UK farm and fisheries minister George Eustice has kept his job at Defra following Prime Minister Theresa May’s government reshuffle.
Mr Eustice was promoted to minister of state at the department yesterday and will work alongside newly appointed Defra secretary Andrea Leadsom, both of whom campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union.
"In 2011, with my MP colleagues Chris Heaton Harris and George Eustice, I founded the Fresh Start group of Conservative MPs," Leadsom wrote on Conservative Home.
"Our plan was to look in detail at every aspect of the EU, getting right under the bonnet of the huge engine of the European Commission.
"We want to look at how it currently affects our lives in the UK and specifically how, with fundamental reform, it could be so much better not just for the UK but for all of its members."
'Opportunity to give more to UK farmers'
During referendum campaigning, Mr Eustice said Brexit offered Britain an opportunity to give more to farmers than they do as members of the EU.
He drew attention to non-EU nations like Switzerland and Norway and how their governments gave more to farmers than the UK does.
"Where power has been ceded to the EU, we see inertia, inconsistency and indecision," he said.
"The achievements we cherish most of all are those where we have secured opt-outs from EU initiatives."
Eustice said the UK gives money to the EU, which they convert into foreign currency creating unnecessary exchange rate risks.
"The system has been through various changes over the years but remains a centralised and bureaucratic policy.
"In its current form, it attempts to codify and regulate almost every conceivable feature of our landscape and almost every conceivable thing a farmer might want to do with their land."
He said some 80% of legislation affecting DEFRA comes directly from the EU.
"It is all pervasive: how many farm inspections there must be in a given year; what proportion of those inspections must be random; how much a farmer must be fined if they make a mistake; how much they should be fined if they make the same mistake twice; the precise dimensions of EU billboards and plaques that farmers are forced to put up by law; the maximum width of a gateway; how we define a hedge; whether a cabbage and a cauliflower are different crops or should be deemed the same crop. The list goes on forever and it's stifling."
