Ewing and Duncan clash over post-brexit planning

While rural businesses were yesterday urged to ignore the current uncertainties – “take the wheel” and push ahead with postbrexit plans – there was political disagreement over just how well-placed the Scottish Government was to do the same with its plans for future rural policy.

Speakingatscottishland & Estates’ (SLE) annual conference in Edinburgh yesterday, Scotland’s rural economy cabinet secretary Fergus Ewing said that the lack of clarity from the UK government on the three key areas of policy funding, labour availability and trade agreements made formulating any meaningful future strategy impossible.

“Who could draw up a business plan when the funding and the rules of the game remained unknown?” asked Ewing.

He said that despite the UK government’s assurance that farm support funding would be “at least the same” as current levels up until the end of the current parliament, no assurance had yet been given by the Treasury over funding of key rural development schemes such as the less favoured area payments made to Scotland’s hill farmers and for agri-environment support, a proportion of which currently came from EU coffers.

However, the under-secretary 0 Fergus Ewing demanded clarity from UK government of state for Scotland Lord Ian Duncan argued that UK farmers – and the Scottish Government – currently had more certainty over funding than their European counterparts. He told the conference: “While the UK government has promised to sustain similar levels of payment to the current spending all the way through to 2022, the rest of Europe is beginning yet another reform of the common agricultural policy – which is likely to see major changes introduced to schemes and spending levels by 2020.”

Turning to trade agreements, Duncan said that EU negotiators were specialists in the “last-minute” approach to such talks – but said that in the current circumstances such a strategy was counterproductive. “There is no excuse to delay things to the last possible moment when everyone needs clarity at an early stage,” he said.

On labour availability, he said that it was wrong to think that the UK was set 0 Lord Duncan criticised EU negotiators’ tactics to pull up the drawbridge on immigration. He also said that the availability of migrant labour was an issue which went well beyond Brexit, with the growth in the economies of many other eastern European countries taking the “push” factor away from such movements.

Earlier in the conference SLE chairman David Johnstone had urged rural businesses to take control of their own destiny and to meet the challenges of Brexit “head on”, rather than using them as an excuse for holding fire. He said the failure to adapt to the current uncertainties and the post-brexit landscape could have farreaching consequences for generations to come.

He said that it was crucial for businesses to get as much information as possible on the impacts of Brexit.

“However, the reality is that change was heading our way regardless, most notably in terms of agricultural support,” he said.