Farming

The UK government believes it is on the brink of a deal to ends months of deadlock with the Scottish and Welsh governments over an alleged “power grab” after Brexit.

Liam Fox has defended the controversial practice of disinfecting chicken with chlorine, reopening a cabinet rift over whether post-Brexit food standards should be lowered to facilitate a trade deal with the US.

Senior EU figures have have hit back at Liam Fox’s “ignorant and indigestible” claim that lowering UK food standards to allow the import of chlorinated chicken from the US is an insignificant detail.

Slashing regulations for farmers will be the government’s key priority for the agriculture sector as Britain leaves the European Union, the environment secretary, Andrea Leadsom, has promised.

Britain can jettison hundreds of costly agricultural regulations which have pushed up food prices, offsetting the extra costs of European Union tariffs, according to a report by a free market thinktank.

The chancellor has been told to go further after promising to invest billions of pounds in projects currently funded by the EU after the UK leaves the union.

Andrea Leadsom, the new environment secretary, supports foxhunting and once said she wanted to end farming subsidies.