Government’s hypocrisy and hyperbole on Brexit is not helping farmers - Yorkshire Post Letters

FEW I hope will be taken in by this line in the letter from Farming Minister Victoria Prentis (Government is helping farmers over fertiliser problems, The Yorkshire Post, April 8): “Outside the European Union, we have the flexibility to adapt to market conditions that we are currently experiencing.”

How is this supposed “flexibility” being used for the betterment of sectors such as agriculture, then?

A couple of days earlier, you outlined the damage “caused by Brexit and accentuated by the pandemic” (Food left to rot and pigs culled amid lack of farm workers, The Yorkshire Post, April 6).

Farming Minister Prentis had nothing to say about this. Instead, all we got was: “Recent events have reminded us that domestic food production matters.”

That reminder is unlikely to lead to the Government rewriting trade deals with places such as Australia and New Zealand that undermine British farming – or rule out the kind of US agreement that could mean sacrificing our European-level, high quality food standards for inferior imported produce from across the Atlantic.

If such “flexibility” genuinely exists, then it’s being strangled by this Government’s dogmatic opposition to the kind of freedom of movement that might mean farmers getting the workers they need.

This and many other examples of Government hypocrisy and hyperbole around Brexit and Europe is providing ample ammunition for our main opposition party.

From: Thomas W Jefferson, Batty Lane, Howden, Goole.

If Peter Brown and other correspondents advocate rejoining the EU (The Yorkshire Post, April 6), they must expect to face searching scrutiny. They must give some idea what the EU’s policy of “ever closer union” means to them.

The implications of joining the Eurozone and opening our borders, which existing treaties demand, need to be understood, as do any moves towards the real possibility of integration of foreign and defence policies. Being in denial that these consequences would greatly affect us is simply not credible.

These are all matters that we have recently rejected and there is no evidence that public opinion has shifted. The onus is, on Mr Brown and his fellow correspondents to stop being secretive and spell out how they see the EU membership they so earnestly desire.