‘Britain doesn’t need farmers’

Bizarre claim of top Treasury adviser – who says ‘fishing’s irrelevant too’

ONE of the Government’s most senior officials has made the incendiary suggestion that Britain does not need its own farming industry.

In leaked emails obtained by The Mail on Sunday, powerful Treasury adviser Tim Leunig argues that the food sector is not ‘critically important’ to the economy – and that agriculture and fishery production ‘certainly isn’t’.

Astonishingly, Dr Leunig implies the UK could follow the example of Singapore ‘which is rich without having its own agricultural sector’.

Dr Leunig is a long-standing colleague of Boris Johnson’s No10 enforcer Dominic Cummings, and his intervention exemplifies the radical thinking within Boris Johnson’s inner circle against bastions of the Establishment such as the Civil Service and the BBC.

In his controversial comments, Dr Leunig also suggests farmers should not be given tax breaks denied to other industries.

His extraordinary remarks come as the UK prepares to enter vital post-Brexit trade talks with both the EU and the US, where negotiators would be expected to fight for British farmers. Already the industry has urged the Government

not to lower standards to allow cheap, sub-standard products such as chlorinated chicken to flood the UK market and put British suppliers out of business.

Last night, a bullish Boris Johnson said: ‘We have the best negotiators in the business.’ And he vowed to ‘drive a hard bargain’ with President Donald Trump which would trade ‘Scottish smoked salmon for Stetson hats’.

Dr Leunig, an associate professor at the London School of Economics, who also holds advisory positions in the Education and Environment Departments, made his arguments in emails sent last week to the National Food Strategy, the Government’s wholesale review of the British food system.

He wrote: ‘Food sector isn’t critically important to the UK, and ag[riculture] and fish production certainly isn’t.’ He pointed to figures suggesting that it adds just 0.5 per cent in extra value to the economy.

Dr Leunig then questioned the special tax breaks given to farmers, saying: ‘We know that supermarkets also make very little, and that lots of restaurants go bust.

‘Not sure I buy a “life is tough for farmers, easy for restaurateurs” approach.’

When he was challenged by fellow members of the review’s advisory panel, he responded: ‘All I am saying is that, as a logical possibility, a nation (or region) can import stuff. We see that in many places for many goods and services. Singapore imports (almost) all its food, Germany

all its oil, Japan all its planes and all its oil, Australia and New Zealand import all their cars, all their planes and all their oil, while Iceland imports oil, cars, planes and graduate-level education.’

Last night, a senior industry insider said: ‘Why would any adviser to Government seek to decimate our own farming sector?

‘Surely the first duties of any Government should be to defend and feed its people. It seems to me that a country that cannot feed itself is no country at all.’

But a Government spokesman said that Dr Leunig’s comments

‘Why would any adviser seek to decimate our farming sector?’

were ‘not Government policy’. International Trade Secretary Liz Truss will tomorrow announce the UK’s objectives for a transatlantic trade deal, and is set to say it must ‘uphold our high standards on food safety and animal welfare’ as well as protect the NHS. The National

Farmers’ Union has been pressing the Government not to relax standards, saying it would be ‘morally bankrupt’ to allow chemically cleaned poultry and genetically modified fruit and vegetables. The union said it would be ‘insane’ to sign a trade deal on that basis.