[Politics] Parliament to be recalled

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

100% and this goes for agriculture too. There is no coordinated food policy and we are producing less and less annually as we lose land to everything from housing and solar farms to rewilding and flood management projects.

Above all, we need policy that enables farmers to make a fair living from producing the food we all need. Otherwise the current crisis in British farming will take us past the point of being able to recover - just like steel and other industries.

Ukraine and now the current global trade crisis continue to underline the folly of relying on imports of the foods that we can produce in the Uk.

It is a 'free market'. They can charge what they like.
Albeit supermarkets may then find it cheaper to import from Holland and elsewhere.

Maybe we could put tariffs on foreign farm produce?

Edit: or maybe absolve them of paying fair taxes?

I suppose it all depends on whether UK farming can be regarded as strategically important.
Anyway, there are loads of Big farms and they don't seem bothered about the need for subsidies....

(Apologies for being provocative; we have discussed all this before, but its you who has brought it up again.
Personally, despite being a lefty, I am not in favour of subsidies to deal with unfair foreign competition.
If a product is cheap because it has been subsidized by the (Chinese) government or made by child/slave labour,
we should ban it.....)

 

[abc]

It is a 'free market'. They can charge what they like.
Albeit supermarkets may then find it cheaper to import from Holland and elsewhere.

Maybe we could put tariffs on foreign farm produce?

Edit: or maybe absolve them of paying fair taxes?

I suppose it all depends on whether UK farming can be regarded as strategically important.
Anyway, there are loads of Big farms and they don't seem bothered about the need for subsidies....

(Apologies for being provocative; we have discussed all this before, but its you who has brought it up again.
Personally, despite being a lefty, I am not in favour of subsidies to deal with unfair foreign competition.
If a product is cheap because it has been subsidized by the (Chinese) government or made by child/slave labour,
we should ban it.....)

Actually we are in agreement! Subsidies are not the answer and I think this applies to any industry. However, creating an environment whereby a Uk business can compete fairly is important.

Take the likelihood of a trade deal with Trump. This will probably permit the import of US hormone treated beef, These hormone treatments are banned in the Uk and the EU on food safety and animal welfare grounds (rightly so in my opinion) but they enable cattle to grow much faster and with less expensive feed and therefore significantly reduces the cost of production.Therefore US beef will undercut British beef as the hormone option will not be available to UK beef farmers.

The answer is either to continue to ban it, allow uk farmers to use hormones or put a tariff on hormone treated beef imports. All of these are in the hands of gov not farmers.

It’s a cliche, but I think all industry in the heavily regulated UK just wants a ‘level playing field’ not subsidies

 

[Albion my Albion]

I can't understand why nobody has a positive outlook on the world economy. Our positive vibes should trump all the negatives!

EDIT: When I first read the thread title I thought the MPs would have to be voted on.

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

From an emotional, "we should be making everything ourselves" point of view, then yes make the purchase.

But from a tax payer value point of view, the current owners are saying it's losing £700k per day and then add on whatever we're paying to nationalise it, that's a bit of wedge. We need to be pretty sure that's going to be more profitable in the future than it is now

 

[Official Old Man]

Nigel will be happy.

 

[Curious Orange]

Well, firstly 2,700 jobs are on the line, then there are many other manufacturing industries which feed off the steel produced at Scunthorpe that would need to source steel from abroad and that would jeopardise many other jobs as, no doubt those costs would increase.

There aren't any significant Iron ore reserves in the UK that could be extracted in any financial viable way, i.e. there would need to be huge reserves to be able to compete with seabourne trade which are traded on global markets. You would need to invest many millions before you even see a dime in return. There is very good coking coal in Wales which used to supply Port Talbot by rail but other smaller mines in England rely on moving material around in trucks which is not very environmentally friendly

Presumably you mean Aberpergwm? The closure of Ffos-y-Fran had a major impact on production in the UK and is the main reason all the heritage railways are having issues sourcing decent steam coal - the exhaust is noticeably blacker as the imported stuff doesn't burn as well (a double hit environmentally).

 

[Machiavelli]

Can they do the same with the Railways, The Electricity and Gas Supply and the Water?

They are doing it with the railways, but slowly.
Can't afford it with the water, I'd imagine.
We can circumvent the gas by going large on renewables.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Actually we are in agreement! Subsidies are not the answer and I think this applies to any industry. However, creating an environment whereby a Uk business can compete fairly is important.

Take the likelihood of a trade deal with Trump. This will probably permit the import of US hormone treated beef, These hormone treatments are banned in the Uk and the EU on food safety and animal welfare grounds (rightly so in my opinion) but they enable cattle to grow much faster and with less expensive feed and therefore significantly reduces the cost of production.Therefore US beef will undercut British beef as the hormone option will not be available to UK beef farmers.

The answer is either to continue to ban it, allow uk farmers to use hormones or put a tariff on hormone treated beef imports. All of these are in the hands of gov not farmers.

It’s a cliche, but I think all industry in the heavily regulated UK just wants a ‘level playing field’ not subsidies

I suspect that you and I probably agree about most things.
But you're not as vehement as @Guinness Boy with whom I violently agree about most things