DEFRA Brexit negotiators are pursuing an abrupt 2019 end to UK farming's involvement in the Common Agricultural Policy.

While Prime Minister Theresa May has sought to calm business jitters with her plan for a two-year 'transition period' from the official April 2019 Brexit date, offering status quo stability into 2021, a throwaway comment by Scotland Office Under Secretary of State Lord Ian Duncan has revealed that Westminster wants UK farming out of Europe on April 1, 2019.

Speaking at NFU Scotland's autumn conference at Birnam in Perthshire, Lord Duncan stated, in answer to a question from the floor that "beyond 2019, it will fall to ScotGov to decide how farm subsidies can be paid".

Sharing the same platform, Holyrood's lead Brexit minister Mike Russell immediately asked for clarification, saying that recent conversations between Mrs May and Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon had revolved around a message of 'no change' before 2020 or 2021.

Mr Duncan clarified that while the level of money currently spent on farming had been guaranteed by Westminster til 2021, the sooner "we move to freedom to decide how to spend that the better". As such, Defra minister Michael Gove’s 'clear negotiating position' was to secure as early an exit as possible from both the CAP and the Common Fisheries Policy

Mr Russell retorted that if the UK was to have access to the Single Market til 2021, via a transition period, the EU might have something to say about a tide of UK agricultural goods produced under a different support system with different regulations.

As with all unresolved fights, this exchange was soon taken outside, as both ministers held separate press briefings to explore the implications of farming being first out from under the EU umbrella. A clearly flabbergasted Mr Russell said that it was 'very different' from what Holyrood had been told, which was that it was 'inconceivable' that agriculture and fishing could be separate from the rest of the transition arrangements.

“You can’t be both in and out – that has been the clear message from the EU,” he said.

NFU Scotland president Andrew McCornick commented: “The problem is they don’t understand we’re making long-term decisions in agriculture during all the uncertainty over the Brexit negotiations.

“Is the UK going to be giving the same money to the EU during the transition period and at the same time paying money for an agriculture policy? I don’t understand how it’s going to work."

As The Scottish Farmer went to press on Wednesday, the leaders of the UK's farming unions, fresh from a meeting with Defra minister Michael Gove, were preparing a joint statement on the matter, and anything Mr Gove may have said to soften this new Brexit blow remained under wraps.