The UK will have a “voice in the room” but no vote on European Union food policies as part of a so-called “Brexit reset” to reduce red tape, EU relations minister Hamish Falconer has told the BBC.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham hopes to agree a deal at a summit on Friday but critics have said a reset will make the UK “a rule taker” but not a rule maker.

Falconer said the UK will be involved in a process to shape the rules and said the deal could help bring down prices for shoppers.

The reset would not involve any upfront payments, Falconer added, but made it clear there could well be an “exit clause” in case a future UK government reversed the closer alignment.

Falconer said it was “reasonable” to consider what would happen if a future Conservative or Reform government wanted to undo the new arrangements.

“The EU is worried about that and you can see why,” he said.

The BBC understands that the clause is a result of EU concerns about the possible cost of having to rebuild facilities for border food safety checks which were put in place following Brexit.

The reset means they will be dismantled.

In September, the Conservative Party said it was “raising the alarm” over the government’s planned reset, saying it would leave British consumers and businesses “dangerously exposed, with no input on how regulations are made or power to reject them”.

Both the Conservatives and Reform have said they would undo the planned reset if they were in power.

The prime minister has said he believes there is a “win-win” deal to be had with the EU.

Speaking at a Marks & Spencer food court in central London, Falconer said the deal would help bring down costs for firms importing food.

“This will mean less cost for supermarkets, and I hope that less cost then turns into cheaper produce on the shelves,” he said.

He said currently “pages and pages” of form-filling meant some suppliers had given up exporting to the EU and some products, such as Lincolnshire sausages, meant they were almost impossible to export at all.

Some M&S trucks require over 300 pages of documents for food exports, from export health certificates, phytosanitary certificates, visits from vets and border check paperwork.

Some exports are rejected for having the wrong colour of ink on forms, or an inaccurate Latin name for cooked meats.

“The amount of paperwork you would need to do, the amount of uncertainty – you have to have it in the right pen colour, if it’s not black, it might be refused,” Falconer said.

“If you’re selling Cox apples from Kent, they have to wait a day before they go into the European Union.”

The reset could also mean “tearing up” checks that were introduced on goods flowing from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, following Brexit, he said, as well as separate “Not for EU” labelling.

Falconer said the impact of the reset deal for food would be an additional £5bn.

The whole deal to be signed on Friday is calculated to add 0.4% to UK GDP.

This wider agreement includes aligning emissions trading rules, and agreeing to a youth mobility scheme, as well as the reset on food trading.

Tom Bradshaw, president of the National Farmers’ Union, welcomed reduced border inspections and paperwork but said that for the NFU it was “a moment of opportunity and risk” with farmers waiting to see what carve-outs and transitional arrangements would be included.

Trade volumes in food exports to the EU had “fallen significantly – by over a third” since 2019, he said.

But the UK should take a “pragmatic” approach to implementing any new rules.

He raised pesticides and precision breeding – or gene edited crops – as areas where he hoped some compromise would be found.

UK firms are, for example, developing tomatoes engineered to contain extra vitamin D.

Historically the EU has had much stricter rules on gene-editing, but this year relaxed regulations.

Falconer said people would have to “wait and see the detail” in this area.

He said there were bound to be compromises and trade-offs in any deal but that where the UK had advantages the government wanted to make sure “those aren’t lost under the deal”.

Another contentious area has been crisp flavourings, with concerns raised that stricter EU rules on certain ingredients might limit the sale of some popular snack flavours in the UK.

“I want to take this opportunity to absolutely stamp down on misinformation about smoky bacon crisps,” Falconer said.

Post-Brexit the UK had stayed “pretty closely aligned” to European food safety standards, he said.

Two leading snack brands had already adapted their recipes to accommodate EU rules, an example of the kind of alignment that would happen whether or not there was a reset of UK-EU relations.

“The truth is, almost every business in this country that wants to export food or drink will be aligning with EU rules because it’s our biggest market.

“Lots of people, like the good people at Walkers and Frazzles have made these changes already, so I would want to reassure people, particularly smoky bacon fans, it’s okay,” he said.