Industry and Exports (Financial Assistance) Bill

Calvin Bailey Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 15th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

This is an important Bill, not only for the agenda of increasing trade and therefore economic growth, but for our entire foreign policy in this chaotic and insecure international environment. My work over the past year as trade envoy to southern Africa has shown me just how important joined-up trade finance is to our diplomacy and to securing UK interests around the world, particularly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer) said, in the steel industry. In many contexts, but particularly in Africa, economic diplomacy that centres trade and investment is what our partners want from us, and this is reflected in the new UK-Africa approach that was launched earlier today. Unless we have the means to commit financially and an anchor to bring together UK businesses and investors, there will be many serious challenges that we cannot overcome.

We need to build partnerships on critical minerals that protect our economy from the weaponisation of supply chains, particularly by China, and to implement the new critical minerals strategy. We need to create deeper economic ties with fast-growing countries and regions, including many of our partners in Africa, because we have been losing out on serious growth opportunities for the lack of a focused, strategic approach over the past decade and a half. We need to show our partners that we have a modern approach to international development that recognises and works with their own strategies and ambitions and therefore puts economic transformation at its heart. This requires us to be much more joined up across Government, and to do more with the resources available.

I want to ask the Minister how the changes in the Bill will complement UK Export Finance’s update of its own strategy. How will we enable organisations with a very long-term focus, including not only UKEF but British International Investment, to be more nimble and more ambitious in working together with our diplomats? As the Minister knows, I firmly believe that what our partners want from the UK is the exercise of cohering power: not providing the whole solution to our shared challenges, but being more willing to step forward and play a leading role in building that solution. Within this, our institutions could provide a bigger economic impact and secure far more UK influence if they worked more in collaboration on larger projects such as infrastructure, trade corridors, energy grid developments and critical minerals processing. This includes working together with close partner institutions, such as those of Japan and Canada, as well as with our EU partners.

The Minister will have read my views on these matters. It is clear that the UK is viewed as a cohering partner in sub-Saharan Africa, and I hope that UKEF being front and centre of that cohering international co-operation will help to address Chinese influence in the region. How does he think we can more effectively support UKEF and others to do that, given that it may require a more nimble and flexible approach than the UK institutions are used to? Today’s Africa approach rightly highlights the UK’s support for the African continental free trade area, but promoting intra-Africa trade and the critical agenda to move up the value chain often requires us to look across borders and apply a regional lens when we assess which projects to support. Can the Minister tell us how UKEF will do this?

Finally, I note that resource constraints are inevitably a threat to the implementation of the Africa approach, the critical minerals strategy and trade growth more widely. I have seen some innovative approaches across the continent that we can learn lessons from, including greater use of chambers of commerce to ensure that country and regional expertise on UK trade and investment relationships is preserved. I want to pour praise on the ambassadors in Mozambique, Zambia, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola, who have all demonstrated exceptional approaches to trade creation and innovation. I wish to ensure that they have the Minister’s support in the retention of those posts and our diplomatic network. Will the Minister set out how UKEF and our other key public institutions will work seamlessly across all mechanisms of government to ensure that we get the greatest value for public money, even when resources are tight?

Expanded trade finance through UKEF is an essential tool for putting these strategies into practice and making our country and our partners more prosperous and secure. The Bill takes welcome steps in fixing the framework governing UKEF and making that progress possible. I thank the Minister and his Government colleagues for their engagement with me on these issues over the past months, and I look forward to playing my part in driving this shared agenda forward.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

To wind up, with the leave of the House, I call the shadow Minister.

UK-US Trade and Tariffs

Calvin Bailey Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

The right hon. Gentleman knows the value that we place as a Department on the incredible product that is Scotch whisky. We have a particular set of policy initiatives on geographic indicators to make sure the brand is protected, and I always do everything I can to support Scotch whisky, which is just absolutely world class and always will be.

He is right to say that our joint success in Scotch whisky produces a prominence that sometimes makes it vulnerable to retaliatory measures because of the recognition of the success in that field. On domestic policy, I remain in close contact with the Chancellor on all matters and will do on this one. There are tremendous opportunities for Scotch whisky from some of the other trade negotiations that we are having, such as with India in particular, which is the biggest whisky market in the world, as the right hon. Gentleman will know. I think there could be real steps forward in terms of our market access there and the arrangements that we have, which will give us an advantage over other countries, and that is also a prominent part of our work.

[Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

War does not benefit anyone. A trade war between the UK and its closest ally will not benefit our industry nor our people and will stifle our ability to grow our way out of 14 years of Conservative mess. For that reason, I thank the Minister for his pragmatic and cool-headed approach. However, the measures also threaten our ability to prevent military conflict here on the continent of Europe. Will he detail what action he is taking to ensure that our air and space industry can work with our European partners to implement the defence industrial strategy, which is central to ensuring peace here in Europe?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right in his assessment of the burdens and benefits of solving the challenge we have been faced with by the announcements yesterday evening. He will know that the defence sector is one of the eight priority sectors of our industrial strategy. There is a whole range of work across areas like air and space that we are engaged in with Ministry of Defence colleagues. Of course, we have also had a significant increase in defence spending, which is a crucial part of how we respond to these threats. The US will always be a crucial security ally for us, and our shared interests—whether they are economic or in the defence and security space—are enduring. That is something we should always bear in mind as we try to find a way through.