UK Nuclear Energy Programme
Debate between Adrian Bailey and Ed Davey
Mr Davey
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support in this matter. He is right to make it clear that Chinese investment into Britain, and in this case into our electricity supply system, is very welcome. We already have it. There are billions of pounds of Chinese money invested in the UK’s electricity industry and in our wider industry. I talked to EDF today, which has been working in China for more than 30 years. EDF has been partnering Chinese nuclear firms for a long time, so this partnership ought to be welcomed in the UK.
Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome this announcement, but the departmental press release said that up to 50% of the work would be available for employment in this country. Can the Secretary of State clarify whether 43% will not be available? Given the rundown in capacity in the construction industry and the shortage of our engineers, can he say what is being done to maximise the employment potential?
Mr Davey
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his welcome. He is right that we have negotiated a deal so that 57% of the value will go to UK firms, ensuring that they can get the benefit and develop their skills and that UK employees can be a big part of the project. We would have liked the figure to be higher, but unfortunately not a lot has happened in the nuclear industry for many years. I wonder whether Opposition Members might like to explain why that is. This Government have looked forward to ensure that there will be a better future for British nuclear firms, not only as a result of this deal, but because earlier this year my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and I published an industrial strategy for the UK’s nuclear industry, looking at all aspects, so that British firms and British people can benefit as we develop clean, low-carbon nuclear power in this country.
Co-operatives and Mutuality
Debate between Adrian Bailey and Ed Davey(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Bailey
One thing that attracted me to work in the co-operative movement for so many years was that as a believer both in the market and the need to succeed in it, and in certain values, I felt that it was a model in which successful businesses could reconcile the two. That is clearly demonstrated, and is part and parcel of the reasons for today’s debate.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)
I hope that we are not bracketing co-operatives in the third sector; they work in the private and public sectors as well. They speak to all of our economy, and if we see them in that way we are much more likely to have an ambitious agenda for them.
Mr Bailey
The Minister can rest assured that I was going to come on to demonstrate the range of businesses in the co-operative sector. One problem that the mutual and co-operative sectors had in the ’80s and ’90s was that they failed to highlight sufficiently their difference, and a minority of co-operatives did not appear to be effective business models—being more charitable, for example—with the result that movement as a whole suffered.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Adrian Bailey and Ed Davey(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
The cuts in higher education funding will begin at the beginning of the next financial year, in April 2011. The university year will not end until the summer, and the new income streams from tuition fees will not arrive until some indeterminate time in the future. There is a disconnection in the cash flow to higher education. What is the Minister doing to prevent it from damaging higher education?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Adrian Bailey and Ed Davey(14 years ago)
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Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the commitment, given by the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), in response to my first question, to setting up structures to access European regional development funding. Will the Minister confirm that money will be available to get the projects together to do that?
Building a High-Skilled Economy
Debate between Adrian Bailey and Ed Davey(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Davey
What I have noticed about the targets set by the previous Government—which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned in his speech—is how often they were not met. The Government set target after target which they then failed to meet. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the targets that they set for apprenticeships, but they set those targets and never met them. We will meet our target, and I believe that we will meet it within the next 12 months. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will soon eat his words.
We heard an awful lot today about the importance of manufacturing industry. I believe that the Government’s skills programme will ensure that it receives the support that it deserves, at the basic skills and education level. Labour Members may complain about the state of manufacturing industry, but they have a poor record in that regard themselves. The hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), the new Chair of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee—I welcome him to his post—made a thoughtful speech on the subject, but I think he should bear in mind that whereas in 1997 manufacturing represented 20% of the United Kingdom economy, by the time the Labour Government left office the proportion had fallen to 12%.
Mr Davey
Of course that is true of many modern economies, but I think it ill behoves the Labour party to criticise this Government in their early days, given that its own approach to manufacturing industry was not to turn the tide and go against the trend.
Although we have a huge amount in common, when Labour Members talk about the skills agenda they sometimes forget some of the record of which they should be less proud. I am thinking particularly of the quangocracy that grew up around the skills agenda. There is currently a patchwork quilt of quangos involved in that agenda. Members may be interested to learn how the position has changed. In government, the Labour party did not just create the existing quangos, but created quangos, abolished them and created new ones, all within 13 years. The fact that that instability and reinvention happened time after time shows that the Labour Government never really had a true vision. They constantly spent large amounts on new quangos while failing to get some of that money to the grass roots—to our communities. A lot of money was wasted then.
When the last Government set up the Learning and Skills Council, I was sent strategy after strategy by that august body. At first I thought that I had a real duty to read every single page, but when I visited the LSC and talked to its representatives, I realised that most of those strategies would never come to anything. I am afraid that that happened time and again. Huge amounts were spent on quangos, reports and consultancy, but less money went to the companies and learners who needed it. We believe that the need to rationalise the quangocracy in learning and skills is a key issue, and we will deal with it. We will do so while also having to look at the spending issues in this area, and there will be huge challenges. I do not think there is anyone in this House or involved in FE, HE or the education system in general who does not realise that we face difficult choices in this area, but we are absolutely clear that we will do our best with the money that we have got into apprenticeships and into the capital programme for FE to ensure that the priorities get the funding they deserve.