European Union (Approvals) Bill

Debate between Andrew Percy and Margot James

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 4th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

Any such comment from me would be speculation, which I intend to avoid, but I point out that Germany, like the United Kingdom, needs the consent of its national Parliament before its Ministers can vote on such draft decisions.

As I said, all member states apart from Germany and ourselves have agreed the Fundamental Rights Agency decisions, and we do not believe that any of the draft decisions are contentious. The Government are committed to being constructive in the UK’s ongoing engagement with the EU. Holding up progress on business that is simple and uncontroversial would undermine that approach and the principle of sincere co-operation that lies behind it. It is therefore clearly in the UK’s interests to approve these draft decisions. Delaying the decisions could have a negative impact on the UK’s exit negotiations with the EU, including discussion on any future framework. There will, of course, be further opportunities to examine more fundamental aspects of the work of the EU in other debates. However, I am sure hon. Members will recognise that, whatever their views on EU exit, it is in the UK’s interests to approve these draft decisions.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

Will the Minister confirm that, as part of our ongoing relationship with the European Union until we achieve our freedom, the provisions of the trade agreement secured with Canada will be implemented fully in the United Kingdom, and that we will continue to play a proactive role within the EU and beyond in encouraging further free trade with Canada?

[Margot James]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention. I remember his excellent work when he was a trade representative to Canada and I assure him that the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement negotiations, completed between the EU and Canada, will cover the United Kingdom for as long as we are members of the EU. After that point, it will be up to us to decide the terms of any future trading relationship with Canada, bearing in mind the—I won’t go any further on that.

Parliamentary Representation

Debate between Andrew Percy and Margot James

Thursday 27th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

I agree with that point and I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. In most Parliaments where there is a decent level of female representation there is at least positive action.

Our party has succeeded to some degree with the positive action that we have taken. I was on the A-list, as it was known, before the last election, along with many of my hon. Friends. That system enabled a big increase in the number of Conservative women that we now have in the Chamber. As many Members will know, it was a system whereby half of the list of candidates from which an association could select were female. We went through a few other developments on that theme, and later in the cycle of selections there was a system whereby associations had to have gender parity at each stage of the selection process. I commend that process for enabling men to have a proper and fair chance while ensuring that women were supported in overcoming some of the more extensive barriers that they face.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I will just take my hon. Friend back to the point of selection. Is it not also the case that the selection processes of all parties, but especially our party, do not only favour men but men of a particular social and professional background? That has been one of the biggest issues in expanding representation. This debate is about not only gender, but social class, and frankly our associations all too often—not in the case of my constituency, I am pleased to say—represent a particular social class.

[Margot James]

My hon. Friend makes the very good point that, of course, this debate is about more than gender; I could not agree more. In my area, the black country, I do not feel that Conservatives have any sort of class bias in favour of people from higher socio-economic backgrounds, but I can see that in some parts of the country that bias might exist and we must certainly stamp it out.

Gender is an area where it has been easier to improve the selection processes, but we must work equally hard on improving the access to Parliament for other disadvantaged groups. We can do that by fostering a sense of inclusion—a sense that Parliament is an inclusive place—and by our parties respecting that when they select candidates.

The Speaker’s parliamentary placement scheme has delivered a good start in equalising the number of women and men who come into Parliament at a young age to work. Almost 50% of the paid internships supported by the scheme have been for young women, which is a good thing. The hon. Member for Aberdeen South mentioned the access to elected office for disabled people fund. There have been 60 applicants to that fund and 29 people with disabilities, who probably face greater hurdles than anybody else in entering Parliament, now have full funding, which is great progress. I thank you, Mr Speaker, for your support for all that work, which I hope will continue.

I will say a little bit about the sort of changes that we can make when we get here. The number of lesbian and gay people on our Benches now makes quite a big difference. Ministers across all Departments are very busy people. I am glad to say that all the Ministers I know are fully committed to diversity and equality, but the issue is not always at the top of their mind—they have very busy lives and many responsibilities—so it is up to Back Benchers. I applaud many of my fellow gay Back Benchers on keeping the Government to their promises. There has been the legalisation on gay marriage; the removal of historical convictions for consensual sex between men; the pardoning of Alan Turing; and support for anti-homophobic bullying campaigns in school. There are many other examples, too. It is because we have more diversity that we can make that sort of difference, and that is why we need more of it.

I want to talk about what we can learn from business. In business, we have seen some success in the “Women on Boards” programme, which has very much been led by the Government and the Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant). Now, 25% of non-executive directors on boards are female; that is up from 16%. I can see business outstripping politics if we are not careful. Of course, I hope that business wins the battle to get more diversity and inclusion. It realises that it will not win corporate battles by relying on the talent pool that used to win in the past, and that areas of great shortage, such as engineering, need to attract more women. Some 75% of an organisation’s customers and employees will not be white men, so its decision makers should not be, either.

There are many ways to lead. Lloyds Banking Group has set a target: it wants women to be 40% of its senior executives in five years’ time. Procter & Gamble has a big programme on developing women leaders globally. Thomson Reuters has a female management academy. Those organisations recognise that women need support and training, and a champion at board level to enable them to fulfil their potential. I see an opportunity there for politics in Westminster. I think that we are all aware that HR at Westminster is perhaps a little antediluvian, compared with HR in industry. We need to learn lessons from these organisations, which do not just set targets, but have committed people dedicated to making those targets a reality. On those programmes, women are identified and put into positions that are known as feeder jobs, in which people can acquire critical skills that they will require at board level. What I am saying is that it is not enough to get greater diversity in Parliament; we then need career progression, which needs to be managed and led from the top. There is a great opportunity there, and I urge that point on Members on both Front Benches.

Higher Education Fees

Debate between Andrew Percy and Margot James

Thursday 9th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. There is, of course, a choice to be made, and Governments can make whatever choices they want to make on important issues such as this. However, I do not think that the case has been made for this proposal, and I shall go on to say a little about that in a moment.

I have a particular issue with the loss of funding to the arts and humanities. It is wrong for the Government to say that there is no value to the state in the arts and humanities. We lead the world in research in the arts and humanities, and the loss of funding in its entirety for those who want to pursue degrees in those subjects certainly does not sit well with me.

I accept that the mechanism that the Government are proposing to put in place could not be much more progressive. I believe that it is fair, and that it will protect the poorest students. However, I have made the point to Ministers on several occasions over the past few days that we have not won the argument on that basis. Many of the choices that young people make about higher education are based on perception, and there is a perception out there that this measure will lead to huge debts of £40,000 to £50,000 at least. We have not won the argument relating to that perception.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making some good points, but does he accept that one third of students will be better off? The progressive nature of the proposal means that some students will never pay off their debt unless their earnings take them into the higher-rate tax band. Surely that is an argument against what he has been saying.

[Andrew Percy]

A number of hon. Members have made that very point today, and I accept that the principle of tripling fees—in many cases, they will go up not to £6,000 but to £7,000, £8,000 or £9,000—means that the system is progressive. My concern is that we have not had a proper debate. We have not had time to consider the options and we have not had time to have a sensible, grown-up debate—

Industry (Government Support)

Debate between Andrew Percy and Margot James

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

There is a big problem with apprenticeships for a lot of people in my constituency. The college funds NVQ level 2 and 3 training programmes and more and more students are trying to stay in college because they simply cannot get the apprenticeships outside as the employers are too hard up to provide them.

[Andrew Percy]

I am a former schoolteacher, and I am sure my hon. Friend will agree with me that what has happened in education over the last few years is that the gap between the best-performing and the worst-performing schools has widened, the number of children from poorer backgrounds going on to decent and good universities has fallen and more people are leaving school with poorer qualification levels and poorer standards in basic literacy and numeracy than did before the previous Government came to power.

[Margot James]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. I was going to go on to make that point myself, but I shall leave it to Sir Terry Leahy, the chief executive of Tesco, to make the point for me. He employs 41,000 people under the age of 20 in a total work force of 280,000. He said at the end of last year:

“Sadly, despite all the money that has been spent”

on education,

“standards are still woefully low in too many schools. Employers like us…are often left to pick up the pieces.”

That is one of the many problems that industry faces.

Let me go back to the points that I was making that follow on from the apprenticeship schemes. Stourbridge has a great many small to medium-sized enterprises. Indeed, in the metropolitan borough of Dudley, of which we are part, 90% of companies employ fewer than 50 people. It is all very well for business leaders to support regional development agencies, as some of them have in the past, but smaller companies cannot cut through the thicket of bureaucracy and have not benefited from them in any large number. In my constituency, where so much industry is classified as SME, that is a real problem.

Support for industry cannot exist in a vacuum. I must contest the Opposition’s claim, in their motion, about

“supporting businesses through the downturn”.

I have already made the point that a lot of the measures that the last Government took under the umbrella of support for industry had a very limited effect at best when set against the disastrous macro-economic policies that they pursued. The macro-economic environment is really what affects business, not this scheme and that scheme.

Stealth taxes were a cardinal sin of the last Chancellor but one, and in my constituency they had a disastrous effect on industry. Empty property relief was abolished and that had a very negative effect. That, the rise in business rates and the spiralling cost of energy and fuel are the things that really make a difference to business. Business was really let down and was not supported by the last Government, so I strongly contest the wording of the motion. The point on education has already been well made thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy).

What business needs, first and foremost, is for sanity to be restored to the public finances. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made that very clear in his response. A robust deficit reduction plan that will enable us to keep interest rates low is one thing that will support industry far more than this support programme and that support programme. I congratulate the Government on promising us—presumably we will hear more detail next Tuesday—a simpler and lower corporate tax regime, as that is crucial. Tax and regulation are two sides of the same coin, and I also applaud the regulation proposals of the new Business, Innovation and Skills team. My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) mentioned the one in, one out regulation rule that is going to come in. I am hopeful that it might even develop into a one in, two out rule over the next couple of years, and I set that as an aspiration for the new BIS team. I was also delighted to hear the Prime Minister announce this week a review of health and safety regulations, which have got out of hand. They are a burden not just on the private sector but on the public sector.

I make a plea for the protection of our science base and our research and development base, so I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Universities and Science is present. I will pay tribute to the last Government in one respect regarding the science base. The shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), mentioned the new patent box tax incentive for drugs and biotechnology products that are researched in the UK. That tax break of 10% in corporation tax is a very useful and proper incentive that might help to stem the tide of research and development that is, tragically, going overseas, despite our having one of the best science and research bases in the world. The last Government belatedly came up with a solution and I very much hope that our Government will continue with that support.

I support the amendment to the motion, particularly in relation to the skills agenda. I am delighted that we will be giving additional funding for apprenticeships to drive business more in the direction of taking them up, as that is badly needed. I am also pleased to see at least some rescue of capital funding for the further education college sector. Stourbridge college in my constituency made a fantastic bid, and was encouraged so to do by the old Learning and Skills Council. It spent a lot of money pursuing that bid in quite a proper manner only to find at the death that all its plans had to be put on hold because the old LSC had over-committed its budget by at least four times. Stourbridge college is pursuing some of those plans, and I wish it all the best. I hope that I can find the right corner of the BIS Department to lobby for our college to get some of the additional £50 million in capital funding that is being made available.

The new skills agenda, the diversion of money from Train to Gain into apprenticeships and the diversion of money from RDAs into local enterprise partnerships will enable small firms and students in my constituency to access that funding directly, to operate under a lighter inspection regime and to get on with the job of training our young people so that they are fit for business. That is what I really applaud about the skills agenda, and I support 100% the amendment to the motion.