Warning of ‘catastrophic’ no-deal Brexit impact on farmers, as minister suggests tariffs on agriculture will not be manageable

NFU warns of ‘savage’ consequences of failure to secure free trade agreement with EU

Farmers have warned of “catastrophic” damage to British agriculture if Boris Johnson fails to secure a trade deal with Europe, after environment secretary George Eustice suggested that tariffs on foodstuffs would not be “manageable”.

National Farmers Union president Minette Batters said that no-deal Brexit would see tariffs as high as 85 per cent imposed on British beef and 62 per cent on lamb, pricing UK products out of the export market.

No-deal would cost the sector £1.36bn in new levies on exports, and would also impose “huge costs” on importers which are likely to be passed on to consumers in higher prices, she warned.

Meanwhile, a Conservative former cabinet minister said that food shortages were possible, as continental hauliers halt trips to the UK in order to avoid queues, disruption and Brexit red tape at the Channel ports.

“A lot of lorry drivers are saying they will just give Britain a miss for the first couple of months of next year,” said Damian Green, who was effective deputy prime minister in Theresa May’s government. “That could obviously lead to a threat of shortages of parts for manufacturing and even possibly of food and so on.”

Mr Eustice appeared to acknowledge the threat to agriculture as he tried to play down the potential impact of tariffs on the fisheries sector.

“When we’ve discussed this with the fishing industry, the main species we export, the levels of tariffs on fish - unlike agriculture actually - are manageable,” the environment secretary told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show.

Ms Batters said that Mr Eustice was right to suggest that tariffs would not be manageable for Britain’s farmers.

“We've been clear for four years now that a no-deal for agriculture is catastrophic,” she told BBC Radio 4’s World This Weekend.

“We (would be) priced out of the market. You’d be looking at enormous tariffs on every sector - 62 per cent on lamb, 85 per cent on beef, 51 per cent on malt and barley. It would be very savage and a total cost of £1.36 billion pounds in tariffs.”

Tariffs imposed on imports from the EU, which supplies 40 per cent of the UK’s food needs, would inflict “huge costs” to traders, she said, adding: “What does it do to food prices as well? It will be a very precarious position to be in.”

Even the kind of bare-bones free trade agreement being sought by Mr Johnson would cause difficulties for agriculture, because it would mean a mountain of new paperwork covering sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) checks on animal and plant products.

With just 25 days to go until the transition to post-Brexit arrangements on 31 December, the UK faces massive shortages of the vets needed to carry out checks, with the threat of lengthy queues at the ports regardless of the outcome of Boris Johnson’s talks with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

“Farmers run long-term businesses, they want certainty,” said Ms Batters.

“They have no certainty on what our trading relationship is with our closest trading partner. I am besieged by by many people at the moment who want to know, but I can only plan for the worst and hope for the best.

“Time is really running out and, while we're living in this period, it's very hard to get final preparations in. We need 500% more vets. We have a lot of cost with the databases and everything else that has to go in - health checks, SPS rules at ports - and a month to prepare.”

With 7,000 trucks wanting to cross the Channel short straits at Dover at any one time, additional friction from red tape and paperwork will result in delays and additional cost, said Ms Batters.

“A thin deal doesn't necessarily mean that that everything is solved because you are still going to have friction,” she said. “That's the key point - we don't know how much friction, but it it it will have to be concluded at some stage. We have to have a trading relationship with the EU.”