North-east MPs clash over Australian trade deal
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Gordon MP Richard Thomson has said former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs George Eustice should have spoken up at the time following his comments in the House of Commons yesterday that the UK’s trade deal with Australia was “not actually a very good deal”.
Mr Eustice, who led DEFRA between 2020 and 2022, went on to say the UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement, signed in December 2021, “gave away far too much for far too little in return”.
Commenting, Richard Thomson MP said: “While George Eustice is simply confirming what everyone already knew, it shows that even among those Cabinet Ministers whom one would have thought had an interest in securing a good deal for our exporters, producers and farmers, they chose to remain silent publicly until after the deal was done and they were out of office.
“As Secretary of State for DEFRA, George Eustice should have spoken up at the time if he felt any private representations he was making to his own Government were going unheeded.
“However, it does now give the UK Government the opportunity to avoid making the same mistakes in future trade agreements – and it seems from what has been said that there were many, many mistakes made in the negotiations over the Australia deal.
“Unfortunately, in terms of the Australia deal, the damage has been done and exporters, producers and farmers will have to live with the consequences of that.
"Unless of course we take control of our own trade negotiations like any other normal country through independence.”
In response Conservative MP Andrew Bowie said the SNP “are no friends of rural Scotland and Scotland’s farmers” as he defended the trade deal.
In his first speech from the despatch box as trade minister, the West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine MP spoke as the first Scottish Conservative Minister outside the Scotland Office for 25 years.
Mr Bowie backed trade deals removing tariffs with Australia and New Zealand, twinned with protections for the likes of Scottish Lamb, which offer the opportunity of growth in “every part of our country”.
He said: “Our free trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand are game-changing deals.
“They demonstrate that the UK is a confident, outward-looking, free-trading country that is ready to grab the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.”
He also took time to highlight the SNP Scottish Government’s track record on agriculture - holding back gene editing technology, leaving farmers in the dark without a post-Brexit agriculture scheme, and their aim to rejoin the maligned Common Agricultural Policy.
“The SNP are no friends of rural Scotland and Scotland’s farmers,” he said.
“If they were friends of Scotland’s farmers, they would have voted with us, as the National Farmers Union of Scotland wanted them to do, on the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill.
“If they were true friends of Scottish farmers, they would have listened to the National Farmers Union of Scotland, which has accused the SNP Government of operating in an ‘information void’ due to the lack of information and slow progress of Scotland’s post-Brexit agriculture Bill.
“They say that they are friends of Scottish farmers, but when did the Scottish Government’s own agriculture and rural development board last meet?
"It was 10 months ago."
