Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Supplementary memorandum submitted by British Sugar

EMPLOYMENT GENERATED BY THE UK BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY

  The UK beet sugar industry is a complex and integrated industry which is primarily located in the rural arable areas of England (ie from North Yorkshire to Essex in Eastern England, as well as from Lancashire to Oxfordshire in the west).

  The industry generates employment both directly and indirectly through the many activities associated with it (eg haulage, raw materials supply, seed trade, agricultural supply trades, power generation, horticulture, retailing, design and process engineering etc).

  The most authoritative independent work examining the economic and employment significance of the industry was carried out in 1994 by the University of Reading. Their report "The Economic Impact of the British Beet Sugar Industry"[11]evaluates these effects in detail, including the employment linkages throughout the UK economy.

  The report concludes that "approximately 23,000 jobs are generated directly and indirectly by the existence of beet sugar production and processing in the UK". Economic multipliers of between 1.7 and 5.5 for different components of the industry are used to arrive at this conclusion.

  It also states that: ". . . the British beet sugar industry has an economic significance that stretches well beyond the first impressions of farming and factory processing. In many regards it is an integral and important part of economic activity in the food industry, and policy makers should recognise the knock-on effects that may be generated as a result of their decisions on farm policy for sugar production".

  Since the report was released, three small factories have been closed with the loss of about 100 direct jobs and 1,000 growers have stopped growing the crop. However, the overall scale of the industry (measured in terms of sugar and co-product output and power generation) has actually increased over this same period of time.

17 May 2004



11   The Economic Impact of the British Beet Sugar Industry, by Professor The Lord Peston (Emeritus Professor of Economics at Queen Mary College, London) Dr David Hallam (Senior Economics lecturer at the University of Reading) and Dr Peter Midmore (Lecturer in Economics at the University of Wales), November 1994. Back


 
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