Britain’s fish and chip industry is warning that Labour’s plans for the economy run the risk of driving the country’s national dish off the menu for good.

Facing ever-rising costs, independent friers are struggling to survive, and shop owners say the sector is being “hammered” by a triple threat of high taxes, high energy bills and EU-fishing deals that have sent the cost of ingredients skyrocketing.

Owners say the challenges threaten to wipe out independent friers within a generation.

Speaking at Golden Union, a fish and chip shop in Soho, Victoria Atkins, the Conservatives Shadow Food and Rural Affairs Minister said: “Rachel Reeves has landed yet more businesses with further costs. The food industry is in crisis, and everything Labour are doing is making it worse. The food industry makes up a whopping per cent of the economy, employing one in every eight people.”

Owner, Billy, said: “After Covid, it was a real struggle, but business picked up when the tourists came back. But national insurance hikes, and fish prices are not helping. We want to provide good portions and a good price, but margins are really thin.”

He added: “We used to pay £10 a kilo pre-Covid, now it’s up to something like £20.50. Tourists want traditional fish and chips, we give them the full British experience. It’s our national dish.”

Billy’s restaurant was packed with visitors from Germany, France, Poland, America, and Japan, including the owner of Tokyo’s first traditional fish and chip shop.

Across the country there are around 9,000 independent fish and chip shops, employing tens of thousands of people and contributing millions to the economy. But the National Federation of Fish Friers warns many could soon vanish.

Its president, Andrew Cook, who has worked in the industry for 26 years, said: “It feels as if everything is set against us, the whole sector is facing higher costs. Some fear that in fifteen years there will be no independent shops left.”

He added: “With the budget, which put up national insurance on shops like ours, and the fishing deal with Europe, it’s hammering our business. We are getting squeezed by VAT, it’s killing us and leaving us by the wayside. Some of us are paying to work. A cut in VAT, to 10 to 12 per cent, would save around £6,000 a quarter. If [Labour] want to drive growth, that’s how they can start.”

Cook also warned that pressure to move from natural gas to hydrogen-powered cookers was adding to the crisis. “They’re trying to move us onto hydrogen cookers, away from natural gas, but there just isn’t the infrastructure, and it’s a very expensive move. New cookers can set you back £85,000 or more.”

Industry figures say 61 per cent of shop owners are not confident about their future, while 35 per cent plan to sell up in the next year. More than two-thirds have less than three months of cash reserves left.

For many, the cost of doing business is becoming unbearable.

However a Government spokesman said that the shops where “vital to local communities” and added that they where “protecting the smallest from the employer National Insurance rise, lowering their business rates and helping more chippies offer al fresco dining, on top of capping Corporation Tax.”