Legislation

The Scottish Agriculture Bill needs a sunset clause to stop Ministers being able to change policy without scrutiny over the coming decades, says Mike Rumbles, MSP for the North East of Scotland.

Banning imports is an impractical and probably illegal idea which was always doomed to fail, but there are other ways to protect our domestic food standards, says Cambridgeshire Fens farmer Tom Clarke.

In promising to uphold the UK’s high food production standards, but refusing to explain how, the Government has displayed a failure of imagination on post-Brexit trade policy, says Tom Lancaster, acting head of land, seas and climate policy at the RSPB.

An amendment has been tabled to the Agriculture Bill which would allow the UK to break away from restrictive EU rules on gene editing.

Turbulence caused by Brexit and the coronavirus is not going away, but there are some positive lessons which can be learned from both, says Sue Pritchard, chief executive of the Food and Farming Countryside Commission.

After listening carefully to the arguments on both sides, Conservative High Peak MP Robert Largan decided he couldn’t vote for or against the Agriculture Bill amendment to ban low standard imports. Here, he explains why.

The mask has fallen. UK farmers have been betrayed by this Government, which promised to protect our food production standards in trade deals, says Leicestershire arable and beef farmer Joe Stanley.

Ensuring the UK’s food supply is secure must be a key aim in all of our future trade talks, as well as post-Brexit farm policy, says Conservative peer Anne McIntosh.

The Government’s failure to protect our standards in the Agriculture Bill was very disappointing, but UK farmers shouldn’t be too demoralised because they have high quality products to sell, says Andrew Robinson, head of agriculture at Armstrong Watson.

New checks on food products entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK will present a ‘significant challenge’ for business, the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) has said.