HankScorpio

BBC NEWS | Politics | Whitehall's egg and bacon divide

Some government departments source less than 50% of their food from the uk.

Do they not understand that even if they save a few quid initially, surely uk food from uk suppliers who employ uk(ish) people who (mostly) pay uk taxes is a better deal for britain?

(there's also the green angle with transport costs etc but lets not go there.)

Little snippets:

- not one rasher of bacon and only 15% of chicken and 19% of lamb served to the UK armed forces by the Ministry of Defence is British.
- three-quarters of all lamb, fish, apples and pears served by the NHS supply chain were sourced abroad.
- Less than half of all government departments and agencies currently demand farm assurance standards, under which the vast majority of British food is produced. This opens the door to vast amounts of public money being spent on food that would be illegal to produce in this country.

j4ckos mate

A lot of uk chicken comes in by air from bangkok.

GC8

When it is whole its origin has to be declared, fortunately.

amahrap

Aye, you are correct - barking but each department's primary purpose is VFM for the taxpayer. We cannot buy British we can only buy cheap - thems the rules which we play by.

When you factor in Carbon targets the situation is obviously not right - but - the Carbon targets don't have primacy over VFM

David Lock

Most of this will be because of EC Regulations. If a public body buys goods over a certain value it has to go to open tender within EC and the best price, if the spec is met, rules.

Common sense plays no role in this.

UKIP is the answer

dl

TopBanana

Hold on a minute, are you saying we should ban meat imports? Why should there be different rules for the government and everyone else?

David Lock

Was that addressed to me? If I don't really know what you are asking. I'm not proposing to ban imports although I would support UK products within reason.

But there are different rules. If you want to go and buy a British car you can (are there any left?). But if you run a police service and want to replace your aging fleet with British cars then you can't unless a British company beats European suppliers' prices. dl

Klaatu

Ah politics! Remember why we remember the 5th of November? If only "the people" had the guts! Oh but they do!

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

It would make sense for the British Government to support British industry. Its better for us all in the long run if our goods are used. Importing stuff just costs us jobs, tax revenue etc etc.