Foreign Direct Investment 2016-17

Debate between Rishi Sunak and Hannah Bardell

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I welcome the debate secured by the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) and the opportunity to discuss foreign direct investment from a Scottish perspective. It has been a record-breaking year, as it has for the UK. I hear much positivity about post-Brexit, but we must remember that nothing has actually happened yet and things are very much in a state of flux.

The hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak) mentioned universities. I do not know whether he is aware that last week Scotland was ranked as having five of the top 200 universities in the world, which is a huge achievement.

[Rishi Sunak]

I welcome that fact, but does the hon. Lady agree that the Scottish Government could do more to improve access to those universities? She will be aware that students from poor and disadvantaged families are twice as likely to go to university in England as they are in Scotland, and that is something the Scottish Government should focus on fixing.

[Hannah Bardell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for that intervention. He knows that the scrapping of tuition fees in Scotland has meant access not only to university but to employment and to college. That has been welcomed across the board. A university place is not always the full picture. Youth employment in Scotland is lower than anywhere else in the UK because of the SNP Government’s investment in a youth employment Minister—the first in these islands—and making sure that students do not leave university with tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds’- worth of debt.