Oral Answers to Questions

Carol Monaghan Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

Obviously, we have agreed an enormous number of trade agreements, including several from scratch. We have a new export strategy and more support for British business; we have a new export finance mission; we are an Association of Southeast Asian Nations dialogue partner; we have a voice back at the World Trade Organisation; we have created the Trade Remedies Authority, to help support our own economic interests; we have set our own global tariff regime; we have streamlined nearly 6,000 tariff lines, lowering costs for business, and scrapped thousands of unnecessary tariff variations; we are creating a single trade window; we will have the most effective border in the world by 2025; and Mr Speaker will be very pleased to hear that we are bringing forward measures to ensure that cat fur products are not allowed to be traded. All this is in addition to blue passports and the prospect of the crown stamp on a pint of English beer.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

T8. A recent London School of Economics report has found that between the end of 2019 and September 2021 UK-EU trade barriers led to a 6% increase in food prices in the UK. Will Ministers start being truthful and admit that the soaring prices are being caused not by the war in Ukraine but the Government’s post-Brexit trade agreement, which is causing so much hardship for my constituents in Glasgow?

[Penny Mordaunt]

The hon. Lady will know that work in government is looking at our global tariff and our tariff regime, with specific reference to ensuring that we are helping on the cost of living issues, which are really affecting our constituents. Leaving the EU has enabled us not only to make those decisions, but to treat developing nations with better preferences on tariffs, helping their economies as well as our own.

Oral Answers to Questions

Carol Monaghan Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Graham Stuart)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Innovation has always given our businesses an edge. Virtual reality and 3D specialist Amazing Interactives in my hon. Friend’s constituency is an example of how innovation can continue to take business and exports forward. Today’s innovators, like Amazing Interactives, will benefit from our new FTAs.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

Macallan single malt whisky bottled at Edrington in my constituency is just one of many iconic Scottish products suffering under the 25% US trade tariffs. A year down the line, can the Secretary of State explain why single malt whisky is not at the top of our US negotiating list?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am absolutely determined to get these tariffs removed. The reality is that the European Union, which the hon. Lady and her colleagues want to rejoin, has failed to sort out this issue with Airbus for 15 years. We now have an opportunity—we have an independent tariff policy starting next year—and I am determined to get those tariffs removed.

Global Britain

Carol Monaghan Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman—who is now my hon. Friend, as we will hopefully work more closely on national defence issues for the United Kingdom. He makes an important point about these being issues that we need to tackle. When it comes to defence, there is an immediate knee-jerk reaction to speak about platforms—have we got enough of them and so forth? That is important, and we do no doubt face some challenges, but it is also about capabilities.

I go back to the fact that the character of war is changing. We are in constant conflict and competition. Why bother invading or, indeed, attacking a country when it is possible to digitally impose problems for any town, city or community from afar, through a laptop? Elections are being interfered with, and there is not even an international organisation that countries can go to and say, “My election has been interfered with by another state. Please can you take action?”

The second issue is to do with the rise of China. It has a President who has got the job for life, and in our lifetime China will become more dominant economically, technologically and militarily than the United States. It is setting its own rules on how it does business, which poses some huge challenges for us. We need to have an adult conversation with China to better understand it and ask, “What are the rules that we should be following?” We talk about the erosion of the rules-based order, but who is willing to step forward and say, “I’m going to challenge that—I’m going to defend the rules-based order or upgrade those rules, because they are out of date”? Let us not forget that many of them were created in the Bretton Woods conversations after the second world war. China was excluded, and it reminds us of that all the time. It needs to be included in a conversation with international organisations, whether it be the UN or the OECD, so that the rules and standards that we follow are observed, because they have not been.

China is doing its own thing, and we see that in the big debate we have just had over Huawei. Whether it is Huawei, Tencent or China Telecom, all those companies are obliged to provide sensitive information to the state. We do not know the relationship between Huawei and the Chinese army. We have no idea what the intelligence services do with that information. That is why concern has been expressed vividly in this House about the relationship that we have chosen for our 5G roll-out.

We were not in the room when that decision was made in the National Security Council. Experts are there to give the Prime Minister advice. My message to the Government is: we have taken that decision, but can we put a time limit on our use of Huawei or, indeed, any Chinese companies? Can we develop our own western capability, so that we can wean ourselves off the use of Chinese operations? We cannot predict the security that we will require in the future, or even today.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and congratulate him on his appointment as Chair of the Defence Committee. More and more we are seeing Chinese companies coming in and buying up companies carrying out research here in the UK. Because there is not enough Government funding, even where we are developing our own technology those companies have to seek funding elsewhere, and that is where they are getting it.

[Mr Ellwood]

The hon. Lady is right. There is an uneven playing field that needs to be addressed. Why is it that Facebook, Amazon and eBay cannot operate in China, but Alibaba, Huawei and others can operate here?

The scale of China is simply enormous. Alibaba is the size of eBay and Amazon put together. Huawei sells more mobile phones than Apple. The scale of it and the injection of cash from the Chinese Government is colossal, which is why we need to have a serious conversation. Given the importance that America, Australia and New Zealand place on this, we need a solution. I know that Huawei’s involvement is in the non-core elements of the 5G network and has been capped. But we made the F-35 stealth fighter—that was essentially the Five Eyes community coming together to make state-of-the-art equipment. Let us do the same with 5G. We should not just turn to Cisco, Ericsson or Nokia and say, “Please catch up with Huawei.” They will not be able to do it. We need the Prime Minister to talk with President Trump and say, “Over the next five years, let’s create the 5G and 6G capability that will allow us to have our own identity.”

If we do not, I predict that there will be a splintering of the internet. The rules that China is adopting and enforcing for its own people and for countries that use its technologies mean that there will be two operations and two versions of the economy. We cannot be caught on the wrong side of the argument in history, so we must develop our own western capabilities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Carol Monaghan Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

3. What steps the Government are taking to increase gender equality in boardrooms in the (a) private and (b) public sector.

[The Minister for Women and Equalities (Elizabeth Truss)]

Women represent half of the population, and I believe that we are missing out on a huge amount of talent because we do not have enough women in senior positions. I commend the work of Helena Morrissey who has achieved fantastic results with the 30% Club.

[Carol Monaghan]

I do a lot of work with science and technology companies and there is still a struggle in many of them to get women into senior positions or get women in at all. We have been using the carrot for decades now to try to get more women into the boardroom; when are we going to start using the stick?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The hon. Lady talks about science and technology, and one of the big issues is the gap that we have in school education, with fewer girls going on to study maths and science later in their school careers and girls losing confidence earlier on in their school careers. The way for us to tackle that it is to improve our education system, which is why we introduced things such as the English baccalaureate and tougher maths GCSEs, and why we are working more on maths education. I am passionate about this, and I am very keen to drive it forward as Minister for Women and Equalities.

US Tariffs: Scotch Whisky

Carol Monaghan Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Conor Burns]

Because I was in Vietnam. I went to the office today, and we have been reaching out and having those conversations. I say to Opposition Members that the absolute determination that we must all share is to try to protect the Scotch whisky sector and persuade the United States not to implement these tariffs in 10 days’ time. That will be my focus for the rest of this week.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

Like many Members, I have a constituency interest. One of the largest employers in my constituency is the Edrington bottling plant, which bottles brands such as Macallan single malt. I am amazed to hear the Minister say that we should be straining every sinew to get this sorted, when he cannot pick up a phone from Vietnam. That is incredible. This was a decision backed by the World Trade Organisation. Can he confirm that, post Brexit, we will simply be swapping one set of EU trade rules for a different set of WTO rules and that, as such, things such as Scotch whisky will continue to be bound by decisions made elsewhere?

[Conor Burns]

The hon. Lady talks about the WTO and decisions being taken elsewhere. The WTO is the international body that does dispute resolution between countries and endeavours to work for an international level playing field in trade. I am not particularly fond of the word, but I thought there was great consensus across the House on wanting to follow an international rules-based order.

By the way, on this point of who has spoken to whom, I outlined the representations made by this Government to our counterparts in the United States, which have been made at the level of the Chancellor and of the Secretary of State to Vice-President Pence and to her counterpart US trade negotiator. We have made incredibly high-level representations on this subject and will continue to do so, because we have a determination to try not to point-score, but to come to a successful resolution on behalf of the Scotch whisky sector.

Oral Answers to Questions

Carol Monaghan Excerpts

Thursday 29th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I agree with the hon. Lady that young women need to see the benefits of studying STEM subjects, because then they can see the huge range of options opening up to them in the modern world. In fact, we have an ambassadors programme, to which 30,000 ambassadors are signed up, who go into schools and provide just the sort of inspiration that is needed.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

We know that gender stereotypes are established extremely early in a child’s life, so what support is the Department giving to campaigns to promote gender-neutral toys?

[Amber Rudd]

I would say that there is sufficient peer pressure to make sure that producers and manufacturers of gender-specific toys are increasingly being encouraged to think again about that, so that we can encourage young women to make sure they take seriously their career options.

Oral Answers to Questions

Carol Monaghan Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend has almost answered the question for me. She is right that Rolls-Royce, Bombardier Transportation and Toyota have all pledged to support the Year of Engineering campaign through activities in schools, both nationwide and in the Derby area.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

One of the biggest barriers to women and girls entering careers in engineering and physics is the perceptions and expectations of parents. What work is the Minister doing during the Year of Engineering to encourage parents to look at the career options?

[Nick Gibb]

The hon. Lady is quite right. We have been successful since 2010 because, in England, GCSE entries by girls in physics have risen from 50,600 in 2010 to 66,700 this year, and the number of girls entering A-level physics has risen from 5,800 in 2010 to 6,947 in 2017. Overall, the number of girls taking STEM A-levels has increased by 20% since 2010.