Oral Answers to Questions

Denis MacShane Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

I absolutely share my right hon. Friend’s comments about the incredibly valuable work undertaken by the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. During the Prime Minister’s recent visit, deals worth £546 million were secured from south-east Asia, but I understand the concern that my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) raises about visas, and I will certainly look into them.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Has the Minister read last week’s pamphlet, by one of the most brilliant and prescient Members among us, which states:

“It is noteworthy that other developed countries have re-oriented their export profiles more effectively than Britain has done, raising doubts about whether we are keeping pace with our EU partners in promoting British commercial interests in the emerging economies”?

That sentence was written by the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), who is sitting behind the Minister. Could they swap jobs, so that we have a trade Minister who knows what to do?

Economic Growth and Employment

Denis MacShane Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, the question is whether the Department is doing what it promised to do for those businesses, which is to give them money and to carry out due diligence in a quick and timely way. It has failed to do so. I do not claim that there was a nirvana in relation to RDAs, but we are talking about the regional growth fund, and we actually want it to succeed.

The Government’s latest attempt to grow the economy consists of making it easier to fire, not hire, people. Today, to great fanfare, the Secretary of State said that the service required to claim for unfair dismissal should be increased from one to two years. He said this morning that

“this will mean that business can once again have the confidence to hire the staff they need to grow and thrive.”

That is a retrograde step for a Government who think that watering down employees’ rights is a substitute for a proper growth plan.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Even at the height of the Thatcher years, there was no attempt to target individual workers—their unions, yes, because industrial tribunals were a Conservative Government invention, but the measure under discussion is utterly shameless. The efficient European economies are partnership economies, but targeting weaker workers and, particularly, women workers is to the utter and contemptible shame, above all, of a Liberal Democrat Business Secretary.

[Mr Umunna]

I am glad that my right hon. Friend brings up the Thatcher era, because a well known noble Lord was asked on Sunday whether such initiatives, which seek to make it easier to fire as opposed to hire people, act as a stimulus to job creation. He told the BBC what he thought of that, saying:

“I’ve been responsible for one of those deregulation initiatives for many years and I would be quite frank in telling you that I don’t think we achieved much.”

He went on to say that

“you want to be very careful in political terms that you don’t get the reputation that all you’re trying to do is make life rougher and tougher for large numbers of people.”

Those are the words of the noble Lord Heseltine, and, if a Conservative-led Government are unable to persuade him to buy into the concept, why should the rest of us do so?

New Schools

Denis MacShane Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Those are two very fair points. I would never want to prevent any school that wanted to become an academy from doing so, nor would I wish to coerce unduly any school that was reluctant to take that step, but it is important that any judgment on capital be made on the basis of need, not on the status or location of any school. That is why schools such as the Duchess’s community high school in Alnwick, a school I visited along with Todmorden high, which were not in the Building Schools for the Future programme, are being judged alongside other schools that were, and they are being done so on a totally equal basis.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Some two hours ago, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) received a faxed letter from the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), announcing the opening of a free school in my constituency. It is called Rotherham, not Rother Valley. The proposed head teacher, Miss Charlotte Blencowe, is a failed Conservative municipal candidate who was rejected from a job at Clifton comprehensive and wants to open the school on a disused B&Q site next to one of the busiest and most fume-filled roundabouts in south Yorkshire.

I have had no communication on the matter, and it is going to cause real problems. We have falling rolls in Rotherham, but we had the best GCSE results this year, beating the Department’s own standards, so will the Secretary of State, out of courtesy, meet me to discuss the issue, and will he at the Dispatch Box now guarantee that no money is to be taken from the existing education budget for Rotherham in order to allow Miss Blencowe to award herself, as the Secretary of State said, the salary that she deems appropriate?

[Michael Gove]

It is an uncharacteristic lapse from the normally high standards of bipartisanship and open-mindedness that the right hon. Gentleman brings to the House, and I am sorry that he feels churlish about the establishment of a new school in his constituency.

[Mr MacShane]

The letter was faxed to somebody else.

[Michael Gove]

I hope that this—I am sure, outstanding —new school will attract, from all of south and west Yorkshire, students who will want to benefit from the high quality of education. It is always a pleasure to talk informally to the right hon. Gentleman, and always a pleasure to work with him in his relentless crusade to put politics aside and our children first.

Oral Answers to Questions

Denis MacShane Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. All the reviews we are carrying out will be open and we will want a wide consultation with as many representations from interested parties as possible, including governors and parents.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

There has been an explosion in internal trafficking and the grooming of school girls for the purposes of sexual exploitation, and although I hate to add more ideas to the curriculum, schools need to discuss that, to identify the symptoms and to explain the dangers to children. I hate to add new material to the work of the Department, but could this problem now be tackled in schools by alerting children to what they might face and how to recognise it?

[Mr Gibb]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to raise these issues. Such actions are crimes and are unacceptable in our society, and the issues that he raises were covered by the Reg Bailey review and will form a part of the review we are asking the committee to consider.

Oral Answers to Questions

Denis MacShane Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

I am happy to provide that reassurance, and to pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his active support for the central Bedfordshire UTC proposals. UTCs will be required to adopt fair and open admission arrangements. They will give priority to the same statutory groups as maintained schools, children with a statement of special educational needs and children in care, and they will not be able to require that children have reached certain levels of attainment or that they have specific qualifications in order to qualify for admission. UTCs are for young people of all abilities.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I welcome the proposal, because we have in this country almost a contempt for technical qualifications and for engineering. Turning that around will require giving orders to the professional organisations and increasing the role and status of people coming out of those courses. Perhaps we might have one or two members of the Cabinet who are thus qualified, even if their only engineering qualification is engineering their financial blind trust to hide where their money is.

[Mr Gibb]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to support this development. We intend to have 12 UTCs up and running by the end of the spending review period. He is also right to emphasise the importance of science, technology, engineering and maths, which the Government are committed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Denis MacShane Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance: indeed, we have already done so. In October my colleague the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions launched a new enterprise scheme to help precisely the category of people that my hon. Friend describes. It will provide mentoring and funding of up to £2,000, including a weekly allowance and access to a start-up loan.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree with Winston Churchill’s formulation that he would

“rather see finance less proud and business and industry”

more confident? Does he think that the grovelling capitulation of his Bullingdon club colleagues to the banks this week really upholds that principle?

[Vince Cable]

Mr Churchill’s views have much to commend them, and they are still relevant in many ways. Certainly, we wish to see manufacturing promoted and finance working in support of it rather than against it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Denis MacShane Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

We are working closely on this matter with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, and I think that we have reached a sensible way forward, which she announced the other day. Of course, if there are individual problems affecting universities in the operation of these controls, we would be interested to hear from them, and will discuss them with our colleagues in the Home Office.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that the United States spends 2.9% of gross domestic product on higher education. We spend 1.3%, which is below the OECD average. The previous Government took a brave decision on tuition fees, although it was very unpopular with my hon. Friends. May I invite the Minister to take equally unpopular decisions on university finance, perhaps to introduce a graduate tax or lift some of the charges that universities can make? We must get more money into our universities.

[Mr Willetts]

That is why, of course, the Browne review was set up on a cross-party basis—to look at these issues so that we can find a way forward that I hope will command consent on both sides of the House of Commons.

Industry (Government Support)

Denis MacShane Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr McFadden]

I am going to make some progress but I will give way later.

I was speaking about the timing of the previous Government’s decisions, but I also want to address the accusation that the political representation of this or that area was a motivation for our decisions. Not only is that complete and utter nonsense, but the fact that the new Government see it that way speaks volumes about how they see the Government’s role in supporting industry. Our country was faced with a choice of Rolls-Royce manufacturing here or in Singapore, Nissan could have gone to Portugal, and nuclear components could have been made in Japan or Korea. Are the Government really saying that when faced with those alternatives, their first reaction would be not to ask how to secure the investment and the jobs for Britain, but to reach for the electoral map to see who the local MP is? What a dismal view of the Government’s role in supporting UK industry.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s robust point. The Prime Minister said that all that money was sent to Labour marginals, but that did not work, did it? If we want a strong manufacturing sector, will the three and a half pro-Europeans in the DBIS ministerial team—the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) is the half—keep British manufacturing ahead of that of France? That is their responsibility.

[Mr McFadden]

My right hon. Friend makes a strong point, but I want to make progress.

The previous Government’s decisions were neither rushed nor politically motivated, and our manufacturing industries deserve a better future. The Government say that they are reviewing the projects to which I referred. We have already had a welcome confirmation of the Nissan decision, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) for pressing the Government so effectively on that, but damaging uncertainty still exists, so let me ask the Secretary of State some specific questions.

What is the position on the loan guarantees to GM and Ford? What is the position on the loan to Sheffield Forgemasters? The director general of the CBI visited that plant the other day and said:

“It is hugely exciting to see such impressive technology and innovation being developed on this scale, here in the UK. The size and quality of the products being developed at Forgemasters is outstanding and this expansion programme builds on that by making a real investment for the future.”

That was the verdict of the CBI. The previous Government decided to back the expansion of Sheffield Forgemasters not because we wanted to give aid to one company, but because we wanted a greater national capability in the nuclear supply chain, which is critical for Britain when many countries are building more nuclear power stations.

The Secretary of State must confirm the Government’s position on that, because I must tell him that there are a lot of rumours going around about their attitude and response, and that if the loan does not go ahead, it will mean he is behaving exactly like the banks that he criticises for not supporting industry. We said that we would support industry, and it is time that the Government’s position on that loan is cleared up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vince Cable]

Let me finish my introduction; I will come to specific projects later.

In relation to taxation, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) knows that I am not in a position to pre-empt the Budget, but if he reads the Chancellor’s speech to the CBI a few weeks ago, he will see that it fully acknowledges that not only do we wish to see lower rates of business tax overall, but we understand the importance of capital allowances in manufacturing.

In my days in opposition, I tried to engage constructively and find common ground, and we have approached today’s motion in that spirit. It includes some excellent statements, to which we are happy to subscribe. I shall start by working through some of those areas that appear to be common ground. The motion states that the

“Government has a crucial role to play in fostering economic growth and in creating a better-balanced economy”.

That is absolutely right, and we totally sign up to it—it is exactly what the Government are about—but it pre-empts the obvious question: why is the economy so unbalanced to start with, and who was running the Government who led it to be so unbalanced? By unbalanced, most of us mean that one sector, and one part of the financial services industry—the City and big banks—became too dominant, while the rest of the economy, including trade in goods and services, and in particular manufacturing, was allowed to decline relatively. That is the imbalance we are talking about.

It is worth putting that in context, however. My hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) made this point from a local context a few moments ago. The share of manufacturing in the British economy shrank from just over 20% in 1997 to just under 12% in 2009. Of course, that is a historical trend, but I remember in the 1980s when people were concerned about deindustrialisation. It is worth noting that the rate of decline in manufacturing over the past decade was three times as fast as it was in the 1980s. Manufacturing employment during the period of the Labour Government, when this imbalance grew, fell by 1.7 million—that is the population of Leeds, Sheffield and Glasgow combined. That demonstrates the decline in manufacturing. Furthermore, the number of manufacturing companies fell by 12% over that period. That was the imbalance created when the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East and his colleagues were in government.

[Mr MacShane]

I welcome the Secretary of State to his job, and he will recall that I reviewed his memoirs very positively, which added considerably to sales. He is right about the decline, but the same decline is reflected in America, Spain, France and Italy. However, one part of manufacturing as important as the rest is steel, which is an industry that I represent in Rotherham. May I bring steel industry employers and workers to talk with him? Steel requires a complex matrix to do with energy, electricity prices and trade. We had a very good relationship with the right hon. Gentleman’s predecessors, and I ask him whether, at his own convenience—there is no great hurry—I and some steel people could meet him to talk about these issues.

[Vince Cable]

That was a very constructive intervention, and I would be delighted to meet the right hon. Gentleman’s constituents. I met steelworkers before the election—indeed, I went to Redcar, which is now represented by a Liberal Democrat, and met the Corus workers there—and I would be very happy to meet any steelworkers whom the right hon. Gentleman wishes to bring.