Export and Investment Guarantees
Clive Jones Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
Boosting British exports, especially for our small businesses, is vital to creating jobs and economic growth, and it absolutely must be a strategic priority for the Government. This secondary legislation is a welcome step forward, giving UK Export Finance the opportunity to grow its portfolio of projects to help deliver for businesses across the country.
This measure will be very important to my constituents, as Wokingham is one of the best places in the country to do business, and the Government should continue to help unlock our growth potential. We ranked 15th of 362 local authorities for competitiveness between 2017 and 2021. The gross value added per filled job vacancy was 23.5%, which is significantly faster than the rest of Berkshire and the south-east.
My constituency has great examples of where Government support programmes have delivered success, such as M2M Pharmaceuticals, which won a King’s award for enterprise this year. Tomorrow, I am visiting Intersurgical, another great success story for Wokingham business, which designs, manufactures and supplies medical devices. Having grown from seven people in 1982 to upwards of 3,500 employees worldwide, it now exports its products globally. However, I am sure it is deeply concerned about the Budget’s impact on maintaining its profitability. I look forward to hearing from the company what more the Government need to do to support its success.
There is certainly more that should be done to boost British exporters and improve Britain’s trade policy. To start, the Government urgently need to fix our broken relations with the EU to foster closer co-operation with our largest trading partner. We must cut vast swathes of red tape and reduce the trade barriers that hold back our businesses. For example, the Government should urgently negotiate a veterinary and plant health agreement with the EU to reverse the decline in British agrifood exports since 2019. Securing bespoke mutual recognition agreements for Britain’s engineers, architects, lawyers and accountants would also help British businesses across a variety of sectors to secure greater export opportunities. The trade associations I have met made one thing overtly clear: the impact of Brexit is hurting their profits, and we need to fix this mess.
On trade, I hope this Government do not follow the Conservative party’s approach of negotiating trade deals in desperation, which led to weak outcomes, as we can see from the results. For instance, the Conservatives failed to guarantee British standards on animal welfare and environmental protections in agreements such as the Australia trade deal, at an especially difficult time for the agriculture sector. Even a Tory former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs described that agreement as
“not actually a very good deal”.—[Official Report, 14 November 2022; Vol. 722, c. 424.]
Parliament never gets a proper say on our trade deals, eliminating the opportunity to stop the Government barrelling ahead with deals that are deeply unpopular.
I respect the Minister greatly, but there is a lot to get right, and to fix from the previous Government. Will he meet me and representatives from Wokingham businesses, such as Xpert, which is struggling to secure UK export finance, to hear what they need from his Department? Will he set out to the House the specific forms of scrutiny we will get when the Government conclude the trade deal? Will his Department renegotiate the Australia and New Zealand trade agreement?
Uyghur and Turkic Muslims: Forced Labour in China
Clive Jones Excerpts(2 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Blair McDougall) on securing a debate on such an important topic. It is also good to see the Minister; I look forward to working constructively with him.
The Liberal Democrats welcome the news that the Court of Appeal has overruled the National Crime Agency’s decision not to launch an investigation into whether high-street brands are using forced labour in the Xinjiang province in China. I congratulate the Global Legal Action Network and World Uyghur Congress on that success. Importantly, in the short term, the ruling means that the National Crime Agency needs to seriously consider its decision not to carry out an investigation, because with 19 billion units of clothing produced in China yearly, it is not unbelievable that much of it is produced by detainees in Xinjiang.
The Global Legal Action Network says that there is an abundance of evidence that UK companies import cotton made with forced labour from China, and that 85% of Chinese cotton is grown in the Xinjiang region. Let there be no confusion: slavery is not an issue of the past. Today, almost 50 million people worldwide are trapped in slavery. That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling on the Government to reverse the Conservative party’s roll-backs of modern slavery protections and to introduce legislation obliging retailers to guarantee full traceability of their supply chains, ensuring ethically sourced materials, decent livelihoods and safe working conditions in the products that we buy.
My constituents in Wokingham do not want to buy clothes that are the result of forced labour, but they simply do not know where they are sourced from. Retailers need to be forced to take action to review their supply chains and take due diligence seriously. We should not allow evil to profit from British consumers. We should not let genocide be a means of increasing a company’s profit margin. We are better than that.
I would like to focus on the word “genocide” for a moment. In 2020, the world discovered that the Chinese Government’s treatment of the Uyghurs was more widespread and systematic than previously known: forced sterilisation, destruction of religious sites, torture, and detainment in re-education camps. The appeal judges in the National Crime Agency ruling stated that there was
“a diverse, substantial and growing body of evidence”
that human rights violations are taking place in the region. The horrific acts found in Xinjiang have been described in different ways, with the UN concluding that China’s actions would constitute crimes against humanity.
The Liberal Democrats agree with Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, whose independent tribunal found that the Uyghurs are being subject to genocide by China. Specifically, these actions constitute a genocide based on the description of genocide laid out in article 6 of the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court. The Liberal Democrats believe that the Government need to be explicit in their condemnation of these actions as being those of a genocide. In recognising that, we need to champion human rights and support survivors and the Uyghur and the Turkic people, who are being persecuted simply for their beliefs.
The Liberal Democrats are calling for the Government to issue a comprehensive China strategy that places human rights and effective rules-based multilateralism at its centre. My colleagues and I will continue to stand up for people’s human rights around the globe, to protect, defend and promote human rights for all, including those persecuted for their religion and belief. Liberalism and co-operation have a vital role to play in securing peace, promoting democracy and defending human rights across the world. The UK must work with its global allies to ensure the end of the persecution of the Uyghurs and Turkic people.
The UK must introduce a general duty of care for the environment and human rights in business operations and supply chains, to guarantee that no human is taken advantage of for a piece of clothing. I ask the Minister to support the Liberal Democrat policies laid out in my speech. Will he back Magnitsky-style sanctions on persons and entities involved in the persecution of Uyghurs and the Turkic people, under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018? Will he ensure that the UK grants asylum to those fleeing genocide—and, to reiterate, will he explicitly condemn the actions of the Chinese state as genocide?
Oral Answers to Questions
Clive Jones Excerpts(3 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Mr Speaker
We are 10 minutes gone and still on Question 1. We need to speed up a little bit. If the Minister could look at me, that would be helpful, so that we are going through the third person. I know that Mr Shannon is popular, but even so, it should go through me. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
In my constituency, the number of people shopping on our high streets has not returned to pre-covid levels, and we have lost anchor stores such as Marks & Spencer, and several banks. The Government urgently need to save our high streets, but the reduction in retail, hospitality and leisure business rates relief from 75% to 40% will come as bad news for thousands of businesses. When will the Government deliver a fundamental reform of business rates to save our high streets and end the penalising of productive investment?
Gareth Thomas
I am grateful for your guidance, Mr Speaker. While the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is popular, you are much more important.
I gently point out to the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) that we have started the process of reforming business rates. We are introducing permanently lower rates for retail, hospitality and leisure from 2026-27. We have listened to businesses and kept business rates relief, and we are opening up opportunities for businesses to come forward with ideas for future reform of business rates.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
Wokingham has one of the highest rates of business survival when compared with the averages for the south-east and Berkshire, but yesterday’s announcement that the Government will raise employers’ national insurance throws that into doubt. The hike is, plain and simple, a tax on jobs that will deal a hammer blow to our small businesses. What will the Government do to mitigate the impact on small businesses in my constituency and across the country?
Gareth Thomas
I say very gently to the hon. Gentleman that if he and his party are determined to oppose the measures we took in the Budget, including on employers’ national insurance contributions, they need to set out how they would fund the extra investment in the NHS, the investment in the automotive and aerospace sectors, and the measures to protect and raise living standards.
Whistleblowing Protections
Clive Jones Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Sir Mark, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) on securing the debate. The existing Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 is simply not good enough; it is woefully inadequate in keeping pace with the modern workplace. For example, it does not cover all types of workers, such as members of the armed forces, volunteers and self-employed individuals. It forces whistleblowers to prove that they made a “protected disclosure” and that any retaliation they suffered was directly linked to their whistleblowing. That burden of proof can be very difficult to meet, as employers may mask retaliatory action as unrelated. Protection often requires whistleblowers to go through stressful employment tribunals, with limited remedies beyond compensation.
The inadequacies do not end there. The Act requires disclosures to be “in the public interest”, but that term is vague and has been subject to differing interpretations in the courts, creating uncertainty about whether specific whistleblowing cases are protected. There are insufficient provisions in the Act for emotional, financial or legal support for whistleblowers, leaving them vulnerable as they often face significant personal and professional risks after disclosing information.
That list of flaws within the existing law feels endless, so the Liberal Democrats are championing the need for reform. We support passing a comprehensive anti-SLAPP— strategic lawsuits against public participation—law to provide robust protection for free speech, whistleblowers and media scrutiny against lawsuits that seek to intimidate and silence criticism. We want to ensure that there is justice for the victims of scandals and prevent them happening in the future. We want the Government to establish a new office of the whistleblower, creating a new set of legal protections and promoting greater awareness of their rights. The Labour party did some positive work on that while in Opposition, so I would be grateful for the Minister’s views on the Liberal Democrat proposals and whether the Government will prioritise similar reforms.
I would also like to remind the Minister of the ask from my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) during an Opposition day debate last week. Please can he give an assurance that, if the people at the Department for Work and Pensions have information about maladministration of the service that they have witnessed, and they wish to come forward with that information, they will be protected as whistleblowers?
Steel Industry
Clive Jones Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) on securing this debate. It is also a pleasure to speak for the first time in my capacity as a Lib Dem Front-Bench spokesman.
Steelmaking is of vital strategic importance to the UK. We need to build the crucial infrastructure required to generate sustainable growth and to safeguard our national security, which must be important to all of us in this Chamber today.
Although the Liberal Democrats welcome the news that new technologies will lead to carbon emissions from steelmaking in Britain falling, the neglect of the steel industry in recent years is just another part of the previous Conservative Government’s disastrous legacy. This Government finally need to move from a patchwork of last-minute rescues to a long-term plan that will set the steel industry on a sustainable footing.
The steel industry’s situation illustrates that we desperately need a real industrial strategy that includes a proper plan for steel. Although I welcome the Government’s Green Paper, which was published earlier this week, and hope that it will provide our business community with much-needed certainty in the eight sectors that the Government have highlighted as being growth drivers, the absence of the word “steel” is strikingly apparent.
We accept the need to move towards less carbon-intensive modes of production, but it is vital that any job losses are mitigated by reskilling, retraining and new green investment. We must be certain that this investment in skills and regeneration is properly targeted where it can have the greatest impact on communities that currently rely heavily on steel production.
With 2,800 jobs set to be lost, the Government need to take action as soon as possible to bring certainty for those employed in steelworks. So, I ask the Minister today what the Department is doing to ensure that job losses are mitigated, and how will the steel strategy, which is set to be published next year, link to an industrial strategy?
Carolyn Harris (in the Chair)
I call the shadow Minister, Greg Smith, to speak.
Business Confidence
Clive Jones Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies) on securing the debate. I am proud of my constituency of Wokingham, of Berkshire and of the Thames valley for being one of the UK’s centres for growth. The area is home to international investment that brings well-paying jobs and prosperity into our area, building an economy fit for the future.
In our small and medium-sized companies, we find innovation and sustainable local growth. The hope is that one day, those businesses will go on to rival the giants that dominate the scene today. The past has been prosperous, but the present is beginning to show some concerning cracks.
In Wokingham, between 2014 and 2022, the number of new business births per 10,000 people fell by 31%. The number of people of working age in Wokingham has decreased. In December 2022, the figure was 83%, but by December 2023 it had fallen to 78.6%. The regulatory burden on businesses to export is growing, with Santander UK’s trade barometer showing that only 22% of businesses say that it is easier to trade internationally than it was five years ago. Covid-19 will have had an effect on these figures, but businesses in my constituency tell me that the chaos and instability of the Conservative Government impacted their business just as much.
I will ask the Minister a few questions, to try to ensure that Wokingham, Berkshire and the Thames valley continue to have a prosperous future. First, will he back small businesses and empower them to create new local jobs, including by abolishing business rates and replacing them with a commercial landowner levy to help our high streets? Secondly, will he bring down trade barriers and enhance our relationship with our closest trading partners, including fixing our broken relationship with Europe? Thirdly, will he speak to Network Rail and the Secretary of State for Transport and convince them of the need for a western railway link to Heathrow airport? Finally, will the Minister for Investment meet me and the Thames valley chamber of commerce to understand what businesses need to attract further inward investment?