Finance Bill

Earl of Shrewsbury Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 17th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Shrewsbury (Con)]

My Lords, I agree entirely with my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Empey. They could not have hit the nail more clearly on the head. On the way to the station this morning to come down on an 11-carriage train from Stoke-on-Trent, with two people in my carriage, I listened to Ken Clarke, the former Chancellor, on Radio 4—as I am sure many of your Lordships did—deliberating on doom and gloom. When I got to the station, I realised what he was talking about.

The Government have done very well with their measures—furlough, bounce-back and this sort of thing. In my carriage on the way down here, there was one other person. He was a businessman who had an engineering company dealing with energy in Buxton in north Derbyshire, fairly close to where I live. He told me that he had not taken a penny in furlough money but was finding it incredibly difficult. Much of his business was done in London, and he was finding it difficult to travel here to meet the people whom he uses as financiers. A message came to me very clearly indeed: we have to get back to work and we have to do it soon.

Following on from what my noble friend Lord Empey said, I will mention two things which are key to recovering from this terrible situation. The first is training, retraining and the teaching of skills. I come originally from near Shrewsbury. Very close by is Ironbridge, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. In Bridgnorth, a town not that far away from there, there is an excellent firm called SD Technology, which runs training, retraining and skills courses. It is about to go under because of lack of funding, and we need it badly. Can I ask my noble friend on the Front Bench whether I can put his officials and SD Technology together so that they can discuss the way forward for the very necessary teaching and training of skills?

My second point is that I firmly believe that large infrastructure projects are a serious key to recovery. I have never been a fan of HS2—it is a dreadful scheme—but in these extraordinary times in which we find ourselves, I am sure that it is a key to the future. It will employ a lot of people. It will produce a lot of employment elsewhere in secondary places. With all these large infrastructure projects, so many things trickle down to fund other things. We really need to do that. It is much better than furlough. It is the way forward.