Minister confident food supplies will not suffer because of Brexit
THE GOVERNMENT is confident “we don’t need to worry too much” about interruptions to food supplies at the end of the year due to Brexit, the Environment Secretary has said.
The UK has already left the European Union but a transition period during which existing rules and trade arrangements for goods and services continue to apply is due to come to an end at the end of December.
Concerns have been raised about interruptions to food supplies in the face of a “no-deal” situation where a trade agreement is not secured with the EU before January.
But Environment Secretary George Eustice said the pandemic had shown that the UK’s food supply chain is “remarkably resilient”.
Mr Eustice said: “Remarkably the transport of fresh fruit and salads and veg from Spain continued
largely uninterrupted, despite all of the problems those countries were going through, the food supply chain right across Europe kept going.”
There were some issues with things such as spices from India and vitamins for fortifying bread.
He said: “I think we are more confident than ever we don’t need to worry too much about the end of the transition period.”
Mr Eustice added he was confident the UK would be able to get food into the country whatever the agreement was with Europe.
The comments were made as he was quizzed by MPs on the Parliamentary Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) select committee on food supplies during the pandemic. Questioned on the panic buying that took place at the beginning of the lockdown, the Environment Secretary said he felt the Government intervened to urge people to stop “at exactly the right time”.
He said initially the industry and supermarkets were bestplaced to lead the response and talking about panic buying or putting quotas on products too early could worsen the problem.
He also said the “Pick for Britain” scheme could be described as a “great success.”