Key facts
- Eagle said the £60 million figure comes from Horticultural Trades Association calculations of current trading costs.
- The deal is due to be signed at a UK-EU summit on November 20.
- Implementation is not expected until the first quarter of 2028.
- Provender Nurseries said it spent at least £500,000 on a control post that becomes obsolete under the deal.
- Eagle said the implementation date is later than the mid-2027 target set when Keir Starmer announced the EU reset in May 2025.
Angela Eagle, the environment secretary, said on November 13 that removing border checks and paperwork on plant imports would "dissolve" £60 million of annual costs for the horticulture industry once a UK-EU deal takes effect. She spoke during a visit to a plant nursery in Kent ahead of a UK-EU summit on November 20.
The sanitary and phytosanitary deal, largely agreed between the two sides in May, is due to be signed at the summit. It would remove most physical checks and most accompanying certificates and paperwork, saving plant health inspection fees, phytosanitary certificates, document and ID checks, port and agents' fees, additional labor costs and extra haulage costs. The £60 million figure comes from calculations by the Horticultural Trades Association and excludes late delivery penalties and sales lost to port delays or damage.
Eagle said the savings should put "downward pressure on food prices" but would not confirm the deal would lower UK food costs. She said the implementation date, expected in the first quarter of 2028, is later than the mid-2027 target set when Keir Starmer announced his EU reset deal in May 2025. Starmer's replacement by Andy Burnham led to a pause in negotiations, Eagle said, and the summit was pushed back from July.
Provender Nurseries, a wholesale nursery at Swanley in Kent, has spent at least £500,000 on a control post on its 20-acre site that will become obsolete under the deal. Managing director Richard McKenna said the company built the sealed building and bought four electric forklifts to inspect lorry loads of imported trees and shrubs, reducing delays and damage seen at government-run posts such as Sevington. He said he hopes the deal will persuade European suppliers to restart exports but that the company needs to see the small print.
Fran Barnes, chief executive of the HTA, called for pragmatic transition easements such as fewer or no checks on lower-risk imports. Eagle said the UK has continued to use some pesticides and fungicides banned in the EU, and that British potatoes grown in 2027 could need to be discarded if frozen chips made from them went on sale after implementation.