The Government has sacrificed British farming for ideological reasons - Yorkshire Post Letters

In March 2020 senior advisor to Rishi Sunak, Dr Tim Leunig, said: 'The food sector isn't critically important to the UK, and the ag(riculture) and fish production certainly isn't'.

We soon saw the result of this ideological free market policy. It took only 16 months for Liz Truss to negotiate a trade deal with New Zealand which will eventually give tariff free access to their beef and lamb to the UK market.

The NFU warned that the deal 'will jeopardise our own farming industry and could cause the demise of many, many beef and sheep farms throughout the UK'. Even the Department for International Trade's own assessment stated that the agriculture sector was 'expected...to contract' due to the deal.

Since then, George Eustace, who was Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has said that the deal and the similar one with Australia 'gave away far too much for far too little in return' and 'was not actually a very good deal.'

The UK has just agreed to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The RSPCA has warned that the CPTPP was a 'nail in the coffin for animal welfare standards' which are so important for British farming.

A few days ago, the EU completed a trade deal with New Zealand after more than five years of negotiations. The deal gives tariff-free exports on key EU exports to New Zealand including pig meat but severely limits imports of beef and lamb from New Zealand.

The negotiations between the EU and Australia have stalled because of the EU's insistence on not giving Australia increased market access to its sheep, beef, dairy and sugar markets.

The contrast between the EU's negotiating position and our own is obvious. The UK farming sector has plainly been sacrificed to a combination of Tory ideological free trade policies, disregard and simply sheer incompetence.