Former Defra secretary George Eustice has said the UK gave away 'far too much for far too little' in the free trade deal with Australia. Mr Eustice, who defended the agreement at the time, told a Commons debate that it was "not actually a very good deal for the UK". The then Prime Minister Boris Johnson heralded the deal as one of the great gains of Brexit.

When the deal was signed on 17 December 2021 the UK government claimed it would unlock £10.4bn of additional trade while ending tariffs on all UK exports. Speaking in the Commons the former minister admitted he ‘no longer has to put such a positive gloss on what was agreed’ before telling MPs the UK "gave away far too much for far too little in return’.

One of the worst concessions highlighted by Mr Eustice was giving Australia or New Zealand full access to the UK market to sell beef and sheep, while Australia still bans the import of British beef. The former minister also took aim at the Defra Minister at the time Liz Truss for rushing through the deal. He said the UK started negotiations "with the strongest possible hand" but negotiators were put "on the back foot" by Ms Truss who demanded that the terms of the deal were agreed before a meeting of the G7 in Cornwall on 11 June 2021. As a result the civil servants at the Department for International Trade (DIT) allowed Australian negotiators to "shape the terms" of the agreement to get completion for the G7 meeting.

In his stinging attack he said the UK needed to learn from these "failures" and move responsibility for negotiations on agriculture and food to Defra. Going as far as to call for the DIT’s top civil servant, Crawford Falconer, to be sacked.

He accused Mr Falconer of accepting concessions to Australian negotiators "often when they were against UK interest".

Responding in the debate International Trade Minister Andrew Bowie said all trade officials were "dedicated to bettering the trading relationship of this country". The Aberdeenshire MP said all of them "without exception, have this country's best interests at heart and are working day and night for this country".