Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Stephens and Nadhim Zahawi

Monday 23rd May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My right hon. Friend raises a very powerful point, and he is quite right: children should be taught how to think, not what to think.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

T8. According to the Child Poverty Action Group, 27% of children in the UK are living in poverty, which equates to eight in a classroom of 30. A classroom with hungry children is not an environment that is conducive to good learning, so what discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Chancellor to plan emergency interventions to tackle such shocking levels of child deprivation and inequality across these islands?

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Chris Stephens and Nadhim Zahawi

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his championing of his businesses and his constituents. There is no shortage of the vaccine. I will happily work with him on the workforce and making sure that there is the resource to make it possible to continue to vaccinate at scale; and of course the industries that are delivering some of the essential products for the vaccination programme are incredibly important in that effort.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

In order to beat this virus, the Government must take care of not only their domestic responsibilities but their international ones. Will the Minister update us on what is being done to ensure vaccine supply to middle-income and lower-income countries, and update us on the international approach?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his excellent question. It is incredibly important, because we pledged to deliver 100 million excess doses, beginning with 5 million immediately and 20 million by the end of the year, and then the balance next year, as well as the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine being delivered around the world at no profit to AstraZeneca or Oxford. To update him, we have sent out our first deliveries of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, as per the Prime Minister’s pledge, and speaking to the Serum Institute of India, they are now not producing 100 million doses a month of that vaccine but are up at 200 million doses a month. It really is an extraordinary achievement by Sarah Gilbert and her team and AstraZeneca in saving the world from this awful virus.

Rolls-Royce (Redundancies)

Debate between Chris Stephens and Nadhim Zahawi

Wednesday 10th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I hope that, as I make some headway, he will see some of the action that we have already taken to help the industry. I have held several meetings with groups of senior industrialists from the sector during this period. I am pleased that aerospace companies have been able to draw on the Government’s extensive financial support package, which includes £330 billion of loans and guarantees, the tax deferrals and the furlough scheme for workers. Rolls-Royce has benefited from £300 million of support from the Bank of England’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility. My Department is working with an industry-led UK aerospace supply chain taskforce, set up by the ADS Group, the national aerospace trade association, in consultation with Airbus. The taskforce, led by Tom Williams, the former chief operating officer of Airbus, is looking at supply chain vulnerabilities within the industry and at potential remedies, including around financing. That will ensure that ongoing covid-19 Government support is co-ordinated with the actions of business to support supply chains and employment.

We are continuing to back the sector strongly. Our Aerospace Technology Institute, the ATI programme, is providing £1.95 billion of Government funding for aerospace R&D by 2026, which will be matched by industry. The programme has been a game-changer for the UK aerospace industry since 2013, providing real long-term certainty about the availability and the level of public funding, giving industry the confidence it needs to invest. From Broughton in north Wales, to Derby in the east midlands and Inchinnan in the constituency of the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, we are at the cutting edge of global aerospace innovation. We manufacture the most advanced parts of an aircraft here in the UK, and we want to maintain our position for many years to come. Indeed, creating this positive business environment helped to give Rolls-Royce the confidence to build its new large engine testbed in Derby, the largest indoor facility of its type in the world.

[Chris Stephens]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

If the hon. Gentleman will give me a couple more minutes, I will come back to him.

The facility is capable of testing large engines and, crucially, the next generation of UltraFan engines. Looking to the future, we recently opened the £300 million feature flight challenge, which will award £125 million of grants to small and medium-sized companies investing in future aviation systems and vehicle technologies, which will enable new classes of electric or autonomous air vehicles. We are supporting SMEs through innovation and productivity programmes, and we are looking at what scope there is to refocus some of these to assist with the short-term needs of businesses. That is what we are doing currently with those SMEs. We are making sure that Rolls-Royce and others can sustain investment in cutting-edge technology so that they are competitive when the markets actually recover. Our joint research projects funded through our ATI programme, which I referred to earlier, are supporting the development of the next generation of cleaner and quieter aero engines.

[Chris Stephens]

I thank the Minister for his generosity in giving way. He rightly talks about the support the Government have given to industry and the aviation industry, but with that we expect some corporate social responsibility. Will he outline what that means? Does it mean the Government are going to have to and will review redundancy legislation so that companies that are not engaging in CSR and are getting taxpayers’ money are told by the Government, “Sorry, you can’t make people redundant.”?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I hope to address the hon. Gentleman’s point in my concluding remarks. Suffice it to say that the most valuable resource in any organisation—I have spent more years being in business than I have as a Member of Parliament and a Minister—is the human resource and that any leader, and chief executive, would be minded to think long and hard before behaving in a way that makes their people, the family who make up their business, feel as though their leadership are not listening to them.

In addition, we are supporting investments in new green aviation technologies, which will not only help us to deliver on our net zero commitments, but keep the UK at the forefront of the aerospace sector globally. We continue to back Rolls-Royce’s export campaigns, including, where needed, through UK Export Finance. The recovery of the aerospace sector is, of course, dependent on the wider aviation sector, as has been mentioned in this debate, and on getting aircraft flying again. The Government are committed to getting this crucial sector restarted. Led by my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary, we are in active discussions with industry through an expert steering group, as part of an international aviation taskforce. The group has been instrumental in the development of the health measures guidance for passengers and operators, which my Department for Transport colleagues will be publishing as soon as possible. The border health measures that we spoke about earlier will be subject to review—currently this will be every three weeks—to ensure that they are in line with the latest scientific evidence, and remain effective and necessary. We are examining the possibility of alternatives to the international passenger self-isolation rules, including air bridges, where countries have managed the virus and we are confident in their measures for departing passengers—I spoke about that earlier. We will continue to work with industry on this concept and, ultimately, we will be guided by the science. I am sure the House will appreciate that the health of the public will always come first.