Education, Skills and Training

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Angela Eagle

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

I am glad to see that despite being a Eurosceptic martyr, the hon. Gentleman is still alive and kicking and doing his thing on the Tory Back Benches. It was the Labour Government who started university technical colleges, and I am glad that he will have one in his own area. He is being rather churlish in talking about our record, when we created the university technical college concept.

The Government have a very large target for apprenticeships, but 30% of those starting do not finish the course, and 96% are level 2 or 3 apprenticeships, with very low numbers attaining higher degree level apprenticeships. I understand and recognise that level 2 and 3 are very important to attain, but even more important for the future health and wellbeing of our economy is expanding the higher degree level apprenticeships, and quickly.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will remember that in the previous Parliament I introduced a private Member’s Bill, the Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill. Is not a real opportunity being missed? With public procurement and major engineering projects in particular, we ought to be getting more bang for our taxpayers’ buck, with proper, decent, high-quality advanced and further level apprenticeships tied into those procurement contracts.

[Ms Eagle]

I could not agree more. I am an admirer of my hon. Friend, especially as I have seen the recent pictures of him abseiling down a very tall building, so my admiration has grown even more. His Bill was an extremely good one. It is important that the Government think much more carefully than they have done to date about how they can tie in the money that they spend on public procurement with skills creation. The Business Secretary will have to do that if he is to deliver a prosperous future for British steel, and he should think about doing it in many more areas. There is a taboo that needs to be broken.

Steel Industry

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Angela Eagle

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

Yes, I do.

Rather than hiding behind the European Commission, why do the Government not take action first on energy-intensive industry payments and get retrospective approval later? That is what Germany did with its Renewable Energy Act 2012. It provided support to producers of renewable energy from January 2012. It did not submit the Act for prior state scrutiny. It let the Commission investigate and then state aid approval was received in November 2014, two years after it had first provided support. Why can our Government not look after the interests of UK steel in the same way? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Government have been so slow to act because they have an ideological aversion to any Government intervention. We have a Secretary of State who will not let the phrase “industrial strategy” cross his lips.

We on the Labour Benches support international trade, but free trade must also be fair. China is currently responsible for a tsunami of cheap steel, which is being dumped on European markets. The UK should be at the forefront of demanding rapid and effective action to stop it.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

We are not just talking about the here and now, but the longer-term economic vision for the country. As sure as night follows day, the steel price will recover at some stage and we could find ourselves without a steel industry and be wholly beholden to other countries.

[Ms Eagle]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. The steel industry is very cyclical in nature. During the hard times and the downturns, it is very important to try to act to preserve assets of strategic importance to our country, so that we can take advantage of the upswing and the recovery when it comes.

China is currently responsible for a tsunami of cheap steel products. Last week’s Chinese state visit is over and done with, so I hope the Business Secretary will be making the case in Brussels today that we should act rapidly to stop the dumping of Chinese steel products in Europe. The scale of the new Chinese imports and the speed of their arrival is staggering. Its surplus production is nearly twice the annual production in the entire EU, and it is increasingly finding its way here. Chinese rebar has grown from having zero presence in the UK market in 2013 to comprising 37% of it a year later. There are quality concerns with some imported Chinese steel. We also know that Chinese steel production causes more environmental damage than UK production, so it is a false economy to allow it to continue.

For both those reasons, action to tackle dumping is vital and long overdue. Perhaps the Minister can tell us, when she winds up, what she managed to achieve during her recent visit to China. I can tell her that both the leader of the Labour party and I raised this issue with Premier Xi and his delegation during the recent state visit to London. Did she raise it during her visit to China? If so, what are the Government actually going to do about the huge amount of imports and the dumping? When it comes to acting on China specifically, perhaps the Government should be less interested in selling off our nuclear industry and more interested in standing up for the strategic interests of the UK.

Standing up for British steel means standing up for the high-quality skills that have built some of the UK’s, and indeed the world’s, most iconic landmarks. British steel built Canary Wharf, the new Wembley stadium and Sydney Harbour bridge, and it will be building the Freedom Tower in New York. We should all be proud of what the UK steel industry has achieved, but the Government cannot treat it as some relic of the past; it has to be a vital part of our country’s future. That is why the Government must do more—much more—to see the industry through these tough times and prepare it to seize future opportunities. The Government should publish an industrial strategy for steel and be open about how they envisage maintaining the strategic steelmaking assets in this country during hard times. It is only firm action now that will guarantee any future at all for UK production.

I commend the campaign by the Daily Mirror, which is setting out daily the compelling case to save our steel. Just in case Ministers were in any doubt about the urgency, Gareth Stace of UK Steel has today described the industry as being like a patient on the operating table “likely to die” without help.

Community, the main steel union, has called for an urgent meeting with the Business Secretary because of the ongoing threat to jobs, as it has emerged that no representative of the workforce, be it Community, the GMB or Unite, has yet been invited on to any of the working groups set up after the steel summit. [Interruption.] The Minister says there is no need to invite representatives of the workforce on to these working parties. Ministers should meet the workers from steelmaking communities, including Teesside, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and south Wales, who are lobbying Parliament to hear at first hand, as I have, the real cost of Government inaction.

The Prime Minister claims the Government are acting on procurement. Just yesterday, the Minister told the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee:

“I would say buy British because it’s quality.”

However, the inadequacy of the Government’s response was laid bare on the very same day, when it was revealed that the Government had just spent more than £3 billion on three new Royal Navy ships and 589 Scout specialist vehicles for the Army, which will use imported Swedish steel.

English Votes on English Laws

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Angela Eagle

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

We are in a complex position, and the hon. Gentleman is right to say that Northern Ireland has its own particular issues that are mixed up with the peace process. We think that we need a constitutional convention to consider where we are in the round and across the piece—including the ever-expanding House of Lords, which grows larger and larger every year, even as the Government want to cut the number of elected Members of Parliament. All that suggests that time is right for us to consider a constitutional convention.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is right: we need to separate out the serious issue of how our whole constitution works together alongside devolved Assemblies and Parliaments in the United Kingdom. Is the real point that we need to discuss how the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and city regions that will get increased devolution, fit into that model?

[Ms Eagle]

My hon. Friend is right. We can do a range of things to devolve power and ensure that any resentment about the way we are governed, of which in this anti-politics era there is much, is properly responded to by a constitutional convention that reaches out—