UK Secretary of State spells out Brexit’s impact on the rural economy
Useful commentary on what to expect next from the Brexit side of the long hard winter ahead.. This article provides the latest (albeit through the lens of a Scottish discussion) update on the likely impact of Brexit on the rural economy – perfectly as relevant to England as Scotland.
George Eustice was grilled by the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee on the impact of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union for Scottish agriculture, fisheries, and the wider food and drink industry.
He explained that negotiations are ongoing, with two “particularly difficult sticking points” around State Aid and fisheries partnership agreements, the latter in terms of access to UK waters and quota sharing arrangements.
“Alongside that we’ve been working to prepare industries like meat and fish processing so that they are aware of the additional documentation that will be needed for exports,” Eustice added.
He was then quizzed about tariffs affecting livestock farmers, in particular sheep, and the potential for some kind of compensation scheme.
“We want to get tariff free trade on all goods, but we accepted that the EU weren’t up for any kind of special agreement, so since then we’ve been working on a simple trade deal much like the EU/Canada one,” Eustice stated.
“You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink, so if the EU are unwilling to do a tariff-free trade agreement, then we would as a country have to review what our response to that would be and we would redouble our efforts to open new markets for lamb like the US and the Middle East.”
He explained that the UK would pursue a strategy of import substitution and in the interim there would be things like movements in exchange rates to smooth the passage from one system to another.