India and Southeast Asia: Free Trade Agreements

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Bilimoria and his focus on India, reflecting the huge amount of work that he does promoting UK-Indian relations. I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Anelay on securing this debate—she obviously has a distinguished record, having served as a Minister in the Foreign Office covering south-east Asia, and knows of what she speaks.

I speak as the chair of the UK-ASEAN Business Council, a post I have been proud to hold for the last two years, having also been the trade envoy to Vietnam under the premiership of Theresa May. It is a region that I have got to know very well, and it remains a huge source of opportunity for the UK. Trade between ASEAN and the UK stands at around £50 billion a year. The UK is slightly ahead on exports against imports. On goods and services, there is roughly a 50-50 split in what we export.

If we go through the members of the UK-ASEAN Business Council, it will give a flavour of where those opportunities lie, with professional service companies, financial services companies, universities and education companies. We recently had the Premier League join us, which reflects, as it were, the new economy and the new businesses, especially the tech businesses, that can make huge inroads in this area.

Noble Lords do not need reminding that we have fantastic ties in the region. Malaysia and Singapore are both Commonwealth nations, with very visible investment in the UK—you have only to look across the river to see the incredible regeneration of Battersea Power Station. Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam are also huge and growing economies where we do a lot of business. There is prominent investment from Thailand. My noble friend Lady Anelay mentioned her visit to Indonesia. I was lucky to sit down with the President of Indonesia when he visited the UK recently as well as the Prime Minister of Malaysia, who was also in the country recently. We are constantly visited by high-level politicians from all those countries, all of whom want to engage with us.

We are very lucky to have some first-class officials based in the region, not least Martin Kent, our trade commissioner, and Sarah Tiffin, our ASEAN ambassador. There is everything to play for. We have a free trade deal with Singapore, as well as a digital economy agreement. We have a free trade deal with Vietnam; we piggybacked on the EU deal. Minister Alexander negotiated an enhanced trade partnership with Thailand, which we signed in September. We have an economic growth partnership with Indonesia. They are not very sexy names, but they are important agreements.

We are the first dialogue partner with ASEAN for 25 years. Of course, we are members of the CPTPP, which includes four ASEAN members, with three more knocking on the door. The CPTPP is already delivering significant benefits—we can now of course export chocolate to Malaysia without paying any tariffs. The CPTPP has given us, in effect, a free trade agreement with Malaysia by the back door.

I conclude simply with two to-do points for the Minister. First, Malaysia is currently the chair of ASEAN. I cannot emphasise enough how engaged Malaysia is with the digital agenda and how much it seeks to engage with the UK on digital, not least on artificial intelligence. Many new institutions have been established in Malaysia which quite openly mimic ours, with imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. They look to us for guidance—not in a patronising sense—on how they should develop their tech policy and tech infrastructure. Secondly, I was flattered to be asked to the Indonesian embassy to meet the Minister for Eurasian affairs, who simply put his cards on the table and said: “We are very keen to have a free trade agreement with the UK”. It is sitting on the table. I do not know if it is quite oven ready, but we have an enthusiastic partner in Indonesia. We recognise that the Government have priorities in terms of their free trade deals, not least with India, but Indonesia is a very willing partner.

Emergency Service Network Programme

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, who will be aware that I can be responsible only for activity post 4 July 2024. There was significant time and money overspend under the previous Government. However, he is right that the service will provide for 300,000 users across Britain, 107 emergency services, 44 police forces, 50 fire and rescue services and 13 ambulance trusts, as well as 300 other organisations that use Airwave for this important purpose. I hear what he says, but we have set a course of action and a direction of travel. He will no doubt monitor that, and I want to ensure that the switchover from Airwave to the new emergency service network happens as quickly as possible. As he knows, it will take some time to bed in following the ending of the previous contract and the beginning of this contract. I hope that the House will bear with me on that delivery in due course.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, this saga goes back so far that I was the telecoms Minister when this was first being discussed, in 2015. I am glad that progress has been made, but with the greatest respect to the noble Lord, setting a new course of action at this late stage would not necessarily be the right thing to do. The fundamental point is that the Home Office should not be building or contracting a mobile phone network, and I am glad that BT/EE is in charge of it. What worried me was reading that the Home Office itself is planning to build 300 masts. How does this programme correspond with the DCMS’s programme for a rural network shared between the mobile operators? It seems that the left hand and the right hand may each not know what the other is doing.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Given the overspend, I do not know whether the noble Lord was the left hand or the right hand in the previous Government. But whichever he was, I declare an interest: I was the Police Minister in 2009-10, and this had not started then. The delay, obfuscation, overspend and costs happened entirely on the previous Government’s watch. However, let us put that to one side. The key thing is ensuring that our police forces, fire services and others have appropriate services. The Home Office will provide some masts because there are some security implications, which we need to examine and deliver on. I hope that I can reassure the noble Lord, and the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, that the Home Office will have a grip on this and will deliver, and that it has a three to five-year plan to get the basics in place, with a handover as soon as possible.

Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The noble Baroness points out the reason why we need the new system. Airwave is expensive and out of date, and will start to become obsolete towards the end of this decade. It uses old technology and has only voice and slow text-based data services so, yes, that is entirely the aim of the new system.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, this network programme is much needed and has to be the right solution. As I understand it, one of the benefits of the new programme will be that the emergency services can send out text messages. Those were very useful during Covid and would perhaps have been useful yesterday, during the heatwave. Can my noble friend outline which services will have access to the text-messaging programme and what kind of use cases are envisaged?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I totally agree with my noble friend. It would have been very useful yesterday and it should be available across all emergency services networks: fire and ambulance, and in the Underground as well.

Policing: European Championship Final

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I will not at this point state which team I support, because that might get us into another row. However, I agree that lessons have to be learned. I understand that there was very regular communication on what was going on, and I think the police on the whole did a very good job. As the noble Lord says, it is a very good thing that nobody was more injured than they were, particularly the police officers. Nineteen officers were injured but, thankfully, none died.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I attend a lot of football matches in London and went to two of the European Championship games. The police do an exemplary job in policing football matches, and let us not forget that arrests have fallen by 50% in a decade. I was astonished to learn that the police can reclaim policing costs from football clubs only if they are in the ground, and that of the £48 million a year it costs to police football matches, they get only £5 million back. Will the Minister look at this legislation so that the police can start to reclaim the costs from the football clubs and not have this artificial situation where the football clubs keep them out of the grounds in order to save money?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con) [V]]

I totally agree with my noble friend in praising the police for the exemplary job they do, and I will take his point back.

E-scooters

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con) [V]]

My Lords, that is one of the things being suggested. As a cyclist myself, as I said when I answered the last Oral Question on this subject, it is quite terrifying for these things to come up behind you. You cannot hear them, you cannot see them until they are upon you, and they go really quite fast. So, at the end of the trial, I am sure that all those things will be taken into consideration.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am a big fan of e-scooters and am delighted that the Government are carrying out these trials. Does the Minister know how many miles have so far been travelled on legal e-scooters hired under the Government’s pilot schemes, and is there any estimation of what contribution they have made to reducing both congestion and pollution in our cities?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con) [V]]

My Lords, somewhere I have the figures for how many miles have been driven on them, but what is certain is that they have reduced congestion. But the trials will be the perfect way to see that they can be used in a safe way.

United Kingdom Resettlement Scheme

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Naturally the pandemic has hindered our efforts. Everything has been delayed, including resettlement schemes. We have restarted the resettlement schemes because we have reached over 20,000 under our previous commitment. I am not sure “apology” is the right word as we are doing everything we can, and we have restarted our resettlement schemes.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I mention in passing how much work is being done by Arts Council-funded organisations to support and help refugees. I have a specific question for the Minister: how many family reunion visas have been granted in the last five years?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I join my noble friend in paying tribute to those Arts Council organisations. Their efforts are very much appreciated. We have issued almost 30,000 family reunion visas in the last five years. This House often goes on about Dublin transfers, quite rightly, but those figures pale into insignificance compared with the number of family reunion visas we have issued.

Police National Computer

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I am very happy to give the noble Lord an update: last week the Home Office became aware that, as a result of human error, the software which triggers these automatic deletions contained defective coding and had inadvertently deleted records that it should not have and had not deleted some records which should have been deleted. An estimated 213,000 offence records, 175,000 arrest records and 15,000 person records are now being investigated as potentially having been deleted. It is worth explaining to the House, which I did not do before, that multiple records can obviously be held against the same individual, as the noble Lord will know.

On how we dealt with it, on the same day as the Home Office became aware of it, engineers put a stop to the automated process to ensure that no further deletions took place. All similar automatic processes have also been suspended. Earlier last week, Home Office civil servants and engineers worked very quickly to alert the police and other operational colleagues, and established a bronze, silver and gold command to manage the incident and co-ordinate a rapid response. The noble Lord will have heard me say to two previous speakers just what the process will be over the next few days.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I, of course, accept my noble friend’s assurances that this was human error. Indeed, human error has brought down the biggest and most sophisticated IT companies, such as Facebook, Google and Twitter. Nevertheless, this shines a light on the still creaking government IT procurement systems. I echo the comments of my noble friend Lord Dobbs. Is it not time to get departments out of their fiefdoms and working more effectively with the Government Digital Service to provide an IT strategy that is fit for purpose as we end the first quarter of the 21st century? We still have these fiefdoms procuring huge IT projects at vast cost and overrun which are not fit for purpose. It is time to centralise this procurement process.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I do not know whether I am speaking as a Minister or not, but on a personal level I totally agree with my noble friend. A whole-of-government approach would be so much better in so many areas, but each department is very protective of the money it seeks from the Treasury. Perhaps in future we will begin to have much more of a common approach on technology and procurement.

Scheduled Mass Deportation: Jamaica

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

Do we have the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf? If not, I call the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey of Didcot.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister could confirm a number of things regarding this case: first, that these deportations are taking place under legislation passed by the last Labour Government; secondly, that the deportation of foreign criminals to Jamaica makes up a very small percentage of the deportations undertaken every year; and, thirdly, that it is wholly wrong to conflate the scandal of Windrush with this case. The Government are dealing with the fallout from the Windrush scandal but this case has nothing to do with it.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Perhaps I can turn to my noble friend’s last question first, because he is absolutely right; my noble friend Lord Lancaster also alluded to this point. To conflate this flight, which contains some pretty serious criminals, with the people of the Windrush generation who came to this country to rebuild it after the war is an absolute insult to the Windrush generation, so I absolutely agree with my noble friend.

On the second point about the percentage of deportations, he is absolutely right. It is tiny: in terms of deportations to Jamaica, it is some 1%. Thirdly, he is absolutely right about the legislation: the UK Borders Act was passed in 2007 under a Labour Government.

Hate Crime: Misogyny

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The noble Baroness will know that there are already numerous strands of hate crime legislation. After the Law Commission has reported, I fully expect that Parliament will be updated on its findings.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I will make one brief point. My noble friend will have noticed the concession made by the Scottish Government on their hate crime Bill that one has to show intent to incite hatred. Will my noble friend keep this in mind when the Law Commission reports next year?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that point. We will certainly keep all aspects of findings and law in mind when thinking about future plans.

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 21st September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am grateful to follow the noble Baroness and for the opportunity to make my maiden speech in this important debate. Perhaps I may begin in the traditional way by thanking the Doorkeepers and staff for making me feel so welcome. I offer them heartfelt thanks because nothing has been too much trouble for them. I also thank my noble friends Lady Bloomfield and Lady Fall for supporting my introduction. Both are extremely busy people. My noble friend Lady Bloomfield has been taking the Agriculture Bill through the Lords and my noble friend Lady Fall has, like me, been preparing for the arrival of Lady Swire’s memoirs, which will be published this Thursday.

I do not want to make this too much like an Oscar acceptance speech, but I hope your Lordships will indulge me if I pay tribute to my late father, who came into this place 44 years ago. It was a place he loved and he served it assiduously. He made his maiden speech on the race relations Bill, expressing the hope that the Bill would one day be redundant. Obviously, given the events particularly of this year, that hope has sadly not been realised. He had a mischievous sense of humour. His final Written Question, published on the day of his death, was to take the Government to task for the misspelling of a sign by the Ministry of Works outside Richmond House. My father came into this place on the lavender list. I know that it would have appealed to his mischievous sense of humour to read the article I read just last week, which began with the immortal phrase, “This list of Peers is the worst list since the lavender list.” That provided me with a valuable connection to my father.

I was lucky enough to serve in the other place for 14 years as the Member of Parliament for the wonderful constituency of Wantage and Didcot. It is a remarkable place, as every MP says about their constituency, being a place of ancient history and modern science, ranging from the ancient white horse to the Diamond synchrotron, and now the manufacturing centre for vaccines. That is attracting politicians by the bucketload to visit it, including the Prime Minister, as it rises from the ground. It is a great privilege to be able to take the title of Lord Vaizey of Didcot, of Wantage in the county of Oxfordshire, to represent my constituency, although I slightly resent my brother-in-law christening me Lord Vaizey of Parkway.

In any event, I was lucky enough to serve for six years as the Minister for culture and technology in the other place, and those are the subjects on which I hope to bore your Lordships on regular occasions. I do not know how attentively you will listen to me, because I am not sure how good I was at my job. I was, for example, the Minister responsible for rural mobile broadband coverage. I remember—and maybe the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, will recall—the day I was sacked by the new Prime Minister Theresa May. I do not know if there are any sackees in the Chamber at the moment, but you get a call from Downing Street; I was in my car, and Downing Street said, “The Prime Minister will call you in 15 minutes”. As I drove off through the rural hinterland of Oxfordshire, I realised that I had lost my mobile phone signal. It took the Prime Minister half an hour to get through to me, and I was a Minister for 15 minutes longer thanks to the lamentable job I had done in the previous six years.

I turn briefly to the provisions in the Bill, and I say again what a privilege it has been to listen to the remarks made so far—this House is justly well known for the extraordinary expertise it contains within its ranks. It goes without saying that the Bill is essential, following the horrific attacks that have been referred to, and I pay tribute to the victims who sadly lost their lives in those attacks. It is also right to pay great tribute to our security services and our police force, who do such a remarkable job in preventing so many attacks, as has already been referred to.

I want to pick up on the theme, remarked on in some of the earlier speeches, of rehabilitation. It may seem odd to have a former culture Minister seek to speak at Second Reading of a Bill on counterterrorism, but my last meeting as culture Minister was in the Ministry of Justice, where I had assembled a series of charities—the National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance—all of which work in prisons and with offenders in an attempt to engage them, give them opportunities and hope, and turn them away from a life of crime. It sometimes sounds frivolous or even facetious, but I am a passionate and powerful believer in the power of culture, the arts and sport in engaging young people. Noble Lords have already referred to young, vulnerable and disengaged young men. We cannot necessarily forgive their crimes, but we can, if we engage them as early as possible, perhaps turn these young people away from them.

I know that the Prevent strategy has become somewhat controversial, but I think its aims are absolutely laudable. All I would do, given that the Bill covers the Prevent strategy, is urge the Government to continue to look at, and redouble their efforts in, engaging cultural charities and institutions to provide young people with hope and opportunity. I know from my own work with the National Youth Theatre how important that is, and what amazing opportunities are often given to young people.

The other issue I want to talk about briefly is the role of technology; and here is an area, I think, where we should hold people accountable. Those people are the ones who run huge global platforms such as Facebook and Google. As I am sure noble Lords know, these platforms are used by terrorist organisations. They use them to organise themselves online, to proselytise online, to convert the young and vulnerable people whom we have been talking about—and to monetise their activity. Extraordinarily, they are able to attract, through ad technology, legitimate adverts from legitimate businesses for their websites. Even more extraordinarily, some are even able to sell merchandise—T-shirts and memorabilia—on their websites, which funds their terrorist activities.

It is not within the scope of the Bill to address that issue. However, I know that the Online Harms White Paper—which will lead, I hope, to the online harms Bill—will provide an opportunity for this Government to put in place some really ground-breaking legislation, which I hope will change the debate and tip the balance. So I am grateful indeed for your Lordships’ indulgence, and the opportunity to make those remarks on the Bill.