The shadow foreign secretary has claimed that Britain’s food industry will be unable to export to Australia after Brexit because products “will go off”.

Emily Thornberry was answering a question about the possible expansion of trade with Commonwealth countries after Brexit during a debate at the Royal United Services Institute, the security think tank, yesterday.

“The truth is the majority of our trade takes place with the European Union,” she said. “And things like our food industry, you can’t export it to Australia — it will go off.”

Her comments created confusion, not least because of the part that refrigerated food exports played in the economic development of New Zealand and Australia. The first refrigerated shipment of lamb left New Zealand aboard the Dunedin in