Farmers urge SNP to support Prime Minister’s deal
SCOTLAND’S farmers yesterday made a direct plea to SNP ministers to back Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
The National Farmers Union (NFU) Scotland told Rural Economy Secretary Fergus Ewing the withdrawal agreement delivers on their top demand of providing ‘free and frictionless trade’ with the European Union.
And they urged politicians to work together to deliver on an agreement that avoids a disastrous no-deal outcome, saying the proposal on the table can help provide ‘certainty’ for the industry.
Theresa May also accused the SNP of trying to ‘frustrate the vote of the British people’ and of failing to listen to the majority of Scots who want to stay in the UK.
Appearing alongside Mr Ewing at a debate at the AgriScot farming conference in Edinburgh yesterday, NFU Scotland president Andrew McCornick said: ‘We’ve got a draft Brexit withdrawal deal put out there. As an industry we need certainty and this is part of the way of getting down this road.
‘It looks to me a bit like progress and we’ve been at this for two and a bit years. Our industry is the one that would suffer by far the greatest if there was a no deal. At least there is something on the table now. There is something there that is going to give what we asked for right from the very beginning – a way of getting this frictionless free trade.’
In a direct plea to the Scottish Government, he said: ‘With all the uncertainty around Brexit, we need the politicians to work together. We need Westminster, we need Holyrood, we need the parties within Westminster and within Holyrood, to be working together. It is too important to get this wrong at this stage; far too important.’
However, Mr Ewing responded by insisting that Nicola Sturgeon and Brexit Secretary Michael Russell had made clear that ‘we think the single market has been a good friend to the farming sector’.
Meanwhile, at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford urged Mrs May to go back to Brussels and renegotiate the terms of her deal.
He said: ‘Let us all work together to make sure that we protect the interests of people in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK.’
But Mrs May replied: ‘He says “let us all work together” but the position that he and his party have would frustrate the vote of the British people in relation to leaving the European Union. He talks about protecting jobs, and that is exactly what the deal we are proposing does.’