Self-sufficiency target

Discussing the crisis of imports from China and the decline of United Kingdom manufacturing, George Kerevan (Opinion, 25 August) highlights a major danger to the nation's future welfare. In pioneering the industrial revolution after 1750, the UK exported manufactured goods which paid for imports of food and raw materials, and sustained an eight-fold increase of population to the present 60 million.

We now import about a third of our food and most of our wood and raw materials, but our exports of manufactures have declined in the face of growing competition with the cheaper goods of developing Asian countries.

As a result, the UK now has a large and growing deficit in the balance of its overseas trade in food, goods and services - 33 billion in 2003.

Our aim should be to move nearer to self-sufficiency in food and goods. A degree of trade protection may be needed for farming and manufacturing industries, and the public should be prepared to pay a little more for its food and goods in order to secure supplies.

Our birth rate of 1.7 children per woman should be allowed gradually to reduce the population to a level supportable by our limited resources. But the government permits a large influx of immigrants. The nation's most urgent need is to bring a near stop to any further immigration.

(PROF) JP DUGUID

Merlewood Road

Inverness