Shropshire Star

Shropshire MP Owen Paterson hails benefit to farm industry of leaving EU

Leaving the EU offers farmers a fantastic opportunity to increase their productivity, a Shropshire MP has claimed.

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Owen Paterson

North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson said Brexit will allow farmers to move on from a "backward-looking approach to technology" and embrace new technologies.

He was speaking at Thursday's Three Counties Agricultural Society Farming Conference in Worcestershire.

Mr Paterson said: "Leaving the EU and climbing out from its protectionist wall is great news for agriculture. It gives the UK a chance to rid ourselves of its stifling, backward-looking approach to technology and, in so doing, offers farmers a fantastic opportunity to increase their productivity.

"New technologies must be embraced, and feasible new developments must be assessed rationally and soberly. That way, British farmers can remain globally competitive and all consumers can reap the price-lowering benefits of increased free trade around the world.

"For too long, the EU has sought to pre-empt and pick technological winners or, worse still, have set their faces against new technology on the grounds of little more than ill-informed sentiment and prejudice."

Mr Paterson said there is great debate in rural areas about the continuance of current farming subsidies after Brexit and their nature.

"In some ways, however, this is akin to looking through a telescope from the wrong end. Leaving the Customs Union and lowering the prices of food, clothing and industrial materials benefits all consumers, particularly the most disadvantaged, many of whom live in rural areas," he said.

"Happily, leaving the Single Market and Customs Union is now government policy, and we have seen the willingness of countries across the world – Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, the United States – to enter into free-trade agreements with us after Brexit.

"We are thus well placed to prosper and, even in the absence of any deal with the EU, must continue to recognise that no deal on trade is far better than a deal which ties the UK into the European regulatory framework and so takes opportunities off the table.

"We will, for example, be able to remove the absurd tariffs on foods which we produce little of ourselves. There is no reason that we should continue to ask consumers to subsidise European farmers when equally good products exist outside.

"Our post-Brexit approach to agriculture must be global in its outlook and must, correspondingly, move away from subsidies and protectionism."

Mr Paterson said he believes British farmers can compete on the world stage, breaking into markets presently denied them.

"We can learn the clear lessons from countries like Australia and New Zealand, who moved away from subsidies in the 1980s, and must free producers to embrace the most advanced and most effective technologies to boost their productivity.

"There are, however, certain areas of the rural economy which could not survive by food production alone, and these we should continue to support generously for the enormous public good which they do in maintaining and nurturing the environment, on which sits a £30 billion annual tourism industry," he added.