Shadow Minister claims reducing profits will create jobs

Labour's Shadow Minister for the Environment, Gavin Shuker, has apparently claimed that the UK is losing out on jobs and growth because reprocessors are importing material (while at the same time collectors are exporting).

On the contrary, it seems to me that the reprocessors are getting a better deal by importing material which presumably matches their requirements better than that which comes from domestic collectors. At the same time, the collectors are getting a better deal by exporting material to overseas reprocessors who are willing to pay a higher price for theirs.

In this way, both domestic reprocessors and collectors are exploiting overseas markets and everyone's a winner. Government intervention which eliminated the most profitable opportunities for domestic organisations and instead forced these two groups to exchange directly with one another would inevitably lead to lower aggregate benefits all round.

Lower benefits means lower growth and fewer jobs. Somehow the Shadow Minister manages to reach the opposite conclusion. I disagree and think that the Government should not meddle with these open markets.