Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Gareth Thomas and Harriett Baldwin(1 week, 4 days ago)
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Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
One of the ingredients for a successful high street is having a post office in the mix. The Government have inherited a network of 11,500 post offices, and that number has been stable since 2010. Will the Minister commit to supporting high streets by maintaining the scale of the post office network in this Parliament?
Gareth Thomas
Yes, we are determined to maintain and, indeed, strengthen the post office network. I suspect that the hon. Member will recognise that we inherited a Post Office with huge problems, which we are working with the new leadership of the Post Office to begin to tackle. We are looking at what new commercial opportunities there may be for the Post Office, and banking appears to be the most significant one. We are also working with the Post Office to identify some of its infrastructure problems, not least in developing a replacement for the Horizon scheme.
Export and Investment Guarantees
Debate between Gareth Thomas and Harriett Baldwin(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Gareth Thomas
I welcome the opportunity to close the debate. I thank the hon. Members for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin) and for Wokingham (Clive Jones) for their comments and questions, which I will try to answer before I make some final remarks about the statutory instruments.
The hon. Member for West Worcestershire asked if the UK Government support fair and free trade. I reconfirm our absolute commitment to supporting fair and free trade. We have made it very clear that trade is one of the key planks of the work of the Department. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Trade Policy and Economic Security, reporting to the Secretary of State, is leading work on a trade White Paper, which we will bring forward in due course. I am sure the hon. Lady will see the Government’s commitment to fair and free trade reflected in that document.
As the hon. Lady knows, when we were in opposition, we supported accession to the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership. We are working to agree a number of free trade deals, for example with Switzerland, India and South Korea. She asked me about the trade envoys programme. We are sympathetic to such a programme continuing. We are looking at it closely, as she would expect, and we will bring forward an update to the House in due course.
The hon. Lady asked me about our views on trade with the United States. We recognise that the US is already a key export market for many British firms, and we want to look at all opportunities to increase trade with the US. I will come back to legislative reform more generally, but she is right to underline the message that we have to be on the side of wealth creators in this country if we want to see growth, more jobs and better pay for those in our communities. Winning export orders is fundamental to delivering growth, so a substantial amount of time in the Department is being spent thinking through what else we can do to support British businesses to win export orders overseas. UK Export Finance is one part, but not the only part, of that story, and we will bring forward our plans in due course.
Dame Harriett Baldwin
I understand that Crawford Falconer, who had been in charge of a lot of the trade negotiations, is leaving the Department. Will the Minister tell the House what his plans are to fill that role?
Gareth Thomas
I pay tribute to Crawford Falconer for his work for the Department and the country. He has already fed into the work that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Trade Policy and Economic Security is leading on the trade White Paper. Others in the Department are actively leading negotiations with a number of countries in support of our free trade negotiations and our ambitions for new free and fair trade agreements.
The hon. Lady asked me whether there is a need for further legislative reform to UK Export Finance. The Secretary of State has instructed UKEF officials to explore how we can increase the organisation’s overall financial capacity. That work is under way. We are committed to ensuring that UKEF can support British exporters now and into the future, but these statutory instruments are key in the short and medium term to helping it to continue to do its job.
The hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) gives me the opportunity to plug International Trade Week, which is taking place this week. I am glad to see that he at least has taken the advice that I wrote out for every Member of the House, encouraging them to reach out to exporters in their constituency, to support what they are doing already and to make them aware of further help that the UK Government could give them to win new export orders overseas. One message that we have sought to get across during International Trade Week is that we are absolutely committed to a reset in our trade relationship with the European Union. There is no doubt that the poor-quality trade deal with Europe that the previous Government negotiated has held back many British businesses from winning export orders in Europe. We need to reset the trade relationship with Europe in very practical terms. We committed, for example, to negotiating a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement, and to exploring more opportunities for mutual recognition of professional qualifications. We see next year’s trade and co-operation agreement review as another opportunity to look at what we can do to reduce the difficulties that businesses face in trading with our nearest neighbours.
The Conservatives talked down the opportunities for British businesses to win export orders in our nearest overseas markets. That was a huge mistake; businesses have told us so. We are actively looking at what we can do to change that.
If the hon. Member for Wokingham gives any message to the representatives of the company that he is visiting tomorrow, let it be this: please encourage them to look again at Europe. We recognise that there are difficulties, but we want to work with business to sort them out, because we genuinely believe that there are real opportunities. He asked whether I would meet him and representatives from Wokingham businesses. I would be very happy to. In that spirit, I commend the draft orders to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Export and Investment Guarantees
Resolved,
That the draft Export and Investment Guarantees (Limit on Exports and Insurance Commitments) (No. 2) Order 2024, which was laid before this House on 14 October, be approved.
That the draft Export and Investment Guarantees (Limit on Exports and Insurance Commitments) (No. 3) Order 2024, which was laid before this House on 14 October, be approved.—(Martin McCluskey.)