Labour blatantly lying about Freeports in new June 2025 Press Release
By avoiding “Freeports” and hyping “ports” as clean energy hubs, the government sidesteps scrutiny of Freeports’ failures.
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EUROPEANPOWELL
Keir Starmer’s Labour government is at it again, peddling a glossy vision of “prosperity” while concealing a corporate carve-up. The June 5, 2025, announcement of a draft revised National Policy Statement for Ports (NPSP) promises to “unlock opportunity” for Britain’s coastal communities, painting ports as the “lifeblood” of the UK economy.
But don’t be fooled. This vague, feel-good rhetoric is a smokescreen for Labour’s Freeports program, a £64 billion taxpayer-funded scam for 25 years that hands public wealth to corporate giants like BlackRock. As Scottish academic Alf Baird warned in his scathing 2023 exposé, The Freeport Ruse Exposed, Freeports are no saviour for struggling regions; they’re a colonial-style land grab. Labour’s latest dodge, calling Freeports “ports”, is a deliberate ruse to hide their privatised, deregulated reality.
Let’s tear through the lies.
‘New vision for UK ports will propel prosperity in Britain’s coastal communities’ is a new June 2025 press release from Labour that refers to ‘ports’ in the paper, which is a misnomer.
It is crucial to understand the difference between a port and a Freeport.
Ports are publicly owned, whereas Freeports are privately owned.
The NPSP: A Masterclass in Obfuscation
Labour’s June document, open for consultation until July 29, 2025, waxes lyrical about ports driving economic growth, clean energy, and jobs in coastal areas. It pledges faster planning consents to attract private investment, framing ports as public goods vital for trade and offshore wind. Sounds noble, right? Except it never once mentions the 12 Freeports—Teesside, Liverpool, Thames, and nine others. Instead, Labour’s Press Release uses the generic term “ports,” blurring the line between publicly accountable infrastructure and the deregulated, corporate-run Freeports.
You can read Labour’s glossy brochure version here with glowing recommendations from the likes of PEEL Ports https://gov.uk/government/news/new-vision-for-uk-ports-will-propel-prosperity-in-britains-coastal-communities
Freeports, designated zones with tax breaks and relaxed rules, are public-private partnerships skewed toward profit. The government’s own data shows £2.5 billion in state aid (public money) poured into Freeports by 2024: £1 billion in seed funding and £1.5 billion in tax breaks.
Teesside Freeport alone cost £560 million, with a 90/10 profit split—90% for private firms, 10% for the public. Yet, the NPSP dresses up these zones as “ports” serving “coastal communities,” dodging their corporate reality.
Alf Baird’s Warning: Freeports as Economic Colonialism
Baird’s 2023 article, published on Yours for Scotland, cuts through the government’s spin. He argues Freeports are a “ruse” to privatise public assets, likening them to colonial outposts where corporations exploit tax-free zones while locals get crumbs. In Scotland’s Firth of Forth and Cromarty Freeports, Baird sees a repeat of historical land theft, with public land handed to private operators under the guise of “levelling up.” He cites their track record: high job displacement, low economic impact, and risks of tax evasion and money laundering.
The UK’s 12 Freeports, Baird warns, are “not about community prosperity” but about “corporate sovereignty.”Alf Baird nailed it in The Freeport Ruse Exposed: Freeports are “effectively the creation of foreign-controlled and operated economic enclaves,” siphoning wealth from locals to global elites.
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2023/08/03/the-freeport-ruse-exposed/
Labour’s NPSP proves Baird’s point. By avoiding “Freeports” and hyping “ports” as clean energy hubs, the government sidesteps scrutiny of Freeports’ failures.
Freeports prioritise corporate profits over public good.
Freeports created just 5,600 jobs by 2024, with 66% (3,733) displaced, not new, not high skilled, costing £896,246 per genuine job.
The Commons Library confirms high displacement, with many low-skilled jobs offering little uplift. Yet, the NPSP claims ports will “double private investment” without addressing these dismal returns or Freeports’ corporate bias, like BlackRock’s 80% stakes in Felixstowe, Thamesport, and Harwich.
Why Hide Freeports? To Bury the Truth that Taxpayers’ Money is Being Used as Corporate Welfare Immediately After Brexit.
The NPSP’s silence on Freeports conceals a multi-billion taxpayer heist: £2.5 billion for Freeports and £17.28 billion for 74 SEZs by 2024, all state aid, public grants, ten-year tax breaks, 25-year licenses, and deregulated infrastructure. Free zones £1.5 billion in tax holidays and 25-year business rates retention starve councils, forcing cuts to services like Birmingham’s waste collection, where binmen strike against £8,000 pay cuts. The NPSP’s promise of “prosperity” ignores this, claiming ports will “strengthen our proud maritime nation” while the duopoly’s free zones Ponzi Scheme hoovering up of billions in public money could’ve funded hundeds of thousands of workers at the median salary, or 4.3 million children in poverty, or 1.2 million who are set to lose their entitlement to PIP disability benefits, or 6.5 million people in fuel poverty across England, Scotland, and Wales.
Labour’s dodge aligns with Baird’s critique: Freeports prioritize corporate profits over public good. The NPSP’s focus on “sustainable port development” and “clean energy” is a distraction, as Freeports’ data centres—powering AI Growth Zones linked to Freeports—consume energy rivaling small nations, threatening environmental spaces. The entire free zones project is a massive con, a “ruse,” Labour are rebranding Freeports as “ports” to mask their £64 billion projected cost by 2048. The Commons Library’s rosy “genuine economic opportunity” claim for SEZs crumbles under this evidence, yet the NPSP doubles down on the myth.
A Coastal Con, Not a Community Win
The NPSP’s vague prosperity-saturated rhetoric, with zero Freeport acknowledgment, hides Labour’s complicity in a bipartisan sellout. Tory mayors like Ben Houchen pushed Freeports, while Labour’s Mayors Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram sat on SEZ boards, funnelling £160 million in State aid per zone. The document’s claim that ports are “lockstep with the sector” for “prosperity” echoes this technopopulist lie, ignoring Freeports’ 0.2% economic impact, per the Business and Trade Committee. prof. Alf Baird’s warning of “foreign controlled enclaves” rings true as BlackRock and others pocket profits while councils collapse under defunded services.
Coastal communities deserve better than this con. The NPSP’s “new vision” is a rehash of failed promises, dressing up Freeports’ corporate plunder as public benefit. Freeports’ 10-year tax holidays and low-skilled jobs won’t lift locals; they’ll enrich elites while land is privatized, mirroring Baird’s colonial analogy.
Labour, Tories, and Reform UK all back deregulated free zones, 86 in total, with more on the way. Make no mistake, this represents a systematic dismantling of big government, carving up the UK into patchworks of corporate sovereignties by handing over governance powers to the private sector under ‘localised freedoms’. Labour is complicit with the so-called opposition parties, they are tailoring laws as services for the asset classes via massive deregulation. The nationwide free zones rollout was embedded with secondary legislation to prevent Parliamentary and public scrutiny.
All this will do is further entrench corporations’ disdain for contributing to and maintaining the public sector. We’ve all at some point approached a big problem by breaking it down into smaller, more manageable pieces, but what happens when you apply that metric to an entire country? This is what constitutes the ideology behind free zones.
Labour is repeating the same mistakes as the Tories on Freeports and SEZs, they were against them when in opposition, but secretly signed off on them immediately after Brexit, they lied then, they are lying to you now, you have to ask why.
Fight for public money to fund people, schools, wages, services, not corporate enclaves. The commons are ours, let’s reclaim them.
https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/44455/documents/221158/default/
This article (p) was created and published by Daily Sceptic and is republished here under “Fair Use”
https://europeanpowell.substack.com/p/labour-blatantly-lying-about-freeports
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