NATO: Russia and Ukraine
Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend’s second point in the sense that we continue to work with our NATO partners to ensure exactly that free operation in the Black Sea. On his earlier point, consultation is very much at the centre of the approach of the United States with its NATO allies, including the United Kingdom. As I alluded to earlier, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary was in Brussels yesterday, together with the United States and Secretary of State Blinken, to discuss Ukraine among other key priorities for NATO.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB) [V]
My Lords, the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, published last month, makes much of the UK’s new freedom to pursue different economic and political approaches to those of the EU, but does the Minister agree that, when the threat is such as that posed by Russia to Ukraine, so close to Europe, we should not stand alone—where we will be weak—but work jointly with our EU neighbours?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend. We are doing exactly that through the NATO alliance. As I said in my original Answer, the Foreign Secretary has engaged directly with key European partners, including France and Germany, and Italy joined various discussions in that respect.
India: Restrictions on Freedom
Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]
My Lords, I believe that the former Chief Ministers who have been detained under the public safety Act have now been released. We welcome the Indian Government’s assurances that all those detained under the so-called preventive measures since August 2019 have now been released. We will continue to raise our concerns with the Indian Government where we have them.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB) [V]
My Lords, it is very sad to see the retrograde steps being taken towards civil society in India and how NGOs are being shut down there. I speak as a former member of the UK-India round table, a bilateral organisation that fostered free and frank discussion on such issues between our two countries. It had a successful track record of achieving progress but in 2014, almost as the then Chancellor, George Osborne, visited India and said “Let us link hands” and “Embrace the future together”, the round table was abandoned. Would the Government consider re-establishing this organisation that fostered strong links between our two countries at a level below government where people could actually speak freely?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]
My Lords, India—as the world’s largest and, as I say, one of the oldest democracies—and the UK have a very deep and broad relationship. Our trade and investment partnership is thriving, and we collaborate on defence and security. Together we are a force for good in the world. The unique “living bridge” that George Osborne described at the time, including a 1.5 million-strong Indian diaspora in the UK, connects our countries across sport, culture, food and more. During the Foreign Secretary’s visit to India in December, he agreed with his counterpart the key elements of the 10-year UK-India road map to deliver a step change in ambition for our relationships. We regard ourselves as friends, but as critical friends. We look forward to taking this plan forward into 2021.
United States: Diplomatic Relations
Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend. That is why the United Kingdom has engaged on an Indo-Pacific tilt in terms of our foreign policy strategy and development objectives, and it is why we are seeking dialogue status within ASEAN. On the JCPOA, we welcome recent announcements from President Biden’s Administration. It is important that Iran also reach out and adhere to the structure of the JCPOA so that we can progress discussions further.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB) [V]
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, referred to the unequal nature of the UK extradition treaty with the US. On February 12 last year, the Prime Minister referred to the treaty and said:
“I do think that elements of that relationship are unbalanced, and it is certainly worth looking at.”—[Official Report, Commons, 12/2/2020; col. 1.]
Will the Minister assure the House that the Government will begin to work towards a fairer, more equal extradition arrangement with the US Government?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has stated the Government’s intent. We regard our relationship with the United States as a partnership. The relative size and mobility of the populations of the UK and the US naturally results in a greater number of extraditions from the UK to the US than from the US to the UK. Nevertheless, I note what the noble Baroness said and I think my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has made our views very clear.
Bank for International Settlements (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2021
Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Wheatcroft (CB) [V]
My Lords, I welcome the establishment of the hub in London, which is renowned for its skills in the financial sector and in regulation. This testimony to that is therefore very welcome. I understand why a degree of what we might call diplomatic immunity may be required, although the total freedom from immigration restrictions is interesting because we have huge pools of labour in this country that could do the work that I guess will be done within the hub. Could the Minister say whether those who will be coming into the UK to work at the hub, and will come in free of any immigration controls, will actually be doing jobs that could perfectly easily be done by the many skilled people we have in the City of London?
More broadly, I welcome the areas in which the innovation hub will be involved. It will play to the strengths of the City and those areas where we are renowned, particularly fintech, which is a growing sector in the UK, and regulation, where we like to think we are ahead of the curve. I am not always so sure of that. However, we are told that one area that the hub will be looking at carefully is that of central bank cryptocurrencies and how these should be regulated. My real question is allied to that because I am deeply concerned about the growth, not in central bank cryptocurrencies, but in cryptocurrencies generally. Noble Lords will have seen that the price of bitcoin, which fluctuated hugely in January, between $34,000 and $47,000, has again leaped into the news because Elon Musk is putting $1.5 trillion into it. While the founder of Tesla can afford to lose $1.5 trillion, although I am convinced he has no wish to do so, my concern is that a lot of people will be persuaded to put hard cash into bitcoin because Elon Musk has done so, and their money will be at risk.
Bitcoin is not regulated; indeed, none of the cryptocurrencies is regulated as such. Derivatives of cryptocurrencies are regulated. I think that the time has come for the UK to lead the way in regulating completely these new and potentially very dangerous currencies. The US is beginning to look at this and the SEC is now considering whether to prosecute XRP, which, far from being a currency, looks like a scam. I fear that there may well be more of these, so I would be grateful if the Minister could tell me whether he has any means of persuading the innovation hub in London to pioneer regulation—[Inaudible.]
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)
I think we got the gist. I call the next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate.
Exports: Government Support
Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Wheatcroft
That this House takes note of the Government’s support for British exports.
Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to be opening this debate on such an important subject. We all know that exporting is good for the country and I hope that we will all be able to agree that the Government are making great strides in getting their act together to help British companies boost their overseas sales. My noble friend Lord Livingston, who will reply to the debate, has had an impressive business career before joining this House and taking on the role of Minister of State for Trade and Investment. I know that he is working tirelessly to ensure that British businesses flourish in world markets.
I am sure that today we will hear a lot of statistics—I will be guilty of coming out with some myself—but I want to begin not with numbers but with a true story of what the Government can, and do, do to support British exporters. Stage One is a company which started life in Tockwith, near York. It is a company which can do extraordinary things. It made the amazing cauldron that was the centrepiece of the UK Olympics and produced some of the most exciting elements in the Sochi Olympics. This is obviously no shrinking violet in the business world. Nevertheless, it felt that it needed support in venturing overseas and is very pleased with the export services and the help that they have provided.
Stage One was invited to join the Creative Industries High Value Opportunity Task Force, a collection of the UK’s top 100 creative businesses. The Government believe that these companies can represent the creative businesses that are flourishing in this country and win big contracts overseas. Stage One’s performance director, Alan Ellis, says that in his business, and surely in any business:
“It is critical to get in front of the right people at the right time. And this is where UKTI really excels”.
Those are his words, not mine.
UKTI trade advisers introduced the company to opportunities in Hong Kong and Macao. It had not contemplated venturing that far afield. They helped the company plan visits and provided £3,000 to help with funding. A UKTI trade mission in February last year enabled the company to build on the contacts it made on its first visit. Membership of the task force has enabled the company to form alliances with businesses it had never met before. That enables them to go together to prospective clients and make an overall business proposition, which to big clients is much more impressive. Stage One now says:
“Working with UKTI is a key part of our strategy over the next five years”.
One story does not make an export boom, but Stage One’s experience is not unusual. Even the CBI, not renowned for lavishing praise on government schemes, voices enthusiasm for the way that the export promotion services are working.
The Government have been clear about their export ambitions. Shortly after he became Prime Minister, David Cameron boarded a flight to India to reignite that special relationship. In his 2012 Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer set out his aim that UK exports would hit £1 trillion by 2020. That was, indeed, a big ambition. No doubt we will hear one or two people say that it was perhaps too big an ambition and we are not likely to get there. I have not given up hope yet, and I do not suppose that the Chancellor has, but we should look at the economic background with which our exporters are grappling. While our Government are working to support business by strengthening the economy, who would have foreseen that other Governments might be rather less responsible, and that our major trading partner in the European Union would find itself in dire disarray? Many of us did fear exactly that, but it is still sad to see it come to pass. The plunging euro and the straitened circumstances of many European citizens mean that it is much harder for us, with our stronger pound, to sell our goods to them.
For several decades, we have relied too much on our relationship with our European neighbours and not ventured far enough afield. That was understandable given that the EU constituted the biggest marketplace in the world, but such reliance is dangerous, as we are now finding. We have to work harder to permeate deep into the emerging markets. Those who listened to the radio earlier this morning will have heard a Diageo spokesperson say just what scope there is in those emerging markets, with 1.43 billion members of the middle class likely to emerge over the next decade. Of course, Diageo hopes that they will all be alcoholics—sorry, I mean drinkers. We should have advantages in many of those markets and need to be careful to build on that rather than jeopardise it, an issue I will come back to.
Despite our great trading history, our failure to maximise our export potential has left us with a balance of trade deficit—that ominous trade gap. We like our German washing machines, our French cheeses and our cheap, throwaway textiles too much. The last full-year figures available for 2013 showed exports of £516 billion and imports of £550 billion. If we could bridge that trade gap, the benefit to the economy—and to all of us living here—would be remarkable. There is plenty of scope. Currently, under 3% of our exports go to China.
The problem is not new. By 2006, the current account deficit was more than 3% of GDP, putting us, in absolute terms, behind only two countries: the US and Spain. In 2000, the UK’s share of world exports of goods was 4.4%, but by 2009 it had fallen to 2.8%. Our share of services exports is much healthier but even that has taken a bit of a jolt after the financial crash. Clearly, we need to get better at exporting.
The good news is that the Government are on the case. In 2011, that dynamic duo, William Hague and my noble friend Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint, were in charge at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and UKTI, and together they launched A Charter for Business. It was a tacit acknowledgement that, while the Foreign Office has many strong points, it had not perhaps always been the greatest supporter of British business overseas. I would not argue that the charter produced an overnight change, but there have been huge improvements in how the Foreign Office and UKTI now work together for the benefit of British business. With a Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, who used to run his own business and my noble friend Lord Livingston heading UKTI, those improvements continue.
There were hiccups in getting the two organisations aligned. They had, of course, overlapping objectives, but their objectives can never be entirely the same; the FCO has to bear security in mind. But in autumn 2013, the National Audit Office examined our help for exporters. While it voiced some qualms, it had to report that 78% of those it surveyed—users of export services—felt that the FCO and UKTI were working together better to help exporters than they had in the past. The current chief executive of UKTI, Dominic Jermey, is well placed to continue these improvements, having been our ambassador in the United Arab Emirates before taking up his post. In an early interview, he suggested that the challenge for the Government went beyond the FCO and UKTI and that every government department should feel that part of its brief was to help British exporters—for example, the Department of Health with pharmaceutical companies and the Department for Transport with transport infrastructure developers. He intimated that more could be done on that front. Perhaps my noble friend could comment on that point when he makes his speech.
There are still qualms about the number of different schemes available to help exporters. Head to the UKTI website and, if you did not have an enormous amount of time on your hands, it might be quite difficult to decide where to go first. It lists:
“Passport to Export Service … Gateway to Global Growth … Medium-Sized Business Programme … Trade show Access Programme … Sell online with the UKTI e-Exporting programme … Export Marketing Research Scheme … Export Communications Review … Overseas Market Introduction Service … Aid Funded Business … High Value Opportunities … Market Visit Support … Postgraduates for International Business”.
It is a little confusing, perhaps. There is an easy answer, and those who visit the website might find it:
“Talk To A UKTI Export Adviser”.
UKTI has gone out of its way to make sure that the middle-sized businesses that we need to thrive as exporters know about this. It has written directly to all those middle-sized companies that could do more on the export front. However, I suggest that not everybody knows that there is a UKTI export adviser ready and willing to help them. From what I have learnt from businesses, those who contact a UKTI export service adviser really do get help.
Perhaps they get some help to figure out exactly what we are exporting, because the statistics continue to puzzle me—I have voiced this qualm in this House previously. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs breaks down exports into a huge number of categories, but to a modern person looking at the list, it could be confusing. For instance, category 42 encompasses:
“Articles of leather; Saddlery and Harness; Travel goods, Handbags and similar containers; Articles of animal gut (other than silkworm gut)”.
I think that there are large differences between a bit of saddlery, let alone some gut, and the sort of handbags that fetch premium prices these days. I wonder whether our statistics are missing a trick in not breaking things down a bit more. That view is reinforced when I get to category 44:
“Wood and articles of wood; Wood charcoal”.
I think that David Linley would contend that there is a huge difference between the wooden objects that he sells and wood charcoal. Category 61 comprises:
“Articles of apparel and clothing accessories, knitted or crocheted”.
The fascination with crochet is something about HMRC that has long puzzled me and I remain somewhat confused. Then we get to category 96, which I feel will not help many exporters in working out where their market should be:
“Miscellaneous manufactured articles”.
I am sure that there is a big market for miscellaneous manufactured articles, but I would be hard pressed to tell you what it was. One of the keys to successful exporting is research and knowing your market. I just wonder whether we could be doing a bit more with our statistics to help those who are seeking to export. I wonder whether the Minister could address that.
Perhaps there is more, even now, that we could do in the way of incentives—I know that money is tight. The Food and Drink Federation, which represents one of our biggest export sectors, has looked at what rivals do and found that we come pretty low down the scale. For instance, there is help if you are French or German on a much more significant scale than we offer to attend trade shows. There are tax deductions for people who are working overseas for companies to promote business. There are lots of small financial incentives which might yield dividends which perhaps we could investigate doing a little more of.
Finally, I mentioned that I would come back to cultivating our old friends, particularly India—but China also comes into this category. I fear—and it is the rhetoric rather than fact—that we are disillusioning those countries because of our insistence on people coming to our universities and then going straight home. I know, as do your Lordships, that if such people achieve a job they can stay for two years, but that message has not got through to the Indian High Commission and to the people that it talks to. I fear that the same message is hitting China. We need to welcome people who could help our businesses to export.
Baroness Wheatcroft
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his reply. It was as thorough and thoughtful as I would have expected. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in today’s debate, demonstrating and sharing such wide knowledge and experience. Because it has been such an upbeat and positive debate overall, I should like to end on a very positive note. When President Obama took tea with Prime Minister Modi he was wearing a quite extraordinary suit. The cloth was manufactured in this country and the suit was made by a London tailor.
International Trade
Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, on securing this debate on such an important subject. I reassure the House that I will not be quoting George Monbiot.
I believe that there is scope for taking a much more upbeat look at the situation than that of the noble Lord, Lord Harrison. The news from the UK on employment is of job creation. Even among younger people who are very hard to employ, the numbers are going in the right direction. Contrast that with what is being said at Davos at the moment, where some people, including the French president of Total, are saying that Europe should be regarded as an emerging market. That is not the situation in this country.
In the motor industry, for instance, to which my noble friend Lord Sharkey just referred, exports of vehicles from this country in November were up by 10.7% on a year ago. That is a remarkable climb in a market that has been very difficult. UK car production over the last year hit a six-year high. Huge investment has made a difference. Nissan in Sunderland is responsible for halving the unemployment rate in that town. It now exports a remarkable 80% of production from that plant. Huge investment in that plant has managed to produce something that is a world-beater.
However, not every sector is as buoyant as the automotive sector. I was struck by the following information from the most recent trade statistics. Reporting our imports from non-EU countries, it was said that in November last year:
“The top five commodities are similar to the previous month although HS2 88”—
their arcane description for—
“Aircraft, spacecraft, and parts thereof … has risen from fifth to fourth place forcing HS2 61 … into fifth place”,
in our imports. HS2 61 is:
“Articles of apparel and clothing accessories, knitted or crocheted”.
I try to keep abreast of trends but I am unaware of an avalanche of crochet coming into the country. Perhaps we would get a better grasp of what is going on in our imports and exports if we were to revisit the basis on which the trade figures are comprised.
The statistics, however, still show some good news. Exports to China have doubled since 2009. That is not enough—it is still only 1% of the market—but is certainly a creditable achievement. As we saw in the recent trade mission, a great deal is being done to build further alliances with China. The digital alliance, for instance, between UKTI and China is aimed at providing up to £2 billion in extra business for our creative industries. That trade mission did not just accomplish big deals for UK businesses but brought investment from China into this country. Chang’an Motors, for instance, is now making a £60 million investment in a West Midlands R&D centre, which will create 300 jobs. It would be really useful if a discipline adopted by the Government was to refer later to what has actually been achieved by these trade missions in the longer term. To hear what the follow-up has been would produce some interesting information for us, but would also probably put a deal of pressure on those businesses that go on trade missions to continue to work hard to capitalise on the extraordinary boost that they have been given.
However, one of the main problems for us is that companies are not investing. I talked about Sunderland, where Nissan’s huge investment has generated a vast number of jobs, made a big difference and made a hugely productive plant that can export. However, in this country and all around the world very few companies are investing and prefer to sit on their cash piles, which is why the employment figures are going up but, I am afraid, the productivity figures look very disappointing. Investment in modern plant and technology creates improved productivity. One thing that I am desperate to see, and to which I have referred in this House previously, is some incentive for big companies to invest at least a bit of that cash pile in smaller companies, thus generating more jobs and helping us to grow businesses.
More can be done. Next week, a report from the 2020 commission, entitled Sweating our Assets, will be launched in the other place and has been led by Laura Sandys MP. I have been delighted to have a small part in the work that it has done, which has been very much in collaboration with the Engineering Employers’ Federation. Some of the ideas that it has come up with will, I hope, help this country to improve productivity. There is a long way to go on that.
The Government are determined to boost trade. As my noble friend Lord Marland said, and put into practice when he was Trade Minister, many initiatives are under way. Last year, in October, the Government launched Grow Online, Expand Worldwide—a scheme aimed at helping small and medium-sized British companies to expand their e-commerce operations. We are already one of the leaders in that field. According to the Business Secretary Vince Cable:
“Britain’s 220,000 online retailers export more than the rest of Europe’s e-retailers combined”.
The Government have been energetic in providing support for exporters, with the aim of doubling exports by 2020. That is a brave aim and one that demands support. It is, however, a very big ask: it requires exports to grow by 8% a year. We are not getting anywhere near that at the moment. In part, to reach that target, there have been dramatic changes in the way in which the support network overseas works. There is increased reliance on British chambers of commerce abroad. This has created a degree of concern among some companies and other business organisations. Some chambers of commerce abroad are effective, strong organisations but vary in quality. Can the Minister assure us that the quality of those chambers is being monitored and that we are confident that this is the best method?
Our chambers of commerce differ from the German chambers, where membership is mandatory. There are some concerns that we may be moving in that direction, as smaller businesses of course want nothing which will involve them having to pay subscriptions to organisations to which they do not particularly want to belong. I understand the logic in taking responsibility for small and medium-sized exporters away from our embassies. I believe that the theory is that the embassies can then concentrate on helping the really big deals go through. I am a great admirer of the skills of our embassies overseas, which do great work. I would like reassurance that we are making the best landscape for encouraging our exporters. I have been particularly impressed, for instance, by the high commission in Delhi and its work building exports in India. The people in those embassies really know their markets.
I return to the undoubtedly good news. Noble Lords will have seen today’s announcement by James Dyson that he will triple the number of engineers working in Malmesbury on creating his brilliant designs. Products will not be manufactured in this country; that is just not competitive. We have to accept that our skills are really on the inventive side. James Dyson says that:
“Competitive advantage rests on knowledge and developing patentable ideas that can be exported—and our intellectual property is owned in the UK”.
We are an inventive race. Over the years we have created some of the most important things in the world today. I do not need to mention Tim Berners-Lee. On a smaller scale, look at Fever-Tree. I would hazard a guess that most noble Lords have come across Fever-Tree, which creates some of the best mixer drinks in the market. Who would have thought, just 10 years ago, that there was a market for a new creator of fizzy drinks to mix with gin? Fever-Tree spotted the gap in the market and now, just a few years later, exports 75% of its turnover. There are a hundred and one stories such as that about inventive British companies, which we need to support.
In conclusion, I take comfort from the fact that, thanks to the determination of our Government to tackle the deficit, no one in Davos this week is saying that the UK should be regarded as an emerging market.
United Kingdom and China
Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Dobbs on securing this important debate and leading it so skilfully. I also applaud the two insightful and interesting maiden speeches we have heard today. I look forward to hearing more from both our new Members.
This is an auspicious day for such a debate. For today, the first ship will enter Britain’s new port, London Gateway. This remarkable deep-water facility will be able to handle 3.5 million containers a year and is just 20 miles down the Thames from London. Earlier this year, the Prime Minister described it as “an emblem of ambition”. So it should be, but I was struck that all the coverage of this new port referred to the imports that will be landing at London Gateway, many of them from China. However, the plan must not be that these ships will leave London empty. London Gateway should indeed be an emblem of the ambition Britain has to build its exports. There is no more inviting market than China.
As we have already heard, our performance has improved markedly. Last year was the third in a row in which our sales to China increased faster than those of Germany, France or Italy, but from a relatively low base. We are still too far behind. Yet, as my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe said, there is an appetite in China for British-made goods. Jaguar Land Rover, for instance, sold a record 73,347 vehicles in China last year, an increase of 74% over the previous year. Burberry has been selling its style in China for 20 years and last year Church’s shoes—a brand not unknown to Members of this House—opened its first shop in China.
These are all high-quality brands and we have many more of them. This summer, I was one of those fortunate to attend a wonderful event in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. This was no ordinary garden party but an opportunity for royal warrant holders to display their wares. From sausages to silverware and cosmetics to clothing, the best of British was on show. As potential buyers from abroad looked at what was on offer, the Queen and Prince Philip toured the exhibition, doing their best to boost the sales effort. Ten years ago, the idea of a trade fair at Buckingham Palace, with Her Majesty taking on the role of head of sales, would have been unthinkable. Now, however, Britain is really serious about bolstering its export effort. We had a prime example last month, to which many noble Lords have already referred, with the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s hugely successful visit to China.
At this point—and I am glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, in his seat—I admit to an interest as a member of the UK advisory board of Huawei, a telecoms company which is playing a major role in the infrastructure of this country and is one of the fastest-growing companies in the world. Huawei is demonstrating ably how the UK and China can co-operate. It is investing more than £1 billion in the UK, including creating a new research and development centre in London. It is also taking on apprentices and doing its best to foster trading between our two countries, taking students to spend time in China and bringing them back here so that what they have learnt can be expanded.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, said, our larger businesses know how to access overseas markets but the imperative now is to ensure that our smaller businesses take advantage of export opportunities. Small high-tech companies which I have never heard of accompanied the Chancellor on his last visit to China, such as games developer Fat Pebble, and Kinosis, which apparently shows surgeons how they can operate via a mobile phone app; I am not entirely comfortable with that, but let us hope that it works.
Trade missions are just the start. Government help should not stop when they land back at Heathrow—and it is, of course, Heathrow. We have not always been good at providing the follow-up necessary to turn contacts into contracts. I am glad to say that this is improving, and credit for that goes largely to my noble friend Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint; we shall miss him.
While encouraging exports, we need to do all we can to persuade increasingly wealthy Chinese to spend their money here. Tourism, as other noble Lords have said, is crucial. The changes in the visa restrictions shall help. However, there are other things we can do. How many retailers and hotels accept Union Pay, the credit card of choice in China and a network second only to Visa in its reach? We should make it as easy as possible for wealthy Chinese to spend their money. I was fascinated to see how this massive organisation views our country. Its website has a small section on the UK which begins:
“Located in Western Europe, United Kingdom is an island country on the Atlantic Ocean … Scotland in the north is a mountainous area flush with cattle and sheep; England in the south boasts enchanting natural sceneries and Wales in the west is famous for rugged mountain ridges and green stream valleys”.
It goes on in a similar, lyrical vein but not, perhaps, portraying the vibrant, creative place we know. The Olympics showed what we can offer, but we must not rest on our Olympic laurels. The GREAT campaign is doing good work in explaining what is on offer in Britain, but it appears that there are some corners of the world that we still need to reach.
There is still a long way to go in fostering understanding between our two nations. A good start, I would suggest—as I always have—is language. Mandarin is not an easy language to learn but it is easier if one starts early. I was impressed to hear of state schools in Michigan where, from the age of four, children are taught every other day in Mandarin. Total immersion works and is cheap to provide: it simply means hiring primary school teachers whose first language is Mandarin. I would like to think that British children might soon be offered the same opportunity so that they will grow up and become effective exporters for Britain.
Lord Haskel
Can the noble Baroness refer to the concerns of Parliament over the regulation of her company? That is the point that I was trying to make.
Baroness Wheatcroft
The concern was over the way in which the deal with BT had been constructed. That is highlighted in the report from the security committee. As the noble Lord knows, GCHQ monitors everything that goes on between Huawei and businesses in this country.
EU: Recent Developments
Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Wheatcroft
My Lords, the European Union could and should be a thriving single market. That was the proclaimed aim when the grand project was launched, whatever ulterior motives some may have had. It remains a sensible ambition, although yet to be achieved. It is slow progress. It was only on Tuesday that the European Parliament passed a new regulation on the single European payments area, which should, eventually, mean that payments can be made from accounts within the EU much more cheaply and efficiently. That will benefit people and businesses and is exactly what a single market should be about. But there is too much that the EU does which seems to militate against increased productivity, whether it be restricting clinical trials, as we have heard today, or in loading new regulations on to businesses, such as prospective new rules on data protection.
I am not suggesting undoing all the measures to which the noble Lord, Lord Monks, referred, but we must not restrict the competitiveness of our business. Brussels ventures into too many areas where its presence is unnecessary. I was startled to see that, for the fifth year running, it is staging a “gender drawing competition” for eight to 11 year-olds. Too much, too soon, I thought. It turns out to be not anatomical but sociological, seeking drawings that show gender equality in action. We do not need Brussels to be doing that sort of thing.
No matter how far Brussels tries to reach its tentacles, Europe is not a single political entity, and what we are currently witnessing, as the Greek débâcle unfolds, is evidence that that is unlikely ever to be the case. There are, of course, occasions when Europe can talk as one, where we have the same aims. Burma is an obvious example. Fighting Somali pirates is another. However, we will not always be one political entity. There are many reluctant to acknowledge that. I was struck by the fact that, last week, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, who otherwise glories in the title of EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, was in Brazil, explaining how the EU had started as a single market but that it had soon become clear that its strength will be in what she termed the “political coming together”. It was this strength, she explained, that had enabled the EU to come to the aid of Tunisia with a package of €4 billion to be distributed over three years.
I applaud someone who chooses to look on the bright side, but a speech that can rejoice in the coming together of the EU and avoid any mention of a little local difficulty in Greece is perhaps taking optimism a little too far. The EU High Representative, however, has to try to think of the EU as a political entity, as she represents its foreign service. She has 136 diplomatic missions around the world, and she overspent a budget of £380 million last year. Quite what this has achieved so far is unclear but, when given money, Brussels has a habit of overspending it. It can always find a way. The fact is that the EU is not a political union and nor is the eurozone. That a single currency would falter if it were not accompanied by political and fiscal union was always likely, if not inevitable. We are now seeing that happen, exacerbated by the financial crisis that has erupted, but not caused by it.
It was clear two years ago that Greece could not continue with the level of debt that it had. Its problems were so bad that simply finding ways of lending it more money, no matter what strings were attached, would not be the answer. If a man is drowning in debt, you do not save him by throwing yet more debt at him. For two years the eurozone has struggled to find a way of dealing with Greece’s problems. Despite the increasingly acrimonious rhetoric and posturing of the past few days, it may well be that more bail-out cash will be shovelled its way, but that will only further delay the inevitable. One has only to look at the scale of the pain now being suffered in Greece, and the anger of its people, to know that further austerity measures are going to be desperately difficult, if not impossible, to impose and that even if a Government made an attempt to do so, the end result would not be enough to enable Greece to cope with its debts. It has to default. It should never have been in the euro—its entry was a political fudge built on a concoction of lies.
The good news is that Greece is only a small country. In the first six weeks of this year, according to calculations from Goldman Sachs, China created half the GDP that Greece did in the whole of last year. However, its predicament is taking on more significance because of the eurozone’s chronic delays in sorting it out. It is being allowed to increase doubts over the functioning of the entire euro area. That is why it is imperative that the posturing should stop and that action should be taken.
Greece, under the weight of austerity, is now shrinking, although those in need of a dose of Ashton optimism might look at a website entitled Invest in Greece, produced by the Greek Government. It is still predicting a rise in GDP this year and suggests that Germans are looking enthusiastically at investing in the Greek tourist industry. I am not sure that coach-loads of Germans arriving in Greece are going to get a great reception at the moment.
It is not only Greece that has problems, as we know. Only today it has been reported that Spain is back in recession for the first time in two years. And we should not imagine that the banking crisis has finally been put to bed, for over the past couple of years what has become apparent is a dramatic rise in eurozone countries taking on their own country’s debt. Holdings of sovereign debt since 2008 have moved dramatically. Spanish banks, for instance, are now holding 65 per cent more Spanish government debt than they were two years ago, and Italian banks have 50 per cent more of their own debt than two years ago. For Greece the figure is even higher, at 89 per cent, and significantly for Portugal the figure is 400 per cent. That may indicate that Greece is not the last country to have to exit the euro. Those holdings indicate that, as countries get deeper into trouble, the effects on their banking system will be dramatic.
My noble friend Lord Hamilton has highlighted the problems that the eurozone has had in getting to grips with what goes beyond the Greek borders. It is true. We have seen two years of vacillation. The noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, praised the role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the help that he has tried to give at this difficult stage for the euro. It is the role of supportive friend, not guarantor, and it is for the eurozone countries to decide whether they feel comfortable with shouldering the weight of the weaker European economies. Our role is that of a fully fledged member of the single market, anxious to play a pivotal role in making that market work at its optimum. That means looking for ways to limit bureaucracy and stimulate growth.