Briefings for Britain, April 14, Catherine McBride
Barry Gardiner MP’s Labour List article entitled Where the government has got it badly wrong on the UK-Australia trade deal – LabourList could be dismissed as laughable if he didn’t hold a position on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Commons Select Committee. One might have thought that an MP representing Brent North in suburban London, would be on EFRA to stand up for the common consumer, but in the case of Barry Gardiner you would be wrong. Instead, his Labour List article regurgitates anti trade talking points disguised as animal welfare concerns; worries about the livelihood of subsidised farmers in faraway constituencies; while overlooking the massive tariffs applied to imported food. Are there no MPs who will stand up for consumers?
Rather than the Government, it is Gardiner who seems to have ‘got it badly wrong’.
In his Labour List article, Mr Gardiner claims that: Currently more than a third of the beef we consume in the UK is imported (362,000 tons), but only 4,000 tons of it (1.1% of imports) comes in free of tariff. Although I am sure that the Treasury will be delighted to hear this news, I imagine that the Irish will be shocked. They have been supplying the UK with about 75% of its imported beef for years – without paying a penny in tariffs. For the record, according to TradeMap the UK’s 5-year average imports of edible beef and beef offal whether fresh, chilled, frozen, salted or dried, was only 280,000 metric tons of which 208,000 came from Ireland. I haven’t included live cattle or calves in this calculation, nor any non-edible bovine products such as leather hides or glue. But although his total import figure seems exaggerated – where did Gardiner get the tariff free number? Surely, he is aware that the UK signed a trade deal with the EU granting them continued tariff free and quota free access to the UK markets.
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