The UK’s trade strategy for agriculture is overdue

The clarity of a country’s approach to agriculture in talks is often a good test of how robust its trade strategy is, according to a host of long-suffering negotiators.

There’s a reason why: agriculture is often the most politically sensitive issue a nation’s leader faces when they sign their name on the dotted line on a trade pact in front of the cameras. Make an ill-considered step one and by the following, day the road can be blocked by tractors. Farmers, and rural communities, have long memories for what they perceive as political betrayal.

And for all the noise surrounding the red wall, many senior Conservative MPs have strong farming ties in their constituency. Trade secretary Liz Truss is no exception. Her South West Norfolk seat has sugar beet farmers who are none-too-happy about the liberalisation of sugar imports that’s come with post-Brexit trade deals. Sugar cane, of which Australia is a huge producer, will soon rush in more readily under a new trade agreement.

Many of the decisions which impact most on farming have come out bit-by-bit: drip-fed in technical detail. But that’s not a strategy that can last forever, as the recent row over the structure of phasing out tariffs on products such as a lamb and beef under the Australia trade deal, was ultimately revealed to amount to opening the UK market up pretty much overnight.

Details of the safeguards that could supposedly stop a flood of Australian produce are in short supply, too. That’s something the Welsh Affairs Select Committee said in a report, released Wednesday, must be clarified for MPs by the trade department in a memorandum of understanding alongside the text of a trade deal.

It’s true that markets in Asia, where middle-class consumers generally pay higher prices for Australian meat, are currently appealing enough to divert produce there. But it’s less clear what would happen, for instance, if a severe Asian recession dampened demand in those markets. Trade, like all commerce, will follow the demand elsewhere: potentially the UK.

For now, the government is stalling on its reply to a report from the independent Trade and Agriculture Commission (TAC) it set up, and then promptly disbanded. By The Independent’s calculations, it’s been four and a half months since the final version of the report was published. That response, several farmers told The Independent, was meant to be the government’s moment to set out in black-and-white how they were going to win from trade, and exactly what they were going to lose.

And the government wants to emphasise those wins. A government spokesperson said: “UK farming is at the heart of our trade policy. We will continue to work with the farming industry, as well as the Welsh Government, to help Welsh farmers take advantage of the dynamic markets opened up by the trade deals we are negotiating.”

Other people, environmental NGOs and MPs, are starting to notice something of a void when it comes to a well-defined government position on how to approach agriculture in trade talks – the aim of the original’s TAC report.

The latest call for the government to set out its stall for the agricultural sector comes from MPs on the Welsh Affairs Committee. It is not complicated in its wording: “The UK Government should respond to the report of the first Trade and Agriculture Commission.”

There’s another problem. There was meant to be a replacement for the original TAC too. This is meant to be a statutory body, still referred to as the TAC.

The Committee said: “The UK Government has confirmed TAC will be in place to scrutinise the agreement with Australia, although members are yet to be appointed. The UK government has clarified that ‘the TAC’s role is not to inform or comment on negotiations, but to scrutinise treaty text after signature, and will be set up in advance of signing the Australia FTA’.”

In the words of Sam Lowe, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform that means the as yet non-existent TAC will perform its scrutiny function “quite late in the day”. In the different words of one official from the department for the environment, farming and rural affairs it will mean scrutiny after the “Slamming the stable door shut, after the (insert animal of choice here) has bolted, been fried and digested”.

The government disagreed. A spokesperson told The Independent that new TAC “will play an important role” in the trade deal scrutiny, including the Australia deal. They added that applications are currently being considered for the body and the government will “announce membership shortly.”

Still, NFU Cymru, the Welsh arm of the National Farmers’ Union said it “very much shares the committee’s concern that the statutory Trade and Agriculture Commission is not yet up and running”.

They added that a “deep and meaningful examination by parliamentarians of all future trade deals” requires lawmakers to properly consider the reports of the new TAC on areas such as animal welfare.

The view from the other side of the negotiating table of the Australia agreement in principle (a shorthand for trade deals before parliaments ratify them) was clear: they had hoped for, but certainly not expected to achieve tariff-free, quota-free access for agricultural products. There was shock as well as celebration in Canberra. There may have been some smart reasons why, given the aim of joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), it made sense to take the political pain of upsetting farmers in talks with Australia this time round, rather than rerunning it in later rounds of talks.

But there’s a cost to not being upfront and delaying detail and clarity on its position for the trade department. Community consent is a huge part of not only getting deals through parliament (though other than delaying tactics, it’s largely a case of like it or lump it for MPs on trade agreements in the UK) it’s at the heart of implementing agreements and making an overall trade strategy work. Just ask some of the New Zealanders who lived through enough protests in recent years to know trade missteps are politically costly.

If the UK doesn’t get its act together with an open, clear approach to agriculture, it risks winning the battle for a deal with Australia, perhaps even with New Zealand, but perhaps losing the war with a deal for CPTPP.