With little over five weeks to go before the end of the EU withdrawal period, agreements in some areas have been reached between the EU and UK in trade negotiations.

But the subjects of fisheries and state aid rules are still major obstacles to progress as the negotiations reach their final stages. We have therefore urged both the UK and EU to avoid the catastrophe of a no-deal Brexit at all costs.

Only recently we’ve heard Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs George Eustice acknowledge on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show that the sheep sector would face particular challenges in no-deal scenarios due to tariffs on lamb exports to the EU of around 40 per cent. But he tried to play the impact down for agricultural sectors.

The reality is that failure to reach a trade deal would have a catastrophic impact for our key agricultural sectors. And that would hit home very quickly, with the sheep industry likely to feel the impact most acutely. It would also cause untold disruption to food and other supply chains and complete anarchy at our ports.

Such a failure would also have devastating impacts for EU businesses, and it is therefore in both the EU and UK’s interest to ‘pull out all the stops’ to reach a deal. We have also rebuffed claims by Prime Minister Boris Johnson that the UK ‘will prosper’ without an EU trade deal.

Let’s be clear you cannot cut yourself off from the world’s biggest economy and trading bloc in the height of a global pandemic, the worst recession for a century and having borrowed a quarter of a trillion to cope and think it’s going to go well.

Not only would this amount to catastrophic self harm from an economic point of view, but at a practical level the country is woefully unprepared to cope with the flow of goods over our borders and all the paperwork and checks that this requires.

While EU ports facing the UK have undertaken significant changes to prepare for different Brexit scenarios, many UK ports are still in the early stages of planning new infrastructure and will not be prepared to cope with the movement of goods until at least July next year.

Even if a deal is reached, we are facing significant additional costs and disruption as a result of non-tariff barriers due to the UK’s decision to leave the Single Market and customs union. There is no question in our mind - no-deal will severely escalate these and must be avoided at all costs.