Bernard Ginns: Will ministers sacrifice Yorkshire to keep AAA rating?

There are no real leaders in Europe because, as it stands, the eurozone has one currency but 17 different member states, which is why they cannot agree on anything meaningful to prevent this deepening crisis in confidence.

We do have leadership in the UK and that’s largely why we still have our AAA rating from the agencies that recommend how creditworthy our government borrowing should be.

At the weekend, the coalition Government’s plan to cut public spending received an important vote of confidence from the head of the World Bank.

Robert Zoellick said: “I believe what David Cameron is doing in the UK is really necessary.

“My concern would be if the politics knocked them off course.”

Ministers are coming under pressure to ease cuts, particularly to the police budget, in the face of social unrest.

And yesterday those calls grew louder yesterday as more evidence emerged of a growing North-South divide, the subject of the Yorkshire Post’s Fair Deal campaign.

A report by KMPG showed that job creation will fall sharply across Yorkshire but continue to increase in the South of England.

The professional services firm said it was concerned that efforts to rebalance the UK economy away from consumption towards exports and investment are being damaged by weak manufacturing confidence.

The manufacturing sector tends to be concentrated in the Midlands and North of England, areas which have relied heavily on public sector spending.

Take away the LEPs and the Regional Growth Fund, a relatively paltry £1.4bn, and the Government doesn’t really have a plan for growth for the whole of the UK. Significant investment in infrastructure, aligned to strategic objectives for key industries, is the only way forward. But would you sacrifice your AAA rating to pay for that?

The Government is more likely to sacrifice Yorkshire.

n IN the week when Britain’s underclass realised that it could run riot without harm or hindrance, a less visible, but no less dangerous, warning sign flashed up.

It concerns something that we all take for granted in this country, but in other parts of world is a commodity so scarce that people are dying through lack of it.

I am talking about food and the rising cost of paying for it. The warnings came from significant quarters: one from Nestlé, the world’s biggest food group, and the other from R&R Ice Cream, Europe’s largest own-label ice cream maker.

First, Paul Bulcke, chief executive of Nestlé, warned that “volatile raw material prices” would continue through 2011.

Like Kraft and Unilever, the Swiss-based group accelerated price increases in the last quarter to offset soaring commodity costs which hit 30-year highs this year.

Second, James Lambert, chairman and chief executive of R&R Ice Cream, warned about sharp hikes in the price of sugar.

The food company, one of the larger businesses in North Yorkshire with sales of approaching 500 million euros, said the cost of the sweetener was rising on a near-daily basis.

R&R has urged the European Union to increase quotas on production and to reduce tariffs on imports to Europe.

The European market is in an unusual position, following EU reforms that transformed the region from one of the biggest exporters of sugar to one of its biggest importers.

Sugar can only be imported to Europe from certain developing regions, such as Africa, the Caribbean and parts of the Pacific, which has led to shortages as a result of increased competition from other importing nations.

Poor harvests across the world and the increasing use of sugar cane for biofuel production have also contributed to price inflation.

Mr Lambert said: “When you go around buying everyone else’s surpluses in the world, you see very, very big price hikes when there’s a shortage. To me one of the things politicians have to do is provide stable food pricing.

“That affects people’s lives more than anything else in any society anywhere.”

He said that companies like R&R would have to increase prices by 10-25 per cent if the EU refuses to remove tariffs on imports.

And, significantly, he claimed: “Food has tipped past ever being cheap again.”

Inexpensive food, provided on scale by large supermarket groups, is something that UK families and businesses have relied upon for many years.

Big hikes in food prices will heap even more strain on the social contract that has already been found wanting in the last week or so.