M&S has backed the Prime Minister’s call for closer ties with the EU, to finish years of “Brexit bureaucracy”.

Speaking to The Telegraph, the supermarket’s head of food, Alex Freudmann, called on Keir Starmer to “move with pace” to remove the red tape governing trade across the Irish Sea.

The M&S executive argued regulations around shipments to Ireland were burdening it with millions of extra pounds of costs, holding up trucks and giving the business “paperwork that takes hours to complete”.

Freudmann said: “There is no difference in food standards between the UK and the EU so why do the rules pretend that there is?

“Five years on, it is time to put an end to the Brexit bureaucracy that burdens both UK and Irish businesses.”

It comes as Starmer aims to reset relations with the EU, having held talks with officials from the bloc over recent days, while the government has also made closer ties with the EU a key element of its growth plans.

Freudmann insisted the need to remove the bureaucracy was even greater “at a time when the UK’s food businesses and farmers need all the help they can get,” in the face of the inheritance tax on farms.

A spokesperson for the government said: “If we want to grow our economy, we need to reduce barriers to UK and EU trade.

“In the Government’s manifesto, we committed to tearing down unnecessary barriers to trade by seeking to agree a veterinary agreement with the EU – which could remove unnecessary checks and paperwork, and help tackle the cost of food.”

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