International Investment

Debate between Lord Prior of Brampton and Lord Lea of Crondall

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My noble friend makes a number of very good points. First, as he rightly says, the 4,200 people who work at Short Brothers have some outstanding, world-class engineering skills, and the fact that Bombardier and Airbus have come to this agreement is extremely good news for all of them. Secondly, as far as civil nuclear power is concerned, he is absolutely right. Hinkley depends on Chinese investment, as indeed do many economies throughout the world. I think that it would be very foolish of us to be at all concerned about the Chinese investing in our civil nuclear power industry. The Chinese will probably build 150 nuclear power stations in their own country over the next 10 years, and they will unquestionably be among the world’s best when it comes to building and operating nuclear power plants. We should take the fact that they are investing in the UK as a very good thing.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that Boeing has for many years been a classic example of indirect support of the military-industrial complex—to use General Eisenhower’s phrase—in the United States through defence expenditure, R&D and so on, and that the same applies to high-tech industries generally? Therefore, is it not a fact that we have to scrutinise matters very carefully and take a robust view of our long-term strategic interest when it comes to the arguments that keep flying around across the Atlantic?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. Boeing has been hugely supported by the American defence industry since the Second World War at least. He is right that we should vigorously defend any claims that Boeing has against the British Government’s support of Bombardier in Northern Ireland.

Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices

Debate between Lord Prior of Brampton and Lord Lea of Crondall

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I concur entirely with part of what my noble friend said: that black cabs in London provide a remarkable service. However, Uber provides a remarkable service in many respects. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said, it is now an extremely valuable and important service. I do not think that there is any contradiction in having a successful Uber service, or one similar to it, running alongside the excellent black cab service in London.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, I think it is apparent that this side of the House would not agree with the Minister’s throwaway line that,

“the system is working quite well”.

That is not the theme of the report. Nor is it true, if one looks at manifold evidence from public opinion polls, that job security is not prevalent as an issue and a worry for almost all classes of worker. It is being economical with the truth to make generalisations about workers preferring casual hours to guaranteed hours. There may be some people—students are a good example, out of term time or even in it in some cases—who prefer such hours, but does the Minister accept that you cannot get a mortgage on a zero-hours contract? Has the Minister done any research on whether that is true? If not, will he do some research and let the House know, perhaps in a letter? Is it possible to get a mortgage on a zero-hours contract? If it is not, does that not mean that we live in a two-class society—with different types of contract of employment —in respect of one of people’s most vital needs: to be able to get a mortgage, with those on such contracts falling away financially from people who are able to buy a house?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, on the noble Lord’s general point about the underlying theme of the report, I shall quote to him from the beginning of it—these are Matthew Taylor’s words and not mine—where he says of our flexible labour market that,

“the British way is rightly seen internationally as largely successful”.

Everything that comes through this report tells us that while the system is not perfect it is actually working quite well.

The noble Lord is right that even where people are working quite a few hours under a zero-hours contract they still find it very difficult to get a mortgage because the mortgage company sees it as zero hours. That is why one recommendation of the report, and it is an eminently sensible one, is that where an individual consistently works a number of hours on a zero-hours contract, after a year they can request that it be converted to a fixed-hours contract. That is one of the report’s recommendations that we will take extremely seriously.