Tories luke warm over fair trade coffee

12.50.55pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 17th Jul 2006

Tories lukewarm over Fair Trade

At a meeting of the Environmental Overview & Scrutiny Committee last Thursday evening, Tory councillors resisted calls for the Borough Council to give a moral lead and to agree to use solely Fairtrade products for its refreshments. Despite representations from the Welwyn Hatfield Fairtrade Group and strong support from Jacqui Russell (Labour, Peartree) and Nigel Quinton (LibDem, Handside) the Tory majority on the committee instead voted to make Fairtrade refreshments available only "where possible" and to continue to use non-Fairtrade coffee.

"At least they agreed to do something, which is better than doing nothing" commented Cllr Quinton, "but an opportunity to provide moral leadership to the Borough has been missed. We were even told by the chairman that the £600 per annum extra cost (yes, that is just 1p per household!) might be better spent elsewhere. Vote blue get green? Hard to see the evidence, if you ask me"

The committee did agree to put a resolution to Cabinet resolving to become a Fairtrade Council, but if this is not matched by actions, then the public will draw their own conclusions.