𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Andrew Neil has slammed a new Labour deal, suggesting it will be a win for the EU. Officials say a new sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement will make it easier to import and export food and drink from Britain by “reducing the red tape that placed burdens on businesses and led to lengthy lorry queues at the [EU] border”. The Government added in May: “This agreement will have no time limit, giving vital certainty to businesses.

“Some routine checks on animal and plant products will be removed completely, allowing goods to flow freely again, including between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Ultimately, this could lower food prices and increase choice on supermarket shelves – meaning more money in people’s pockets.”

An Anglo-Spanish framework agreed in September stated: “Given our close trading ties in the agriculture, food and fisheries sectors, we will increase our collaboration in areas of shared interest, through enhanced engagement and information sharing on food safety, food security, sustainable agriculture and water, the development of improved plant varieties through new precision breeding techniques, fisheries science, and technological developments in the area of fleet decarbonisation.

But Mr Neil suggests that Labour’s negotiations will ensure the large trade gap with the bloc widens.

He wrote: “We already run a massive trade deficit with the EU on food and agricultural products. This deal will make that deficit even bigger.

“[It] will also place UK food and agribusiness under EU rules, regulations and ECJ court judgements once more, processes in which this time we will have no say.

“And it will undermine UK technological advances in agriculture, in which we are becoming world leaders, because it returns such research to the dead of Brussels’ ‘prudential’ approach, which regards all innovation as a risk unless it can be proven otherwise.

“Hugely retrograde for UK, huge win for EU.”

The Government said in an update yesterday: “Once finalised, our new… food and drink deal will make it easier for British shoppers to buy Spanish produce and reduce the barriers to great UK companies selling in Spain and the rest of Europe.”

Officials add that the UK-EU trade deal is expected to add up to £5.1billion a year to the economy and increase the volume of British exports of major agricultural commodities to the EU by 16%.