Brexit and the Australia deal is bad for British farming so why didn't any Ministers intervene? - Yorkshire Post Letters

When asked recently about the effect of Brexit on the UK economy during the BBC's World at One programme, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Mel Stride admitted: 'If you have a situation where you create frictions between yourself and your major trading partners, I think you have to accept that will have an impact.'

But Mel Stride knew this would happen: less than four and a half years ago he personally delivered to Parliament the Treasury's predictions of the effect of different forms of Brexit. The Free Trade scenario, as Boris Johnson eventually negotiated, was said to reduce the UK's GDP by 4.9 per cent in the long term, and the loss of free movement of people from the EU was said to cause another loss of 1.8 per cent.

Two years after the completion of Johnson's Trade Agreement we now know how disastrous this Hard Brexit has been.

The Office of Budget Responsibility still considers our GDP will reduce by 4 per cent. Recent studies by the Centre for European Reform state that the UK's GDP has already fallen by 5.5 per cent due to Brexit, amounting to an annual loss of tax revenue of £40bn, and the immigration policy has caused a shortfall of 330,000 workers. We know of how badly the latter has affected the NHS and the farming, food and care sectors.

Mel Stride went on to suggest that there are now 'major opportunities'. It has been suggested that one such opportunity was that we could do trade deals with other countries.

Most of the deals which have been done just replicated those negotiated by the EU. The Australia deal, however, was described by Boris Johnson as 'historic' and a 'new dawn' despite being predicted to boost GDP by a mere 0.02 per cent and give tariff-free access for Australian farming produce to the British market, phased in over a fifteen-year period.

The NFU has stated: “We continue to maintain that a tariff-free trade deal with Australia will jeopardise our own farming industry and could cause the demise of many, many beef and sheep farms throughout the UK.

“This is true whether tariffs are dropped immediately or in 15 years’ time. We remain of the view that it is wholly irresponsible for the government to sign a trade deal with no tariffs or quotas on sensitive products and which therefore undermines our own domestic economy and food production industry.”

George Eustace sat in Cabinet as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and rubber stamped the Australia deal. Astonishingly, he has subsequently said: “It was not actually a very good deal for the UK.”

For farmers, already suffering from a 22 per cent cut in subsidy last year with another 36 per cent cut planned for this year, the Australia Trade Deal is just another massive blow. The knock-on effect will create severe damage to the rural community.

Mel Stride, like George Eustace and other Tory MPs, knew that Brexit and the Australia deal would be bad for farming. They knew it would be bad for rural constituencies. They knew it would be bad for the country.

They did nothing about it. They sat meekly, keeping quiet in order to stay in power and save their jobs. They must be held to account.