The Brexit reset minister will set the EU a 2027 deadline to strike a deal on food and drink trade to bring down supermarket prices, as the Government faces pressure on inflation.
Nick Thomas-Symonds will today use a speech to confirm the Government’s ambition to finalise an agrifood deal within 18 months after Sir Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen agreed headline terms in May.
He will set out the UK’s position on how it will follow EU laws on food and drink as part of a necessary step to boost economic growth, protect business, secure jobs and bring down food prices, telling hardline Leavers that it is “sovereignty, exercised in the national interest”.
New research will also be published by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) revealing the cost British businesses face when trying to export food and drink to the EU under the current arrangements as the minister builds the case for following Brussels law.
Food inflation rising fast
Inflation is stubbornly high at 3.8 per cent – and predicted to rise as high as 4 per cent in September before coming down. Food inflation is a key factor behind the overall inflation figure – rising to 4.2 per cent in August and at the fastest pace for 18 months according to the British Retail Consortium.
While extra costs – such as employers national insurance – from the Budget have been partly blamed on the rise, the boss of Morrisons said in May that the post-Brexit deal with the EU would help reduce prices.
Sweeping away trade barriers with the EU will remove cost, complexity and delay in food imports from the continent,” Rami Baitiéh, chief executive of Morrisons, told the BBC.
Thomas-Symonds will say small and medium-sized firms in particular “lack the capacity” to deal with the red tape necessitated by Brexit, putting them at a “competitive disadvantage” to bigger firms.
The i Paper has previously reported that Thomas-Symonds wants to ensure that voters feel the benefits of the agrifood deal, the economic centrepiece of the Brexit reset, in time for the next election, expected in 2029, and will introduce new laws to align the UK with EU regulations in the coming months.
The UK has also axed planned incoming border checks on EU fruit and veg, and meat, in anticipation of the deal.
UK moving at ‘speed sloths would laugh at’
However, the minister faced accusations that the UK is “moving at a speed sloths would laugh at” after the Prime Minister trumpeted the Brexit reset at a May summit in London with von der Leyen, but left major parts of the deal to future negotiations.
But Liberal Democrat Europe spokesman James MacCleary said the UK should instead negotiate a customs union with the EU to “transform our economic relationship with Europe”.
The Conservatives’ botched Brexit deal has held back our economy for too long, and to announce that in the next 18 months things will only get slightly better simply won’t wash.
“Adding insult to injury, the Government sold its recent talks as a done deal only to now turn around and admit a finalised agreement could be years away.
“Our farmers and food producers simply cannot wait that long.”
Thomas-Symonds will meanwhile argue that Nigel Farage’s commitment to reverse the agrifood deal if Reform wins the next election means he would harm British consumers and businesses and bring about a return to lorries stuck in 16-hour queues carrying rotting food.
The minister will say: “Nigel Farage’s manifesto at the next election will say in writing he wants to take Britain backwards, cutting at least £9bn from the economy, bringing with it a risk to jobs and a risk of food prices going up.
“Nigel Farage wants Britain to fail. His model of politics feeds on it, offering the easy answers, dividing communities and stoking anger.”
Priti Patel MP, shadow foreign secretary, said: “Once again Labour are trying to justify their EU surrender – but the British public simply won’t buy this betrayal.
“Keir Starmer is dragging us back into Brussels’ arms, and looking to once again make this country a rule taker rather than a rule maker, having sold off our fishing communities in the process.
Naomi Smith, chief executive of Best for Britain, a campaign group that lobbies for closer ties with the EU, said: “The EU should move quickly to finalise an alignment deal with this Government to deliver for consumers on both sides of the channel, [and] to prove Farage wrong yet again in his Euroscepticism.”
Reform has been asked to comment.