cent in one year.

From January 2023 the EU customs rules are mandatory across the EU so the disruption with Ireland will be repeated with every other EU country, if the necessary actions are not taken.

The UK government should insist immediately that Post Office Limited implement the required procedures for exports to the EU to uphold international trade, to support British businesses and consumers.

Royal Mail has a responsibility to ensure trade is facilitated (not least by repairing the dysfunctional relationship between Royal Mail and the Post Office), implementing a duty-paid system to help EU consumers of British companies.

If it is not too late — but it’s already close to that for many SMEs — these steps could have an immediate and positive economic impact on the SME sector and the millions they employ, a sector regularly described by government as the backbone of the British economy.

The system and process implementation has some complexity but is surely a price worth paying if it allows the UK to trade with Europe.

David McRedmond
Chief Executive, An Post
Dublin, Ireland