Ministers will have to take controversial decisions on sensitive issues from the NHS to food standards as they negotiate post-Brexit trade deals, a former government official warned.

David Henig, who left the Department for International Trade last month, said that it would be impossible to please everyone as Whitehall grappled with contradictory requests from campaigners and lobbyists.

Predicting that the government would face a backlash during trade talks, Mr Henig said that so far politicians had avoided discussing “trade-offs between competing interests, in which the government has to pick winners and losers”. He identified private contracts in the NHS and changes to agricultural standards as areas that could provoke debate, adding that a trade deal with the US would “present the greatest risk”.

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