Business people’s plans for Brexit were not helped as the Covid ’bomb’ went off, it was argued at the Business News Topical Talks gathering.

In the months leading up to Brexit, there were certain sectors that were going to be potentially more impacted by Brexit than others, said Caren Pegg, president of the island’s Chamber of Commerce.

For instance there were retail businesses that relied heavily on imports and exports.

But she added: ’The Chamber committees had been working hard to gear up as much as they could for Brexit and the real challenges were not really knowing how the processes were going to change and I think the Covid bomb that went off did not help with that.

’I remember coming in as president. At the time all of our events were largely focused on Brexit and then obviously everything went on hold and it was all about Covid and how businesses could be supported and to some extent we are still in that bubble at the moment.

’So to reiterate what people are saying we will have to wait and see what the effects are.

’My background is more in terms of financial services companies from my day job (with Appleby) .

’I do know some businesses have not factored in modelling for a Brexit impact.

’That is largely because they don’t know how to model that at the moment but also in terms of the issues raised at the outset of the this discussion - are we going to have problems about blacklisting? is there going to be increased focus on tax havens?

’Most businesses in the finance sector have been very much focused on those issues for a long time.

’I have to say as a passionate Manxie that I firmly believe that we are among the most highly regulated countries in the world.

blacklisting

’I would hope that there would be no issue going forward with blacklisting. Most companies know that we need to have sophisticated responsible systems in place to show that we do good, clean business in the Isle of Man.

’Yes, there could be some more complications in terms of us being able to influence, but I think that actually some of the issues are long standing issues anyway.

’It’s being offshore, it is us being a small island and I think that trying to focus on the opportunity going forward, for me and I think, a lot of Chamber of Commerce members, would want there to be a good strategy to be put in place as to how we market ourselves, how we establish our links and try to move forward as best as we can.

’But I personally am pretty positive that hopefully the Isle of Man will be in a position where we are not unduly impacted by Brexit.’

Chairman Richard Butt said it might be an issue of perception rather than reality in that we are well regulated. He argued an MEP in Poland was going to think no more than 10 minutes ever about the Isle of Man and was likely to have the idea that the island was a dodgy place.

He asked: ’Is there a possibility that we are going to be swept aside and that would badly affect us?’

Ms Pegg said our relationship before Brexit with Europe was by Protocol Three. ’So we had to ensure that we had strong links with those UK representatives that were going to have us on their list along with many other things when they were communicating with the EU.

’But I do question how far up their priority list we would be.’

MHK Lawrie Hooper argued the UK did represent us ’reasonably well’.

He said: ’We came out of this (Brexit) at the other end with what we wanted. From an Isle of Man perspective it was as good as we could have expected perhaps.

confidence

’It does give me a little bit of confidence that we are going to get represented by the UK on that international stage when they engage with the EU.

’But equally I think that because the UK is now a third country in its own right maybe that also gives us the space to maybe engage directly with the EU countries more than we have in the past.

’The Isle of Man has always been Westminster focused and very London-centric.

’We have strong links with the north west of England and I believe there is a massive Irish question for me. Actually do we need to start looking at growth in terms of our relationship with Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland? Maybe there is an opportunity there now the UK is in a very similar position to us.

’Maybe there are other places where we can go to.

’Again, it is one of those ’’how long is a piece of string?’’ type questions.

The gathering was sponsored by Manx Telecom.

Manx Telecom chief executive Gary Lamb said from a telecoms point of view. ’We don’t see it (Brexit) impacting us hugely. Most of our business is in the Isle of Man.

’Obviously there are things like supply,but that is relatively straightforward to deal with. The one issue that might be of concern is roaming. About four years ago European roaming rates were implemented.

’We could find some of the operators around Europe taking a different stance with the Isle of Man. As we don’t have a lot of traffic with some countries in Europe, those operators may decide the rates they charge us will be significantly higher than they are now.

’But there is no sign at this point in time that that will be the case. So we are not unduly worried about an impact of Brexit at Manx Telecom and we will watch that roaming position very carefully and hope that it will not impact us.’

Mr Lamb, who is also chairman of Strix, said that company was not significantly impacted by Brexit either.

’Anything we manufacture in the island we send straight through to China. I guess we are lucky in both Telecom and in Strix we don’t see a huge issue over Brexit.’