Whisky, cheese and chocolate producers have suffered the biggest post-Brexit export losses in the food and drink sector, new figures from HMRC have shown.

Analysis of the figures by the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) shows that cheese exports in January plummeted from £45m to £7m year on year, while whisky exports nosedived from £105m to £40m. Chocolate exports went from £41.4m to just £13m, a decline of 68%.

They put the collapse in trade down to a combination of Brexit and weaker demand in Europe, where restaurants, hotels and other hospitality outlets remain closed.

Exports of some other goods such as salmon and beef almost stopped altogether, with declines of 98% and 92% respectively, but by value they were the 7th and 4th biggest losers of the top 10 exports to the EU.

Overall, trade in fish, thanks partly to a complete ban on the exports of certain live shellfish, dropped by 79%.

The figures come hot on the heels of data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing trade between the UK and EU had been hit hard in January, with overall exports down by 40.7% in January compared to December.

It comes as the House of Lords EU environment subcommittee expressed deep concern over the disruption to trade caused by Brexit. “We’re dismayed that our agri-food sector is facing such high trade frictions, “ said Lord Teverson, the subcommittee chair, in a new report due to be published on Tuesday.

The “end of the seafood industry” on the south coast of England could be caused by post-Brexit export problems, a Dorset fish merchant has said.

Charlie Samways said extra paperwork and IT issues mean perishable seafood exports from West Bay were taking twice as long to reach customers in the EU.

As a third country outside the European Customs Union, UK exports are subject to new customs and veterinary checks.

The government said it was in contact with the industry to address issues.

Mr Samways, whose family has operated in West Bay for 60 years, buys seafood from 150 local fishermen, much of which is exported to customers in France, Spain and Italy.

Supertrawlers spent almost 3,000 hours fishing in UK marine protected areas in 2019, making “a mockery of the word ‘protected’,” according to campaigners.

Supertrawlers are those over 100 metres in length and can catch hundreds of tonnes of fish every day, using nets up to a mile long. A Greenpeace investigation revealed that the 25 supertrawlers included the four biggest in the world and fished in 39 different marine protected areas (MPAs).

The Southern North Sea MPA was one of those fished and was created to safeguard porpoises, which are especially threatened by supertrawlers. More than 1,000 porpoises died in fishing nets around the UK in 2019. The most heavily fished MPA was the Wyville Thomson Ridge, off Shetland, which was intended to protect reefs. All the supertrawler fishing was legal.

Forty per cent of England’s seas are designated as MPAs, but these only ban some of the most damaging activities in some locations. On Monday, an independent review commissioned by the government urged the establishment of highly protected marine areas (HPMAs), where all harmful activities including fishing, dredging and construction are banned. The government’s own assessment in 2019 showed the marine environment is not in a healthy state.

“Our government allowing destructive supertrawlers to fish for thousands of hours every year in MPAs makes a mockery of the word ‘protected’,” said Chris Thorne of Greenpeace UK. “For our government to be taken seriously as a leader in marine protection, it must ban this practice.”

The president of the National Farmers’ Union has hit out at “completely out of touch” suggestions from a senior government adviser that the UK does not need its own agricultural sector.

There were reports that Treasury official Dr Tim Leunig claimed the food sector was not “critically important” to the country’s economy – and that agriculture and fisheries “certainly isn’t”.

In leaked emails published in The Mail on Sunday, the economic adviser to the chancellor Rishi Sunak is reported to have said ministers could follow the example of Singapore, which is “rich without having its own agricultural sector”.

The agriculture and fishing sectors combined represent less than 1 per cent of the UK’s economy. But rural and coastal communities voted out in large numbers during the 2016 referendum after the Vote Leave campaign argued that farmers and fishermen would be better off once free of EU rules.

The government distanced itself from the official’s comments, adding: “We have made it clear the comments are not in line with government policy.”

Although the industry is a tiny part of the UK economy – worth less than 0.1% of the total in 2018 – it has become emblematic of a plucky, independent Britain, freed from the shackles of restrictions and regulations set by other people in other places, forging its own way in the world.

Much, therefore, is riding on trade talks that are due to begin at the start of March. According to Nigel Farage, fishing will be the “acid test” of Brexit. Boris Johnson reinforced this view in a key speech on EU trade negotiations earlier this month. Any agreement must ensure that “British fishing grounds are first and foremost for British boats”, said the prime minister, who visited Brixham last summer to meet fishermen and sample hake and chips on the quayside.

The timetable is extremely tight, with the EU saying that an agreement on fishing must be reached by the end of July, and the talks will be tough. A fishing deal is a precondition to a wider trade agreement, the EU has said – and some European politicians and officials have suggested that Britain’s access to the EU’s lucrative financial services markets could depend on EU fleets being allowed to continue to fish in UK waters on the same basis as now.

At the heart of the talks are issues of access and quotas. Under the EU’s common fisheries policy (CFP), all member states have equal access to EU waters apart from the first 12 nautical miles from the coast. At the end of this year, the UK will become an independent coastal state, operating under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea rather than the CFP. As such, Britain will have control over an “exclusive economic zone” up to 200 nautical miles off its shores – some of the most bountiful seas in the world.

Quotas are set for fish species in Brussels each year following scientific advice about the levels of stocks, and are allocated to member states on the basis of historic practice. Currently, EU boats are entitled to more than 60% of overall landings by weight from the seas around the UK, and for some species the proportion is greater. For example, the UK is allocated 9% of Channel cod, while the French get 84%. From next year, quota shares will be negotiated rather than decided in Brussels.

Britain has been quietly increasing its maritime defences in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the “cod wars” of the 1970s once the UK fully completes its departure from the EU at the end of 2020.

With a post-Brexit deal on fishing to be negotiated, maritime authorities are taking on two new inspection ships, according to recent parliamentary answers – and will have more than twice the number of Royal Navy patrol ships by the end of the year.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs has said that it wants “a relationship with the EU based on friendly cooperation between sovereign equals”, but has ramped up preparations in case talks with Brussels break down.

Britain has so far refused to offer Brussels any promises on access to UK waters, where more than 700,000 tonnes of fish and shellfish are caught by EU trawlers each year, prompting the Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, to threaten to block a trade agreement on financial services last month in retaliation.

In a no-deal scenario, the UK would be responsible for patrolling and enforcing the exclusion of foreign vessels in its economic waters, a vast area of 80,000 nautical square miles into the Atlantic and the North sea.

The Marine Management Organisation, responsible for English waters, can obtain a further 22 ships in an emergency, and is also considering whether to take on two extra surveillance aircraft to help cover the maritime area.

Meet the young fisherman from Northumberland who is making a living from the seas.

Sophy Rose crew members Jordan Richardson and Edward Sinclaire lift more than 300 creels a day from the waters around Holy Island.

Jordan, 24, skippered his first boat aged 17 and now works full time as a fisherman.

Watch more on this story on Inside Out in the North East and Cumbria on BBC One at 19:30 on Monday 2 September or catch up after on the iPlayer.

Construction knows it has a problem. Working on a building site has become the deadliest profession in the UK, but the dangers have nothing to do with cranes or ladders.

More than 1,400 construction workers took their own lives between 2011 and 2015, according to national statistics. In 2016, the figure was put at 450. The rate is more than three times the national average for men.

Labourers, plasterers and crane operators are more likely than ever to be off sick, but it won’t be bad backs or broken bones that get them signed off, but anxiety, stress and depression.

North Sea cod stocks were once plentiful but plummeted – and came perilously close to collapse – between the early 1970s and 2006. A “cod recovery plan” sought to restore stocks to sustainable levels by limiting fishing days, decommissioning boats, banning catches in nursery areas and putting larger holes in nets to allow young cod to escape.

In what was seen as a significant achievement, the stock rose fourfold between 2006 and 2017, when the MSC – on whose guidance big retailers and many consumers rely – awarded three fisheries sustainable status. The MSC’s distinctive blue label with a white tick was a huge fillip to the industry.

The UK consumes about 115,000 tonnes of cod each year. Only 15,000 tonnes comes from the North Sea, with the rest imported mainly from the fertile grounds in the Barents Sea and around Norway and Iceland. But the species is of huge symbolic importance to the UK fishing industry, which employs about 24,000 people – more than half of them working in Scotland.

Ices, an international organisation of scientists from countries bordering the North Atlantic, advises governments and the industry on stock levels and the sustainable quotas that can be fished without endangering future stocks.

It sounded a warning last year with its recommended cut in the cod catch of 47%, but this year’s assessment – based on extensive scientific research – warned that levels were dangerously low and another two-thirds reduction was needed.

“It is unclear what the reasons are for this; further work is required to investigate climate change, biological and fisheries effects,” the report said.

Environmental organisations point out that cod has been fished above its maximum sustainable yield in recent years, meaning the fish are taken from the sea faster than they can reproduce.

The species is not breeding as fast as it used to, too many unwanted “juvenile” fish are caught, and the practice of “discarding” – throwing dead fish back into the sea to keep within quotas – continues despite being banned.

The government is monitoring a river in Somerset after it turned a bright, electric blue.

The Environment Agency said the drastic colour change affecting a tributary of the River Frome was a “pollution incident”.

There are no reports of wildlife in distress or dead, a spokesperson for the agency’s southwest contingent said on Friday. 

Government experts will continue to monitor the stream over the weekend and samples have been taken for testing.

Residents have previously feared for the state of the river.

The mysterious event creates something of a pattern in Somerset, after thousands of dead fish washed up in the River Sheppey one week earlier.

A pollution spill was blamed for the deaths of around 6,000 trout, bullheads and other species.

The Environment Agency sprayed the river with hydrogen peroxide in order to boost oxygen levels in the water.