Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Andrew Griffith

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister to his role. I hope he will share his predecessor’s enthusiasm for, and commitment to, science.

Climate change presents huge challenges and huge opportunities. Labour would champion university clusters and spin-outs as engines of sustainable regional growth, but right now great green job-creating businesses such as Low Carbon Materials, a Durham University spin-out, and Airex, an award-winning retrofit start-up, are bogged down by Tory red tape, with some new products subject to 11 different regulators. Will the Minister adopt Labour’s proposal for a regulatory innovation office to unblock the system, end damaging uncertainty and drive much-needed growth?

[Andrew Griffith]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question, and look forward to working collaboratively with her. I absolutely share my predecessor’s determination to drive forward British science, including the all-important work on net zero.

Mortgage Market

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Andrew Griffith

Tuesday 13th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

If York is a low-wage economy, the hon. Lady’s constituents will be benefiting enormously from the unprecedented 9.7% increase in the national living wage. The measures we are putting—[Interruption.] Perhaps she does not like the 9.7% increase in the national living wage that this Government came forward with. We are putting measures in place with lenders, including forbearance, and working with the Department for Work and Pensions on mortgage interest support and to ensure that families have access to the support they need.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

The typical household’s mortgage payments have risen threefold in the last two years, yet in the north-east the typical wage packet is lower than when the Conservatives came to power 13 years ago. The Minister refuses to take any responsibility for the economic misery his Government are inflicting, despite having flagrantly and blatantly crashed the economy less than a year ago. Will he tell my constituents why they should carry on paying the price of Conservatism?

[Andrew Griffith]

Once again, we have a contribution from the hon. Lady that completely ignores the fact of the global pandemic, the £400 billion of support we have provided and, although I believe she is highly literate in these matters, the fact that interest rates are rising across the western world.

Silicon Valley Bank

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Andrew Griffith

Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

As my hon. Friend knows, the Government are seeking to support challenger banks to make sure we have a vibrant and competitive sector. That includes looking at issues such as the level of MREL—minimum requirement for own funds and eligible liabilities—and making sure that we have proportionate banking regulation that is relevant to the risk involved. He makes important points about the culture and capabilities of SVB UK, which is why it was so important that we had to very swiftly find it a home. I have spoken today to the chief executive of HSBC, as well as to the former chief executive of SVB UK. They are both enormously excited about the future. They see this as a platform for mutual growth, taking our brilliant life sciences and technology businesses international and to a new scale. The Government will not rest until we have mobilised capital to turn us into that science superpower.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

The Minister said, “The system worked.” Certainly, it was a huge relief that the estimated 50% of the UK tech sector that banked with SVB UK could today pay their suppliers and staff. However, surely that highlights the lack of diversity of capital available to the UK tech sector, and our dependence on the US. In the last two years, Silicon Valley Bank’s deposits tripled, but its exposure to Treasuries, and therefore to interest rate rises, went up ninefold. Is the Minister seriously saying that no one on this side of the Atlantic should have noticed that, and that it had no impact on what happened?

[Andrew Griffith]

The hon. Member talks about dependence on the US, but if that is her concern she should welcome this deal wholeheartedly, because we have taken a former subsidiary of a US business and made it part of a thriving and successful UK business.

National Security and Investment Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Andrew Griffith

Committee Debate: 12th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 10th December 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Chi Onwurah]

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

[Chi Onwurah]

National Security and Investment Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Andrew Griffith

Committee stage
Thursday 10th December 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention, which I think was made in the proper spirit of the Committee, by seeking to improve the Bill, help the Secretary of State, and help those who will be affected by the Bill to understand it. The hon. Gentleman is quite right that there is a trade-off.

During the expert evidence sessions, we heard both from those who felt that there should be a definition of national security and from those who felt that there should not. However, if my memory serves me, they all tended to agree that there should be greater clarity about what national security could include. For example, Dr Ashley Lenihan of the London School of Economics said:

“What you do see in regulations is guidance as to how national security risk might be assessed or examples of what could be considered a threat to national security.”––[Official Report, National Security and Investment Public Bill Committee, 24 November 2020; c. 38, Q42.]

We also heard that in the US the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act 2018 provides for a “sense of Congress” on six factors that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and the President may consider—the term “may” is used well here—in assessing national security: countries of specific concern; critical infrastructure, energy assets and critical material; a history of compliance with US law; control of US industries that affect US capacity to meet national security requirements, which is very important; personally identifiable information; and potential new cyber-security vulnerabilities.

My argument is that if we look at examples from elsewhere, we see indications of what can be included in national security without having a prescriptive definition. That is exactly what the new clause tries to set out. It states:

“When assessing a risk to national security, the Secretary of State may have regard to factors including”,

and then it gives a list of factors, which I shall detail shortly.

The question, “What is national security?” is entirely unanswered, for Parliament, for businesses looking for clarity, for citizens looking for reassurance, and if hostile actors are seeking to take advantage of any loopholes in how the Secretary of State construes national security. I do have sympathy with the argument that we should not be prescriptive and limit the Secretary of State’s flexibility to act by setting down a rigid definition of national security that rules things out. That is the spirit of the new clause. It does not rule out the Secretary of State’s flexibility or set a rigid definition; it simply does what other countries have done well, as our experts witnesses have said, by giving a guide on some factors that the Government might consider, while allowing many more to be included in national security assessments. This is critical in order to give greater clarity to businesses puzzled by the Government’s very high-level definitions of espionage, disruption or inappropriate leverage.

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

The hon. Lady appears to be advancing two arguments simultaneously. On the one hand, I understand the argument about clarity, which is indeed something that many people would look for in this Bill. However, she also talks about flexibility and that we should not seek to tie the Secretary of State down to a particular, prescriptive definition at any point in time, which I think members on both sides of the Committee would agree on. Given that, I am genuinely confused as to why she would seek to advance this new clause, although I find its actual wording wholly unobjectionable. Perhaps the Minister will reply on this topic, because I think the record of these proceedings could provide that clarity without needing to press the amendment to a vote.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, which I found very helpful. If he believes me to be presenting both sides of the argument at once, perhaps that is because the Minister has been doing the very same thing so often during the past few sittings. As the Minister has often said, there is a balance to be sought between flexibility for the Secretary of State and clarity for the business community and other communities. This new clause goes exactly to the point made by the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs, and strikes that balance. That is why—I will say it again—the new clause does not prescribe what national security is, but it does not leave a vacuum into which supposition, uncertainty and confusion can move.

The new clause gives greater clarity to citizens worried about whether Government will act to protect critical data transfers or our critical national infrastructure. Are those areas part of our national security, even though they are not covered by the Government’s proposed 17 sectors? The new clause provides assurance in that case and—this is important—sends a message to hostile actors that we will act to protect British security through broad powers applied with accountability. It should be clear that we also need to consider how this Bill will be read by the hostile actors against whom we are seeking to protect our nation, and this new clause will send a clearer message as to what may be included in that.

The factors highlighted in this new clause are comparable to guidance provided in other affected national security legislation, most notably the US’s Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act 2018. Paragraph (a) would protect our supply chains and sensitive sites, in addition to acting against the disruption, espionage and inappropriate leverage highlighted in the Government’s statement of policy intent. We have heard from experts, and have also seen from very recent history—namely, that of our 5G network—that our strategic security depends not only on businesses immediately relevant to national security, but on the full set of capabilities and supply chains that feed into those security-relevant businesses. We cannot let another unforeseen disruption, whether pandemic or otherwise, disrupt our access to critical supply.

Paragraphs (b) and (c) look strategically at our national security, not with a short-term eye. We have heard consistently from experts that national security and economic security are not altogether separate. Indeed, they cannot be separated; they are deeply linked. A national security expert told us that a narrow focus on direct technologies of defence was mistaken and that instead we should look to the “defence of technology”. That was a very appropriate phrase, meaning not specific technologies of defence, but defence of technologies that seem economically strategic today and might become strategic for national security tomorrow.

National Security and Investment Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Andrew Griffith

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 1st December 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important point. I am reluctant to continuously mention China, because this is not an anti-China Bill per se, but we heard in oral evidence of the real concerns about Chinese influence in our higher education institutions. He is right that the Department for Education may have an important input to make about securing our future national security.

In defining the agencies that need to be involved in this multidisciplinary approach, we could look at the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which has nine voting departments, two non-voting agencies and additional White House representation on its decision-making committee. I know that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has done some work on comparisons with other countries, in particular our Five Eyes allies. There are models to take.

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

In the same vein as my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South, to expand a little on what multi-agency would mean, would the hon. Lady rule out the Low Pay Commission, for example?

[Chi Onwurah]

I welcome this debate. If by that the hon. Member is asking whether I think human rights have a relationship to national security, that was very well debated yesterday in relation to the Telecommunications (Security) Bill. A number of his colleagues strongly made the point that there is a relationship between modern-day slavery and our national interest and national security. I do not have the expertise to identify what the agency should be. The Low Pay Commission is not an organisation that I had considered, but I am happy to take his advocacy for its being part of this multidisciplinary approach.