Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

We introduced the national living wage. We have enabled workers to carry over more annual leave because of the pandemic. We have increased the reference period that employers use to calculate holiday pay, to improve seasonal workers’ wages. We are continuing to improve workers’ rights over this Parliament. We are indeed the workers’ party, so we will continue to make sure that we tackle fire and rehire when it is used as a bully boy tactic.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

4. What steps his Department is taking to establish the UK’s position as a world leader in science, research and innovation.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (George Freeman)]

I thank my hon. Friend, who has been a distinguished Minister in the Treasury and the Department for Transport and a champion of innovation. As the Prime Minister has made clear, the Government are completely committed to unlocking this country’s global reach as a science superpower and an innovation nation. That is why we are committed to spending £14.9 billion this year on research and development, and to increasing the total R&D budget to £22 billion and 2.5% of GDP.

[Andrew Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer, and congratulate him. It is good to see him back at the Dispatch Box.

One of the largest employers in my constituency is Labcorp, a business that is at the heart of new medicine development both in the UK and across Europe and has played a role in the life science industry response to covid. It is considering UK expansion over the next five years at a number of sites across the UK. Will my hon. Friend meet me to discuss that opportunity, and also some of the obstacles that may get in the way of it, with a view to securing expansion in the UK as a whole but in Harrogate in particular?

[George Freeman]

I should be delighted to meet my hon. Friend soon to discuss that. Labcorp is a major global corporation whose investment in the new clinical pharmacology site is vital. It is in such companies that we need to be investing to drive private investment in research and development.