A late PS: international trade minister Nigel Huddleston has assured farmers that the UK Government has “got their backs” when it comes to protecting domestic food producers.
Huddleston said there were “safeguards” within the terms of the deals to allow ministers to prevent the UK market being “flooded” with Australian and New Zealand produce.
Should those mechanisms, including stalling the timetable for tariff liberalisation, fail to arrest the problem, the UK could decide to exit the free trade agreements altogether, Mr Huddleston said – although he stressed that he did not think such drastic action would be necessary.
Speaking to the PA news agency, the minister said:
“There were some concerns from certain parts of the sector about what if all of a sudden there was a massive surge and they were flooded with imports, so we put protections in place.
“It literally is in the details of the deal so that we’ve got bilateral safeguards in place, a number of protections.
“Also tariff reductions come in over time. That was deliberately done to provide additional reassurance, to the farming sector in particular, that we’ve got their backs and we’re looking after them, literally to the point that if there’s a massive surge, we can call a pause in the deal and say, ‘Right, hold off for a couple of years until we’re able to restabilise’.”
Afternoon summary
Time for a quick round-up: here are the main stories so far:
