A BREXIT deal between the UK and EU is set to be announced this morning, with bad news for part of Scotland’s “booming” farming industry.

According to widespread reports on the contents of the deal, seed potatoes – a multi-million-pound Scottish export – will not be included in the list of UK crops allowed into the EU from January 1.

The SNP have described the news as a “devastating blow” to the sector.

With the Warwick Study already having estimated Scotland has lost more than £3.94 billion as a result of Brexit, the party’s food and rural affairs spokesperson stressed there is only one way to avoid the UK “selling Scotland’s farming and fishing industry out”.

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MP Deidre Brock said: "If these reports are true, it would be a terrible negotiating failure on the part of the Tory Government - and a devastating blow to an extremely valuable part of Scotland's booming farming industry.

"Scottish seed potato exports to the EU are worth millions each year - but that is being threatened by Boris Johnson's plans for an extreme Tory Brexit that Scotland didn't vote for.

"It is clear that the Tories are selling Scotland's farming and fishing industry out and planning a total betrayal of our rural communities - with a hard Brexit that will cause serious and lasting damage to exports, jobs, living standards, businesses and the economy.

"Scotland has been completely ignored by Westminster throughout the Brexit process.

The National:

“The only outcome possible at this late stage is a very thin and bad deal. It is clearer than ever that the only way to properly protect Scotland's interests and our place in Europe is to become an independent country."

Hannah Bardell, the SNP MP for Livingston, added: "I wasn’t aware of the importance of seed potatoes until I spent three years working in the north east, meeting many farmers who exported them.

"This is devastating and just another reminder of the rank incompetence of Boris and the destruction of Brexit."

Negotiations continue in Brussels this morning – reports had anticipated a deal to be announced earlier, but Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney told RTE Radio there had been “some sort of last-minute hitch” over the small print of the fisheries agreement.

Reports have suggested the UK has offered a deal where it will take back the right to land 25% of what the EU currently takes from British waters, phased in over five-and-a-half years.

As the battle to spin the situation began, French sources reportedly claimed the UK had made “huge concessions”, especially on fisheries – a symbolically important issue on both sides of the Channel.

The Office for Budget Responsibility had forecast that a No-Deal Brexit could wipe 2% off gross domestic product in 2021, adding to the damage to jobs and livelihoods already caused by coronavirus.

But the details of the deal – expected to be around 2000 pages long – will be closely scrutinised to see where either side has compromised.

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Any deal Johnson secures is likely to pass through Parliament with Labour expected not to oppose it – Sir Keir Starmer has said that an agreement with the EU would be in the national interest.

Hilary Benn, the Labour chairman of the Commons Future Relationship with the EU Committee, told the BBC he had “no doubt” Parliament would back it because “the alternative is No-Deal and that really doesn’t bear contemplation”.

But in a sign of the political difficulties Johnson may face, the European Research Group (ERG) of hardline pro-Brexit Tory MPs said they would scrutinise any deal in great detail.

But it is not only hardcore Eurosceptics who could be critical of a deal. Lord Barwell, Theresa May’s former chief of staff, said “the truth is the deal means the introduction of significant barriers to free trade” through customs and regulatory checks.