The price we pay for 'cheap'

Just as there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is no such thing as cheap. Someone, somewhere always pays a price.
A few days ago I was chatting to a Nottingham accountant who was musing over the steady loss of manufacturing jobs abroad after it became "too expensive" to make things here.
In Nottinghamshire, we waved goodbye to much of the textile industry as a result.
All that happened, he says, is that we exported pay and working conditions we were no longer willing to tolerate to other countries.
So the 'cheap' five-minute fashions we enjoy aren’t cheap at all. As Naomi Klein pointed out years ago in her book No Logo, there is a human cost. We get a minimum wage, the people who make what we buy don't.
A similar moral dilemma now appears to be rearing its head closer to home. I was talking yesterday to Andy Hogarth (pictured), the chief executive of the Nottingham-based temporary staffing business Staffline, asking him why there had been a £5m drop in their sales revenues in the first six months of this year.
One of the reasons is that some of his rivals have been paying staff in a way which cuts PAYE and National Insurance bills. The lower tax bills mean they can charge clients less. And because the clients pay less they can supply the food they process to supermarkets for less.
The cost? Well, the temporary staff who work on the food processing lines are still getting the legal minimum wage (though some of it comes in a round-about way).
But Mr Hogarth reckons these staffing companies are collectively on course to pay £1bn a year less tax – at a time when our hobbled economy needs all the money it can get.
Think about that next time you buy from one of the 'cheaper' food ranges.