Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Featherstone and Richard Fuller

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

2. What steps she is taking to encourage private capital investment in the Economic Community of West African States.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Lynne Featherstone)]

Through DFID offices and international programmes, we are helping west African countries to build infrastructure, reform laws and institutions that govern business, strengthen financial services and develop sound projects, to make them more attractive to private investors and stronger trading partners for the United Kingdom.

[Richard Fuller]

I thank the Minister for that response. I am sure that, like me, she recognises the critical role that small and medium-sized enterprises can play in west African states in ensuring development. We welcome the global SME finance facility that the Government have put in place. Will the Minister keep an open mind about expanding that facility, particularly for west African states, and will she join me in welcoming the steps that Governor Fashola has taken in Lagos state to improve the ease of doing business in Nigeria?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Featherstone and Richard Fuller

Monday 7th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

T3. On a similar theme, law-abiding volunteers and employees in Bedford and Kempston are quite fed up with having to get a new Criminal Records Bureau check each time they change jobs. Can the Home Secretary tell me how those checks will change to avoid that ridiculous duplication that so debilitates so many volunteers and employees?

[Lynne Featherstone]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. Many people write to me about the problem of having a new CRB check on each occasion. The new system will make the check portable. An employer will be able to go online to see whether an individual, who will have a unique number, ever had any information on them and whether anything has changed since they first had a check. That will make the whole system simple and quick, which will encourage volunteering, which is part of the purpose.