Monday, August 10, 2020
Another sweetener for the Prime Minister's allies?
Following on from yesterday's post about how the friends and allies of Boris Johnson have somehow secured lucrative government contracts, the Independent reports on another astonishing, but altogether different phenomenon.
The paper says that Tate and Lyle Sugars is in line to save £73m from a post-Brexit trade shake-up, after campaigning to leave the EU and donating money to the Conservatives. The company has secured “a sweet deal” that will also see cane imported from countries with lower employment and environmental standards.
The allegations come from Greenpeace, but the firm said it was “a complete fantasy” that it wanted to import cheap, poorly produced sugar, under a shake-up at the end of the year, and defended its lobbying:
The controversy comes after the government said companies will be able to import 260,000 tonnes of raw sugar cane from anywhere in the world, tariff-free, from January.
However, the only company that currently imports raw sugar cane is Tate & Lyle – one of the few large employers that publicly backed Brexit.
Its name was also carried on the lanyards worn by everyone who attended the 2017 Tory conference, a sponsorship is recorded as an £8,000 donation by the Electoral Commission.
The new tariff-free quota equates to a £72.8m saving, according to analysis by Greenpeace’s Unearthed investigations team.
It is being introduced after a long and public lobbying campaign by the company. Greenpeace said Tate & Lyle had held at least 10 meetings with senior ministers over the last three years.
Greenpeace is particularly concerned as they believe ditching tariffs on raw cane sugar will boost imports from a handful of countries, all of which use pesticides banned in the UK for being harmful to wildlife and humans.
As ever with these issues we will have to see how that pans out.
The paper says that Tate and Lyle Sugars is in line to save £73m from a post-Brexit trade shake-up, after campaigning to leave the EU and donating money to the Conservatives. The company has secured “a sweet deal” that will also see cane imported from countries with lower employment and environmental standards.
The allegations come from Greenpeace, but the firm said it was “a complete fantasy” that it wanted to import cheap, poorly produced sugar, under a shake-up at the end of the year, and defended its lobbying:
The controversy comes after the government said companies will be able to import 260,000 tonnes of raw sugar cane from anywhere in the world, tariff-free, from January.
However, the only company that currently imports raw sugar cane is Tate & Lyle – one of the few large employers that publicly backed Brexit.
Its name was also carried on the lanyards worn by everyone who attended the 2017 Tory conference, a sponsorship is recorded as an £8,000 donation by the Electoral Commission.
The new tariff-free quota equates to a £72.8m saving, according to analysis by Greenpeace’s Unearthed investigations team.
It is being introduced after a long and public lobbying campaign by the company. Greenpeace said Tate & Lyle had held at least 10 meetings with senior ministers over the last three years.
Greenpeace is particularly concerned as they believe ditching tariffs on raw cane sugar will boost imports from a handful of countries, all of which use pesticides banned in the UK for being harmful to wildlife and humans.
As ever with these issues we will have to see how that pans out.
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Tate & Lyle has long been owned by an American conglomerate, of course. What may be less known is that David Davis, arch-Brexiteer, is a former T&L executive.
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