opinion STRAWS IN THE WIND
In the last issue of this publication, the results of the EU Referendum were behind us and the only political hurdle to be essayed, if hurdle they can be called, were the local elections scheduled for 4th What a sea change a few weeks can make. In a surprise
May.
announcement, the Prime Minister, taking the media and, reportedly, many of her closest cabinet colleagues by surprise, announced a General Election to be held on 8 June. It is not necessary to speculate as to the cause of the Prime Minister’s decision to go to the country, although her small working majority had the potential to provide leverage to ultra-Brexiteers in her own party who might have been inclined to vote against any deal involving, for example, sacrificing an element of control of immigration or paying a fee for departure from the EU. Meanwhile, the framework for the Brexit negotiations is falling
into place. The remaining members of the EU appear to have adopted a
hard-line position when it comes to the Brexit talks that will start shortly after the General Election on 8 June, albeit this is likely to represent an opening gambit. It appears that the EU wishes to settle matters relating, firstly, to the UK’s financial liabilities to the EU and, secondly, arrangements concerning those EU citizens currently resident in the UK. The latter should not be too difficult to resolve, although the UK’s financial liabilities to the EU are likely to arouse more contention. Only then, say the EU, can matters relating to future trading arrangements be put on the negotiating table. Although there is little trade in manufactured animal feeds
between the UK and the remainder of the EU, apart from some very specialist exceptions, the future of trading relationships with the EU is relevant to the feed industry. Around 90 per cent of UK exports of beef, sheep and dairy currently go to the EU and the imposition of high tariffs, in the event of a ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ scenario, would be particularly damaging to some rural areas where farming constitutes a critical part of the local economy. There is also the question of imported raw materials, such as those passing through Rotterdam, raising the question of what arrangements might be made for entrepôt trade. It is early days and it is likely that the two negotiating parties,
the UK and the EU, are still at the initial stages of formulating their negotiating positions. It is likely that the UK’s initial gambit, involving a departure both from the EU Single Market and the customs union will be modified during the course of the negotiations. In that respect, it
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will be important for the UK not to field negotiators characterised by a visceral opposition to EU membership, always remembering that the current ‘advantages’ of EU membership, however defined, are unlikely to be available in the forthcoming negotiations. It is clear that preparation for the Brexit negotiations are likely to
consume an increasing proportion of the agricultural supply industry’s representative activities during the next two years. So far, the signs are good. This publication, ever since the Brexit vote, has been urging the necessity of a clear identification of how Brexit will affect the agricultural supply trade and its trading environment, as well as urging that UK agriculture’s ancillary bodies should get together to identify common points of concern, as well as working to create a mutual interdependence that will have a synergistic effect on the strength of the industry’s representations to government during the course of the Brexit negotiations. The creation of the Brexit Coalition is thus to be welcomed representing as it does, a coalition of likeminded organisations including the Agricultural Industries Confederation, devoted to making the most of the opportunities to exert influence on both government and farther afield as the negotiations progress. The government’s White Paper, outlining the Great Repeal bill,
whereby all EU legislation metamorphoses into UK law, ensures that, on the day that the UK officially departs from the EU, no legal vacuum will open up under the feet of the agricultural supply trade. It is therefore to be welcomed, opening the way for the trade to make representations to appropriate government bodies on regulations that it believes to be unjustifiably onerous or merely irrelevant. However, there is a further stage that should be considered even at this early juncture. Once agricultural policy has, as it were, been repatriated to the UK, the supply trade and its co-coalitionists in the Brexit Coalition should, initially on their own and, later, with farmers’ organisations in the devolved countries of the UK, get together to discuss the future of agriculture in the UK in the years following Brexit. As a recent editorial in Farmers Weekly put it, ‘Brexit provides a
real opportunity to devise an agricultural policy that is more appropriate to our needs than the EU model we have been stuck with for more than forty years’. Indeed yes. What should be the aims and objectives of the UK’s
agricultural sector? How far should these be sponsored by government – or should government play any role at all? Brexit really does provide an opportunity to hold a full debate on the shape and the future of farming in the UK – and that debate should start now.
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