Well, that is the theory, but the Government’s own figures and modelling show that the Australia trade deal, for the very reasons I was just setting out, will give a £94 million hit to British farming. There is no doubt that the deal has sold out and—in the words of Minette Batters, the excellent president of the National Farmers Union—betrayed British farmers. The impact of the trade deal undermines British farming and the standards and ethics of the United Kingdom in general—in particular of the way we farm. That is added to a set of assaults on British farming.
The transition to the new farm payments scheme is in complete chaos. The removal of direct payments—20% by this Christmas—will plunge many farmers into poverty. Meanwhile, many farms are trying to engage with the new environmental land management system. Two years down the road, they will change their businesses, and now they do not know what to do. The Government have sort of part-listened and have thrown everything up in the air; it is total chaos. There is chaos in farming and in the market.
The greenest thing that the British Government could do is keep Britain’s farmers farming, because without farmers we cannot deliver the environmental goods. Likewise, we cannot deliver the food that we all rely on. If we become less and less self-sufficient, that has a moral impact as we push up the price of commodities for the poorest counties in the world. The failure to conduct fair and transparent trade deals with the scrutiny of this Parliament undermines British farming in general and puts at risk our environmental imperatives, our food production and, by connection, the poorest people in the world, whose food prices will go up because we cannot feed ourselves. That is why we must get it right next time. Free trade is important, but we must not throw our farmers under the bus in the process. Free trade that is not fair is not free in the first place.
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