Customs and Borders
Debate between Albert Owen and Anna Soubry(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)
I join all those who have spoken today, other than the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), and endorse and embrace pretty much everything that has been so ably said. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) said, this is not just a simple case of our having a debate, which of course we should have had some time ago in order to assist the Government in this extremely difficult process, but of having the debate that we should have had in the run-up to the EU referendum.
I do not know whether the good people of Vauxhall actually did sit and discuss the intricacies of the customs union and the single market. Perhaps they did. That might explain why, of course, they voted to remain in the European Union. What we are seeing—I am sorry that I am repeating myself here—is the dawning of a Brexit reality. In that reality, businesses the length and breadth of our country are worried. They are extremely worried, especially those in the manufacturing sector.
On Tuesday, a real-life business in my constituency, which employs 750 people, came to see me. Such is the atmosphere in this country that it has not allowed me to tell Members its name, because it is frightened of the sort of abuse that many Members on these Benches have received and to which we have become accustomed. We will not give up, and we will speak out, because it is not about us, but about the generations to come and indeed the people in our constituencies who now, in the real world, face the real possibility of losing their jobs.
What did this company tell me? It makes a world-leading medicine. I am enormously proud to have it in the borough of Broxtowe. The reality is that, as it uses specialised medicinal ingredients, it imports them into our country. In Broxtowe and Nottingham, it puts them altogether and makes a world-leading medicine. Some 60% of its exports go directly to the European Union. Tariffs do not concern it so much. They concern the car industry where margins are so tight that any imposition of a tariff simply will see those great car manufacturers, which employ 425,000 people—people, whom I am afraid, the hon. Member for Vauxhall, casts to one side—move their production and new lines to their existing facilities in countries such as France, Germany and other places.
Returning to the pharmaceutical company that came to see me, any delay at all of those basic ingredients will have a considerable effect on its ability to produce, and time costs money. Any delay also means that it has to look for warehouse spaces—and it is doing this now—so that it can stockpile. I am talking about the sort of expanse that we can barely begin to imagine. It is looking for warehouses so that it can store and stockpile both the ingredients and the finished products. It fears that any delay will affect its business of exporting into the European Union.
Albert Owen
As a member of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, I met some pharmaceutical companies. One thing they told us, which was quite stark, was that research and development is done in this country, and manufacturing in the Republic of Ireland, and the product is then transferred back to the UK to go to mainland Europe. They will be paying tariffs perhaps half a dozen times, adding costs to our NHS.
Anna Soubry
The hon. Gentleman speaks with authority because he knows the reality. He will also know that pharmaceutical batches must be checked to ensure that the quality and ingredients are right. That work has to be done in a European Union country in order for those products to be sold within the European Union, so this pharmaceutical company it is going to replicate exactly the same brilliant labs that it has in Broxtowe and in Nottingham over in Amsterdam. This is the stuff of madness. The company is looking at flying qualified, high-skilled technicians out to Amsterdam on a weekly, if not daily basis, to do the work there. Replication adds to costs, and I have no doubt that it will not be long before the senior managers simply say, “Why on earth are we doing it in the UK, facing the end of the customs union and the single markets, when we could simply go into another country in the European Union and replicate our manufacturing process there?”
Enterprise Bill [Lords]
Debate between Albert Owen and Anna Soubry
Albert Owen
It is very confusing. This has not been made clear, but my understanding is that if these people were to leave today, they would be given the full package, yet the companies have been told that the measure will apply from October and those very companies are now saying that people cannot go until then. That is what is being said by the hon. Gentleman’s constituents and my constituents who have been writing in.
The Minister could end the confusion today. She could say that she will honour, as Mrs Thatcher and other Tory Ministers did, the protected rights and status of these individuals, and we could have a vote. Lawyers will argue about whether people can be protected, but we should not leave it to the lawyers—the House of Commons has the opportunity to act today. I hope that Members across the House will support new schedule 1.
Anna Soubry
Government amendments 3 to 9 will enable Welsh Ministers to make regulations on exit payments that they feel are suitable and devolved to them through the Government of Wales Act 2006. That has been agreed with Welsh Ministers through the Welsh Assembly, and I am grateful for that.
The Conservative manifesto was very clear that we would introduce the cap and that we would set it at £95,000. It is extremely important to remember that this relates to redundancy pay. The cap will curb only the top end of exit payments—just the top 5% in value of all exit packages across the public sector. Amendment 15 is merely a device based on an article in The Daily Telegraph written by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) back in January 2015. It was not part of the manifesto promise that was made. There is no honour, if I may say, in putting that forward as anything other than a junior Treasury Minister praying it in aid in an article she wrote in The Daily Telegraph.
I want to make it absolutely clear that the cap will not affect a classroom teacher earning the maximum of the upper pay range of £38,000 with a normal pension age of 60. It will not affect anyone working in the NHS earning below £47,500 or firefighters. I am told that police officers cannot be made redundant, and in any event no police officer earning below £54,000 would be caught by the cap. The Cabinet Office has confirmed that no civil servant earning below £25,000 will be captured. Some earning around £25,000 may be captured, but we can find no such example. A librarian earning £25,000 with 34 years’ experience could still retire on an unreduced pension at the age of 55.
Small Businesses: Late Payments
Debate between Albert Owen and Anna Soubry(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Alok Sharma
I am really pleased that the Minister has thrown out that challenge to Members. Will she commit to sit down with me over the coming weeks—
Albert Owen (in the Chair)
Order. There is plenty of time to sit down with the hon. Gentleman.
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).