Former British prime minister Boris Johnson was warned that the UK was repeating the mistakes of the UK-Australia trade deal by being too soft in its negotiations with India, according to a letter seen by the Financial Times.
The then agriculture secretary George Eustice wrote to Johnson on June 27 to complain that an internal Whitehall agreement designed to avoid a repeat of the one-sided concessions made to Australia on food exports had been “watered down”.
“We cannot risk another outcome such as Australia where the value of the UK agri-food market access offer was nearly double what we got in return,” Eustice wrote after the conclusion of the fourth round of UK-India trade negotiations.