Daniel Zeichner – 2020 Comments on Agricultural Payments After Brexit

The comments made by Daniel Zeichner, the Shadow Farming Minister, on 30 November 2020.

If the government mishandles the transition away from existing payment schemes, it risks pushing family farms over the edge.

And risk is even greater if the Tories push ahead with a series of race-to-the-bottom trade deals that allow cheap food produced to lower standards to be imported into our shops and high street takeaways.

Where public money is supporting farmers it should rightly promote good environmental practice. But if the government can’t put the new systems in place in time, farmers’ livelihoods won’t survive.