New freeports unveiled in bid to boost trade and create jobs

EIGHT low-tax “freeports” have been announced in a bid to encourage new businesses to set up shop in England.

East Midlands Airport, Felixstowe and Harwich, the Humber region, the Liverpool City Region, Plymouth, Solent, Thames and Teesside are all set to benefit from the status.

Rishi Sunak said the “special economic zones with different rules to make it easier and cheaper to do business” would come with simpler planning, cheaper customs – with favourable tariffs, VAT or duties – and lower taxes, with “tax breaks to encourage construction, private investment and job creation”.

Stephen Barclay, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has previously said the areas could be fully operational by the end of the year.

Freeports work by allowing companies to import goods tariff-free, paying once they have been sold into the domestic market, or exporting the final goods without paying UK tariffs.

The areas were promised by the Conservative Party in its 2019 manifesto, and they have long been a political project of Mr Sunak’s. In 2016, the Chancellor authored a paper for the Centre for Policy Studies, a think tank, calling for freeports to be set up once the UK had left the European Union.

Mr Sunak yesterday said that in Teesside, he hoped for “old industrial sites being used to capture and install carbon, vaccines being manufactured, off-shore wind turbines creating clean energy for the rest of the country”.