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  This is all a bit tricky as the lines are blurred as to what is state aid and what is not.
  
  Liverpool has a tremendous maritime history and should certainly get a slice of the cruise market. If it needs to repay a few million quid of taxpayers money to become a turnaround port then so be it.
  
  Southampton is far and away the major cruise port. Together with many other privatised British ports, it is owned by ABP who are a foreign consortium registered in Jersey and paying no corporation tax. It has just received a lot of taxpayers money to upgrade the railway connection to the port to handle bigger containers.
  
  Portsmouth has just opened a new cruise terminal funded by the City Council. It has also just benefited from £371m of taxpayers money to build the Hindhead bypass around and under the Devil's Punchbowl making the A3 entirely dual carriageway.
  
  Dover is a Trust Port and is on very dodgy ground complaining about taxpayer subsidies to other ports. Nevertheless the Chamber of Commerce has issued the statement at the start of the thread and Charlie Elphicke has stated the following:
  
  Quote: MP for Dover Charlie Elphicke has written to transport minister Mike Penning as part of a 10-week consultation to formally object. "There is no problem with a bit of competition but there needs to be a level playing field. We don't get any help like that in Dover - it amounts to Liverpool getting state aid. I'm not an expert on this, but I would imagine allowing turnaround trips at Liverpool would be unhelpful for Dover." Unquote.
  
  Clearly neither Charlie nor the Chamber of Commerce have any comprehension of what colossal state benefits Dover receives by virtue of being a Trust Port. There is certainly not a level playing field as it is tilted very much in our favour.
  
  As a Trust Port, the Port of Dover is owned by the nation. It has benefited from enormous investment from the taxpayer over the years amounting to billions of pounds in todays money, the largest outlay being the fortune spent on the construction of the Admiralty Harbour a century ago. All the profits from operation of this infrastructure are continuously reinvested in the port with the result that we are the largest ferry port in Europe, the second largest cruise port in the UK, and have flourishing cargo and marina facilities.
  
  The port pays nothing to the taxpayer for the privilege of operating all this nationally owned infrastructure free gratis and having the opportunity of continuously improving and building on it by reinvesting the profits. In return, the nation can comfort itself with the warm feeling that it owns a vital piece of national infrastructure which is thriving and continuously expanding.
  
  I think that, in consequence, it would pay us to keep a very low profile in this trifling argument over a few million quid being spent on the other side of the country.

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