Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 13 December 2017 to Question 118331, what progress has been made on the programme of analytical work into understanding how withdrawal from the EU will affect the UK; and if she will publish the interim findings of that work.

This analysis only applies to England as agricultural policy is devolved.

As part of our preparations to leave the EU, we have carried out a rigorous programme of analytical work that has assessed the impact of various EU exit scenarios on the UK farming sector.

Part of that programme has included modelling work co-funded by the four UK agricultural departments. In August 2017, the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI-UK) published this analysis in the report “Impacts of Alternative Post-Brexit Trade Agreements on UK Agriculture: Sector Analyses Using the FAPRI-UK Model”. It considers the impact of different trading scenarios on many farming commodity sectors. The full report is available on the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute website here:

https://www.afbini.gov.uk/sites/afbini.gov.uk/files/publications/FAPRI-UK%20Brexit%20Report%20-%20FINAL%20Clean.pdf

In addition, the evidence and analysis paper which accompanied the publication of the Agriculture Bill (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-future-for-food-farming-and-the-environment-policy-statement-2018) provides analysis of the various ways farmers are likely to be affected by the movement from the area based payments of the Common Agricultural Policy to being rewarded for the public goods they produce under Environmental Land Management.