Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

There are huge advantages to our collaboration in or outside the European Union. To enable us to shine a light on the excellence that my hon. Friend mentions, on my recent trip to Israel I agreed with Prime Minister Netanyahu that we will jointly sponsor a Government high-level trade and investment conference that will enable us to show the world the best of what both countries have to offer in the sector mentioned by my hon. Friend.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State on mentioning D-day. My father served in the Royal Engineers throughout the war, and my thoughts are of him and our brave troops today.

The Secretary of State is right to say that global trade can take place only in conditions of peace. Will he back the small group of MPs from across the House who are trying to create close relationships between university research in the UK and university research in Israel?

[Dr Fox]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. He is right—where we are able to take advantage of the innovation coming out of universities, we should make every attempt to do so. One reason that international investors give for putting money into the United Kingdom is the access to high-quality innovation that comes from the collaboration between industry and academia. Where we can take full advantage of that, including with bilateral relations elsewhere, we should do so.

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[Harriett Baldwin]

I am pleased to say that my ministerial colleague Baroness Sugg has been at that conference in Vancouver this week. The hon. Lady highlights a very important issue, because the evidence and the research that we have done suggests that involving women in peace processes very significantly increases the chances of their being successful and sustainable.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Minister agree that if we want to make women more equal worldwide, we have to free them from poverty? And does she agree that a road death or serious injury can plunge a family into long-term poverty? Does she agree that we must act now to stop this greatest epidemic of our times, which kills more women and children worldwide?

[Harriett Baldwin]

May I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s tireless work on road safety around the world? He and I have met to discuss this issue, which is one of the biggest killers around the world. Of course, it is a killer of women and girls as well, and often of girls on their way to school. We are thinking about how we can best make sure that, where there is a need to develop growth—where the World Bank is providing finance, for example—the road safety elements are taken into account from the beginning.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

In congratulating the hon. Member for Huddersfield upon the magnificence of his tie, I call Mr Barry Sheerman.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Can all those on the Government Front Bench tell me what I should say to my service and manufacturing industries that export overseas? For years, they have been frustrated that the Chinese are stealing their patents and intellectual property, but now this Government are going to open not only the back door but the front door to the Chinese to take their secrets and undercut them.

[George Hollingbery]

In the past week, the Chinese have agreed a joint communiqué with the EU about the forced transfer of intellectual property, which gives us some comfort. We work extensively with the Chinese Government through joint trade reviews to examine various areas of the economy, particularly in services, where we can address this. I believe that progress is being made on this front, but I go back to the point I made to my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant): this is a complex area. WTO rules make this very difficult to address, and we need to change it.

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[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the Minister aware that an increasing number of women entrepreneurs are using digital blockchain tools to start and grow their businesses? Will she meet people who can introduce her to blockchain solutions, and will she say something to her colleagues in the Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority to encourage such use?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I would be very happy to meet women who are using all manner of tools. I met eBay yesterday, and it talked about the work it is doing to encourage women to start their own businesses. It particularly talked about how it is working with retail businesses in Wolverhampton. I am always available to speak about anything that will encourage women in business—in fact, not just women but all people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

The countries my hon. Friend mentions are for new free trade agreements, whereas of course the agreement with Switzerland was a continuity agreement. In fact, it was an unusual agreement because, rather than being a single agreement to roll over, there were some 58 different ones. It was to the tremendous credit of the Swiss Government that they were able to carry out that work as expeditiously as they did and we owe them a great deal of gratitude.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does not the Secretary of State realise that the Swiss deal is a tiny deal—nothing wrong with it, but it is tiny? Could we have a list of all the trade deals he has secured across the piece because, as I have been tracking them, they are very small indeed? May I also tell the Secretary of State that it was not his finest hour last night when he did not have the courage to take an intervention from the Father of the House?

[Dr Fox]

Sometimes one wonders how small people can actually become in this House of Commons. The Swiss deal is not small, it is not insignificant; it is worth over £32 billion a year. Switzerland is Britain’s seventh biggest trading partner globally. The hon. Gentleman should know that.

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[Kelly Tolhurst]

The research programme into the workplace and gender equality will invest £1.1 million in academic research over two years. So far that programme has commissioned an evidence-based review of family-friendly policies and women’s progression, as well as considering how parents share caring for their children, and what motivates employers to improve their offer of shared parental leave. That programme will be based on evidence and advice from employers regarding how we can improve those family-friendly policies.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

2. If she will meet the Children’s Commissioner and the Ofsted Chief Inspector to discuss barriers to girls and women entering highly paid professions.

[The Minister for Women and Equalities (Penny Mordaunt)]

My colleagues in the Department for Education regularly meet Ofsted and the Children’s Commissioner, and I will ask them to raise that matter at their next meeting. It is critical to get more women into professions where they are under-represented, not least because that will help close the gender pay gap.

[Mr Sheerman]

The Minister knows the information and data that those two organisations hold on the fact that so many bright girls are diverted early on away from science and maths, and away from other subjects that have a clear link with progression to high management. Surely that is criminal, and we should do something about it on an all-party basis.

[Penny Mordaunt]

I think the hon. Gentleman for the opportunity to discuss this issue again. He is right, and this is an issue on which Members across the House will agree. Progress has been made, including a clear increase in girls choosing those subjects, which shows that effort does pay off, but there are still too few such cases, and we must not let up in our work to encourage women to have such choices and to go forward in those professions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[George Hollingbery]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Crispin Simon, the aforementioned HMTC, is leading the Department’s network to grow trade in key sectors. UK exports to India grew by 28%, to £7.9 billion, in the year ending quarter 2 2018, making that seven consecutive quarters of growth. Goods exports increased by 38% in the same period. Following the launch of the UK-India technology partnership by the Prime Minister and Indian Prime Minister Modi in April 2018, there have been many successes, including the healthcare AI catalyst programme. We have worked closely with many companies, such as BT, Rolex, Diageo, GlaxoSmithKline, Marks & Spencer and G4S.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister might know that, in the Leeds city region, which includes Huddersfield, we have many brilliant businesspeople from an Indian background and they of course have very good partnerships with India. They are totally demoralised at the moment, partly because of this Secretary of State. I would not wish him to go into hell, but they have no confidence in him and they have no confidence in shrinking the potential market for India from 650 million to 65 million people.

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[Mr Speaker]

Order. Before we move on, as Humphrey Bogart said,

“I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners, I don’t like them myself”,

but just because the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) is sporting a rather splendid and garish Bogart tie, that does not mean that he should descend to that level himself. [Interruption.] He is chuntering from a sedentary position with predictable regularity—

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

For my constituents against that man.

EU Free Trade Agreements

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[George Hollingbery]

The Government policy, as my hon. Friend knows, is to leave with a deal, and I very much agree with that; it is by far and away the most sensible thing to do. I think most of the House will understand that if we have a deal and an implementation period, it takes the time pressure off and allows us to negotiate these deals in a more orderly fashion. Order has been created, and we are making progress, but if we have a deal and an implementation period, which is crucial to that, it will make negotiation of these deals a great deal more straightforward.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I feel sorry for the junior Minister. This must be one of the worst cases of neglect of duty since Nero fiddled while Rome burned. His boss is in the fleshpots of Davos, rubbing shoulders and having a lovely time, while he is slaving here at the Dispatch Box, on a day when the media tell us that many more companies are fleeing to Holland, Ireland and France. He is not trying to mislead the House—I am not saying that—but he is being very careful with his answers in terms of how many of these agreements have been signed. He is not giving any information to the House or our constituents, while his boss is having a lovely time in Davos.

[George Hollingbery]

I anticipated that that subject might arise, and I speculated that the timing of this urgent question was quite deliberate, for that very purpose. Let me tell the hon. Gentleman exactly what the Secretary of State is doing in Davos. Believe me, he has not taken his ski suit; he has taken his business suit. He met yesterday with the Israeli Government, from whom he elicited an agreement that our arrangements with Israel will be rolled over. He met the Egyptians, from whom he had a very positive reaction. He met with the Peruvians and the Colombians, and he further met with the South Korean Government. Today he will meet with the Ecuadorian Government, the Canadian Government and the South African Government, and later today—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman pretends to be playing a violin; I suppose he is saying that it is a sob story.

[Mr Sheerman]

I’m fiddling while Rome burns!

[George Hollingbery]

What I am trying to tell the hon. Gentleman is that the Secretary of State is in Davos doing exactly what this House would want him to do. He is at the negotiating coalface, ensuring that our partners in these countries who have not necessarily taken a no-deal Brexit seriously do so. He is incentivising them to sit down around the negotiating table, and he is making good progress. Later this afternoon, he will attend the trade stewards committee, where he will meet nearly every single trade Minister in nearly every single jurisdiction where we are attempting to create continuity in our trade agreements. I hope the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his implication that the Secretary of State is not doing his job, because that is exactly what he is doing.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I hope the House will forgive me if I speak to the global context; after all, we are debating the European Union (Withdrawal) Act.

I come from the generation that was stung by Dean Acheson’s saying in 1962:

“Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.”

I was lucky enough to get into the House when a generation was still here of people like Denis Healey and Ted Heath, who had actually fought on the beaches at Anzio and in the Normandy invasion against Hitler. Those people were still here. That generation had seen two world wars, and they created, not just in Britain, but across the western world, the United Nations, NATO and the European Coal and Steel Community that became an integrated Europe, and they did so to keep the peace, to keep the prosperity and to face up to the challenges of that global environment.

In my time in this House, I have seen that global environment becoming more challenging, more frightening and more terrifying. Indeed, it is the most terrifying time to be a Member of Parliament. We are responsible for looking after our constituents when their jobs are being undermined by different kinds of contracts and uncertainties, and when the old certainties are being swept away for us in the United Kingdom.

I believe passionately that our country has to be part of that global community and to be leading that global community. When we joined the European Union in 1975, it was thanks to the bravery of people such as Ted Heath who led the Conservative party and changed it from being anti-Europe to pro-Europe. His generation was one that, cross party, I admired. It produced a breed of politicians who, for their time, stepped up to the plate and showed that leadership.

What I am very concerned about is that we are now entering into an unknown world. Our withdrawal from the European Union has implications for our membership of the United Nations and there are questions over whether we will hold on to a seat on the Security Council and whether our impact or our force in the world will be very substantial at all. The fact of the matter is that we had found a new role in the world—as an active member and leader of the European Union. I judge this debate today on whether, as I want, our country is successful—successful in terms of meeting the challenges economically and meeting them politically. We can do that only through very close-co-operation across Europe in the European Union. That is why I cannot support anything that takes us out of the European Union. I campaigned to remain and I remain convinced that we should be in the European Union.

On a micro-level, on a bottom-up level, my sacred duty as a Member of Parliament is to come to this place to make sure that the health, welfare and prosperity of my constituents are not harmed in any way—that they are improved. Every piece of evidence that I have seen from the Bank of England, the London School of Economics, and the independent think-tanks convince me that I was right when, as Chairman of a Select Committee for 10 years, I believed that evidence-based policy was the best kind of policy. All the evidence shows that my constituents, on any deal, will be worse off and poorer out of the European Union than in the European Union.

This deal does not deliver what we need or want. The Chancellor is looking at me carefully. He has criticised me in the past for synthetic passion. This is not synthetic, Chancellor. This is me with a heartfelt plea about our global position as a nation. I am speaking from a Parliament that should be representing the people from our constituencies. I do not want a poorer Britain. I do not want poorer constituents. This deal will deliver both those sad outcomes, and I urge the House to vote down the motion.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right—it is a priority of this Government to create even more high-paying jobs by making the UK the most business-friendly market in the world. The Labour party’s promise to seize the assets of foreign pension funds invested in the UK threatens our prosperity and the retirement of those around the world who have put their confidence in Britain.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

In the past few years I have often thought that I live on a parallel planet to the Minister. That obviously is the case, because the senior people I meet from the United States, China and other major economies are not investing, or thinking of investing, in the United Kingdom, partly because of the uncertainty over Brexit and because, if we leave the European Union, they want a market of 650 million, not 65 million.

[Graham Stuart]

I can confirm that the hon. Gentleman does live in a parallel universe, but it is one that he shares with his Front Benchers. His parallel universe is entirely divorced from the reality that investors are coming to the UK. We are the No. 1 foreign direct investment destination in Europe. We have the largest stock, and that is why we have been able to support more than half a million new jobs since 2010. The biggest threat, investors tell me, is that of Labour coming to power.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I do not know whether the Secretary of State listens to my favourite programme in the morning, “Farming Today”, but is he aware that, following the publication yesterday of the Agriculture Bill, there is a great deal of concern in the farming community about the Bill and about the possibility of having a decent trading relationship, with high-technology components, after Brexit?

[Mr Speaker]

Particularly in relation to Israel.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Our proceedings would be incomplete and underperforming without a question from Mr Barry Sheerman.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

May I ask the Secretary of State if he is not being a little complacent about the role of China in our manufacturing and other sectors? Does he realise that, when we encourage companies to export, some of the companies, like Syngenta in my constituency, are wholly owned by ChemChina and wholly owned subsidiaries of the communist Government in China? There is a greater number of British companies owned by the Chinese. Does that alter the sort of conversation he has with them?

[Dr Fox]

We believe in an open, liberal, global economy and, if we want to own companies overseas, countries overseas have to be able to own companies in this country. That is part of a liberal trading system, but that system requires a proper system of rules. That is why the World Trade Organisation needs to be strengthened and in some areas needs to be reformed, to ensure we have a global trading system that is fair and fit for all.

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[Victoria Atkins]

Very much so. We have the highest rate of female employment on record. We know that we have more women returning to work after they have had caring responsibilities. The message to business is very clear: women are good for business. Organisations with the highest level of gender diversity in their leadership teams are 15% more likely to outperform their industry rivals.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

How women are treated when they become pregnant and have to take maternity leave is a disgrace in both how it affects their job promotion and how it affects them when they come back after maternity leave. Can we have more leadership and a new charter so that every woman and every employer knows their rights?

[Victoria Atkins]

The law is very clear: employers are not allowed to discriminate against women on the basis of pregnancy or of their maternity commitments. As part of dealing with the gender pay gap, employers are beginning to talk about how they treat their workforce in a way that they did not a year or two ago. To me, this is part of readjusting what we expect from employers and what employees expect of the people for whom they work.

US Steel and Aluminium Tariffs

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

I do not think that those issues are remotely related. It has been clear from the presidential election campaign onwards that the President has concerns about the US steel industry and global overcapacity. We do not disagree with the analysis of the problem; we disagree with the remedy being applied.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Secretary of State not worry that future generations will look back on him and the group of people who pulled us out of Europe as the real villains of the piece? Is it not a fact that the promise that we would give up the market of 600 million people in Europe but get a massive market in North America has proven to be false? Will he remember that this country deserves to be in Europe, fighting united for Europe?

[Dr Fox]

It was not me, nor any other Member of the House, who decided to pull Britain out of the European Union; it was the people of Britain, in a democratic referendum. I will send the hon. Gentleman a dictionary, and he can tell me which of the words “binary”, “referendum” and “democracy” he does not understand.