Brexit: Europe will still buy our lamb even if Britain leaves EU after referendum, says Owen Paterson MP
North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson says Continental customers will carry on buying British lamb if Britain leaves Europe because it is "good and it is the right price".
The former Defra secretary, who helped set up Vote Leave, explained why he thinks farmers would be far better off coming out of the European Union (EU) and wouldn't miss out on financial support.
Mr Paterson said: "Our neighbouring customers for great products like British lamb will want to carry on buying it; they don't buy British lamb because we are in the EU, they buy it because it is good and it is the right price.
"We prospered before the EU and we will prosper afterwards.
"We had good relationships before the EU and we will continue to have them.
"Just think what it would be like if we ran our own regime, devising our own agriculture system and environmental policy tailored exactly to our own industry and our own environment.
"We could tailor it in such as way that it would really benefit people on the ground, be of a huge benefit to the environment and be far, far simpler to administer – whatever the money was.
"And there is absolutely no reason why we wouldn't pay the same money and of course, we would have the happy freedom to pay more, as do Governments in Europe but outside the EU such as Iceland, Switzerland or Norway."
Mr Paterson said agriculture is a huge industry that employs one-in-eight workers.
"It is our largest manufacturing industry," he said, "bigger than car making, bigger than aeroplanes and everything else.
"What I can guarantee is that our European partners have a massive, selfish and strategic interest in continuing to trade with us."
