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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of whether giving subsidies to farmers in the UK in the event of a no-deal Brexit to assist them with the export of (1) lamb, and (2) beef, to the EU would be in breach of World Trade Organization rules.

The World Trade Organisation’s (WTO’s) rules covering agricultural subsidies are set out in the Agreement on Agriculture. A final assessment against these rules can only be made once a subsidy scheme has been designed in detail.

However, at the 10^th WTO Ministerial Conference in 2015 a decision was taken to fully eliminate any form of agricultural export subsidy as part of the ‘Nairobi Package’. This prevents the UK from putting in place measures such as: direct payments related to export performance; buying up non-commercial stocks of agricultural products and selling them overseas at less than domestic market value; or subsidising domestic or international transport costs for exported goods.