Andrew Bowie MP has said the SNP “are no friends of rural Scotland and Scotland’s farmers” as he defended trade deals between the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Responding for the UK Government on a Commons debate about the international deals struck to increase trade Andrew spoke as the first Scottish Conservative Minister outside the Scotland Office for 25 years.
Andrew backed trade deals removing tariffs with Australia and New Zealand, twinned with protections for the likes of Scottish Lamb, which offer the opportunity of growth in “every part of our country”.
He said: “Our free trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand are game-changing deals.
“They demonstrate that the UK is a confident, outward-looking, free-trading country that is ready to grab the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.”
He also took time to highlight the SNP Scottish Government’s track record on agriculture - holding back gene editing technology, leaving farmers in the dark without a post-Brexit agriculture scheme, and their aim to rejoin the maligned Common Agricultural Policy.
“The SNP are no friends of rural Scotland and Scotland’s farmers,” he said.
“If they were friends of Scotland’s farmers, they would have voted with us, as the National Farmers Union of Scotland wanted them to do, on the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill.
“If they were true friends of Scottish farmers, they would have listened to the National Farmers Union of Scotland, which has accused the SNP Government of operating in an ‘information void’ due to the lack of information and slow progress of Scotland’s post-Brexit agriculture Bill.
“They say that they are friends of Scottish farmers, but when did the Scottish Government’s own agriculture and rural development board last meet? It was 10 months ago…
“They are political opportunists who think that they can still get away with professing one thing in this place and practising another in Scotland, tied as they are to their Luddite partners in Government, the Green party.”
