Thread by @Jim_Cornelius

@DCBMEP Rubbish. Yet again economical with the truth and outright false!

Let's take the claim "50% on New Zealand lamb".

Here's the tariff schedule. 0204230011 (Other meat of sheep; fresh or chilled Boneless; of domestic sheep; of lamb).

trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/trade-tariff/c…

@DCBMEP This is part of the schedule.

Can you see all the 0% for FTA partners and developing countries? I've highlighted a few of the more interesting ones.

There a many more not in the screenshot. I've also highlighted the tariff rate quotas (TRQ) for New Zealand and Uruguay.

@DCBMEP Here are the tariff rate quotas for New Zealand for this year. Only the top three (09013, 092109, 09211) need concern us as 092202 is for beef. You may have noticed the number 092109 on the previous screenshot.

ec.europa.eu/taxation_custo…

@DCBMEP Here's the link to the quota details.

I took this screenshot a couple of days ago.

About 128 thousand tonnes remaining for this year up to 24th July

ec.europa.eu/taxation_custo…

@DCBMEP This is a graph produced by the New Zealand Meat Board It shows that for the last few years, at least NZ have not been hitting 100% of their quota allocation for sheepmeat exports to the EU.

So all NZ lamb has been coming in at 0% tariff under quota.

ec.europa.eu/agriculture/si… …

@DCBMEP The EU has many FTAs which mean zero tariffs for the majority of goods and an extensive GSP preference scheme for developing countries. Under EBA this means zero tariffs and duties.

A full list of preferences and FTA countries is on this UK Govt website.

gov.uk/government/pub…

@DCBMEP If you take the EU-27, the overseas territories, our FTA partners and all of the countries on preferences and put them in a single list so show where the UK trades at zero and preferential duties you get this list of 188 countries and territories.

@DCBMEP What remains are the countries with which the UK trade nominally on WTO rules.

There are 40 countries and territories remaining.

But even here there are exceptions. For instance tariff rate quotas as in the New Zealand lamb example given earlier.

@DCBMEP By the way, it's worth pointing out that before the UK joined the EEC we had a tariff on New Zealand lamb of 8%. Also 15% on cheese from outside the Commonwealth.

This is from Hansard. The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Fred Peart speaking.

api.parliament.uk/historic-hansa…