No-deal Brexit: Sainsbury’s boss says there will be gaps on shelves within a week under Boris Johnson’s plans The former supermarket boss said: ‘something between 30% and 40% of our produce at that time of the year is coming from the European Union’

Former Sainsbury’s chief executive Justin King warned that fresh food shortages would start to happen by 7 November if the Government pushed through with a no-deal Brexit.

Speaking on Wednesday night to the BBC Newsnight programme, the former boss, who is credited with turning around the fortunes of the supermarket chain between 2004 and 2014, sounded a warning over a disorderly departure.

Fears have grown over such an exit on the 31 October since Boris Johnson took office, with his demands that Brussels alter the withdrawal agreement being met by a similarly tough line from the EU.

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Mr King said: “Let’s be clear, there’s about 10 days of food in the UK in total.”

“There’s obviously a lot more than that in packaged goods and in frozen. So a very small number of days in fresh food.”

“The kind of disruption that the government is talking about today, 50 per cent of vehicles being held up, will lead to gaps on the shelves within a week in the UK, significant gaps.”

“Because something between 30 and 40 per cent of our produce at that time of the year is coming from the European Union.”

Competition laws

Retailers have called for competition laws to be suspended in the event of a no-deal as firms may have to collaborate to ensure supplies to certain areas or at risk groups. This would currently be deemed anti-competitive under existing regulations and could results in large fines from the regulator.

The Food and Drink Federation’s chief operating officer Tim Rycroft told the BBC that there would be “selective shortages” of food that could last weeks or months.

“It may be the government is going to come to us and say, ‘can’t you guys work together to ensure that remote communities or the elderly or children – at-risk groups – don’t suffer from these shortages’,” he said.

He called on the government to “provide cast-iron written reassurances that competition law will not be strictly applied to those discussions”.

One retailer said: “At the extreme, people like me and people from Government will have to decide where lorries go to keep food supply chains going. And in that scenario we’d have to work with competitors, and the Government would have to suspend competition laws.”

Backstop spat

Mr Johnson has demanded that the EU remove the backstop section of the Withdrawal Agreement which is a series of proposals that aim to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland.

The measure which has riled Brexiteers since it was unveiled last year, aims to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic by keeping the UK inside the customs union and Northern Ireland aligned to EU rules if no trade deal is agreed that can deliver the same objective by the end of the transition period.

Speaking in the Commons on the 25th July, Mr Johnson said: “No country that values its independence, and, indeed, its self-respect, could agree to a treaty which signed away our economic independence and self-government as this backstop does.

“A time limit is not enough if an agreement is to be reached it must be clearly understood that the way to the deal goes by way of the abolition of the backstop.”

EU negotiator Michel Barnier branded Mr Johnson’s comments “unacceptable” in a letter to officials.