Humber ports at greater risk of climate change than Brexit – Yorkshire Post Letters

WHILE there may be advantages for the owners if their ports are given freeport status, the case is quite weak (The Yorkshire Post, January 30).

Remember that the Government did not bother to renew freeport status for Liverpool and Southampton in 2012.

The main business advantage is reduced import duties, but only if the product is re-exported. The Government may give tax reductions, but they do this for lots of enterprise zones already. There is a limit to how much advantage businesses can receive before the WTO intervenes. Exports to the EU would just attract higher tariffs, so we would lose tax revenue and they would collect more.

I suggest that a much higher priority is to decide how our region can retain a port at all as the sea level inexorably rises.

Hull and Goole will both need massive sea defences and new raised access routes. By the end of the century a combined spring tide and storm surge could have seawater within sight of Selby.

Future governments wishing to save farmland from the sea will probably decide to dam the Humber just upstream of the bridge. On past form, I wouldn’t bet on them saving the coastal ports they have neglected for decades.

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