The Thin End

The combination of companies abandoning 'fairtrade' commitments and the UK government's determination to scrap the DFID pose a significant threat to ethical trade.  Support for co-operatives and Fairtrade risks being diluted and diverted with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s "reckless" proposal to scrap DFID (Department for International Development), Labour has warned. Abandoning DFID isn't a new idea.  The Tories have been targetting it for some time.  Their arguments against it are that it spends far too much money,  but there is another,  more sinister reason.  It gets in the way of trade based on poverty wages.  There lies the rub of it.   They don't really want ethics to block trade deals.  In 1997, the then Labour government set up a dedicated Department for International Development, and over the next decade, the UK development budget tripled.  Support was targeted at the poorest, with work to promote good governance, encourage gro...