Ferrari Takes Clegg To Task Over Claim Food Prices Will Soar After Brexit

17 October 2016, 07:44 | Updated: 17 October 2016, 08:21

Nick Ferrari has accused Nick Clegg of scaremongering after the former Deputy Prime Minister claimed the price of chocolate and cheese will soar if Britain leaves the EU.

Mr Clegg insists that if Britain leaves the European Single Market, the tariffs that we'll be forced to pay to import products will force prices up significantly.

But Nick labelled him "Mystic Clegg" and accused him of scaremongering.

Mr Clegg told LBC: "What I'm taking at face value is what Liam Fox and others have said. Crispin Blunt, the Conservative chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee has said it's no problem if we leave not only the EU but the single market in the Customs Union because we can, as they put it, resort to WTO tariffs, the World Trade Organisation, which is this big global organisation every one - 160-odd countries - sit together thrashing out trade deals.

"So what I, not just myself by the way, a number of independent experts who've helped me with this report, have looked at what the tariffs would be if we did what they say, not what I say."

However, Nick said: "What? If we had no deal in place? That's never going to happen. That is scaremongering, you are a scaremongerer."

But Mr Clegg insisted: "Senior members of our government and of the Conservative Party are saying that they want this hard Brexit in which we leave and we resort to WTO terms regardless of whether we have an interim trade deal in place.

"If you don't have an interim trade deal in place, I'm just using this report to spell out what that might mean for one sector, which is the food and drink sector. It so happens to be a disproportionately important one to our economy, but it's nonetheless a sort of bellwether sector for the economy as a whole.