Food essentials such as bread, milk and meat will be almost 20 per cent cheaper after Brexit, study finds
New policy to replace mountains of EU red tape could see the UK 'unilaterally' slash the import tariffs
FOOD essentials such as bread, milk and meat will be almost 20 per cent cheaper after Brexit, a major study suggests.
A new British Agriculture Policy to replace mountains of EU red tape could see the UK “unilaterally” slash import tariffs that increase consumer prices according to the Policy Exchange think tank.
And they recommend giving sweeping new powers to the Food Standards Agency to review scientific evidence on sensitive issues like washing chicken in chlorine.
If the FSA approves them, Policy Exchange’s report suggests British farmers could choose whether to meet EU standards after Brexit if they wish to keep selling products into the bloc, or instead match British standards and those in international markets outside the EU.
And they suggest that “clear labelling” on food products to “allow the public to make their own decisions about what matters to them”.
Policy Exchange also find that 87 percent of UK farming income currently comes from subsidies, which it brands “a perverse and unsustainable state of affairs”.
On top of scaling these back, the report finds that if Britain led the way in scrapping tariffs, prices would drop.
It states: “While the average EU tariff is relatively low at 2.7 per cent, agricultural tariffs are more than three times higher than this at 8.5 per cent.
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“For some product groups tariff barriers can be many multiples of this: 33.5 per cent in dairy, 20.2 per cent on sugar and 15 per cent on animal products.”
The think tank predict their changes would see a reduction in shopping bills of between 15 and 18 per cent.
They said “leaving the European Union allows us to think again about agricultural policy from first principles. The starting point for policy reform must be the consumer.”