Aligning with EU on genetically modified food and agricultural products will create a regulatory cliffedge for a sector which has investors queuing and in which Britain has the chance to lead the world, says Matthew Bowles

Last week, Sir Keir Starmer unveiled plans that could risk quietly derailing one of Britain’s fastest-growing scientific sectors, all in the name of “alignment”. Starmer announced controversial plans to reopen the post-Brexit EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, raising many eyebrows. Among the proposals discussed during the Summit were extending European trawlers’ access to UK waters until 2038 and an agreement for the United Kingdom to dynamically align its agri-food standards with the EU.

Much of the commentary has since focused on fishing rights and food trade. But buried beneath these headline-grabbers is a deeply concerning – and largely ignored – detail, the reintroduction of the EU’s Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) regime, a strict set of rules governing food and agricultural products that could heavily restrict gene editing applications. Whilst it may sound like dry trade policy, for the UK’s flourishing gene editing sector, it’s a regulatory iceberg.

Picture a biotech lab in Cambridge. White coats, centrifuges humming, and a team of scientists celebrating a breakthrough in gene editing that promises to revolutionise crop yields or eliminate a rare disease. A queue of investors are lined up, start-ups are scaling, and Britain, finally free of the EU’s scientific red tape, is leading the world in this cutting-edge field.

Then suddenly, this is no longer possible. Under the guise of regulatory “cooperation,” realignment with EU rules would re-impose the very framework that drove our brightest innovators overseas in the noughties. This isn’t just hypothetical; it’s a political decision unfolding in real time.

In the early 2000s, Europe became a hostile environment for biotech innovation, particularly relating to gene editing and genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Driven by the........

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