Former Tory minister and leading Brexit campaigner Michael Gove has called on the government to slash EU regulations on cannibalism which he claims have been holding back British industry.

“We need to take back control and abolish absurd rules preventing British industry from profiting from what is after all a valuable source of protein,” he said.

“If there are regulations which hold any business here back, we now have the potential to rescind them – our lambs need no longer remain silent !” Mr Gove told an audience of vampires, ghouls and other anthropophagites in central London this week.

“Should we waste good money and resources deporting EU nationals when we could be eating them?” he asked.

“Why stop at Danish pastries and German sausage when we could be munching the whole Dane, and German’s sausages,” he asked, explaining that legalising cannibalism could provide both a much needed boost for British meat packing industry and a cheap source of healthy protein for poor Brits who have been forced to rely on food banks.

Gove suggested that the establishment of new abattoirs on green-field sites around the Solent would allow for the effective processing of what promised to be a glut of tasty Europeans and would also in future allow quick processing of unwanted arrivals on the south coast.

“And while we’re at it we can privatise the blood banks. As my good friend Norman Tebbit has long suggested,” he said, pointing out that you can’t beat a breakfast of gently fried slices of black pudding topped with a fried egg.

Gove formerly served as Education secretary under David Cameron but was removed from his post following a series of unfortunate incidents in school kitchens.

More recently, he was appointed editor of Unbelievable Bastard magazine following a surge of popularity after research by Rochdale Community University demonstrated that it was physically impossible for anyone to see a photograph of him and not spontaneously mutter the word TWAT.