The UK and EU are close to finalising an agriculture agreement that would reduce Brexit trade barriers, but it would not wipe out all the paperwork that keeps exporters trapped in the system. Peers on the House of Lords European affairs committee were told on Tuesday that the sanitary and phytosanitary, or SPS, agreement would have a “modest” impact on the UK economy, even as it could reopen sales of Scottish langoustines and oysters.
Who Pays for the Border
The deal would end physical checks on farm produce and remove the need for veterinary certificates, which cost £200 each. It could also scrap the requirement to label food as “Not for EU”, a rule William Bain, head of trade policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, described as “a significant problem” for wholesalers and distributors. Those are the people left to absorb the costs, delays, and administrative drag created by the border regime, while the institutions above them debate how much friction is acceptable.
Bain, who is Scottish, said the agreement could reopen the door for exports of Scottish langoustines and molluscs. Before Brexit, he said, they would be fished and diners in Paris could be eating them within a day. Many exports stopped because border checks reduced the seafood’s shelf life. The damage was not abstract: the trade system itself made the product less usable, and the people who catch and move it were the ones forced to live with the consequences.
Even with an SPS deal, the paperwork machine would keep grinding. British exporters would still have to fill out customs, VAT, and safety and security declarations. So while the agreement may trim some of the most visible barriers, the underlying apparatus of control remains in place, just with fewer forms in one place and more in another.
Dynamic Alignment, or Taking Orders by Another Name
Labour’s plan to reduce trade barriers for food exporters would mean applying all future EU rules and regulations in relation to farm produce under what is known as “dynamic alignment”. Under negotiation is an agreement to accept the 76 laws that have either been passed in Brussels or from which the UK has already diverged in the farm food area. The language is technical, but the structure is plain enough: regulatory authority is being handed around by institutions that decide for everyone else.
On Tuesday, peers were told that the UK could have pursued an alternative path such as the “mutual recognition” of food standards that supports trade between New Zealand and the UK. That would have removed the need for dynamic alignment with the EU, said Shanker Singham, chair of the Growth Commission and a past adviser to some MPs on alternative arrangements for Brexit in Northern Ireland. He said the UK had significant commercial heft in talks, with about 23% of the EU’s global exports of agrifood going to the UK, with “much less” going the other way.
This imbalance exists partly because the EU implemented all Brexit rules in Dover and beyond from day one, with up to 20,000 British businesses stopping exports to the bloc as a result. The UK, however, never applied the border controls in the same way, eventually opting for random inspections on fresh food. The result was not a clean break but a lopsided regime in which one side enforced the rules hard and the other side hesitated, leaving businesses caught in the middle.
What the Negotiators Call Leverage
Singham said the trade imbalance gave Keir Starmer a huge buyer’s advantage in talks. “The interesting thing here is that the UK government hasn’t really used the leverage it has,” he said. He suggested the UK could pursue an alternative system where both sides would “mutually recognise” their standards, as New Zealand and Australia do, rather than dynamically align with the EU. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get,” he told peers. “One has to be very, very careful when one is giving away one’s own regulatory authority in any area.”
Sam Lowe, head of trade and market access practice at Flint Global, said the advantage of dynamic alignment was that “physical inspections would pretty much disappear”, something a New Zealand-Australian style mutual recognition deal would not afford. “What we’re actually asking for is the EU to recognise our dynamic alignment, and in doing so, treat our exporters better,” he said. “The EU exporters have an advantage because the UK recognises their rules. So what we are actually doing is asking them to give us something back on that,” he added.
So the deal is being sold as relief, but it still runs through the same hierarchy of rule-makers, negotiators, and trade specialists. The people at the bottom get fewer checks in one lane and more declarations in another, while the institutions above them decide which version of friction counts as progress.