Newport Wafer Fab Sale Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Main Page: Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Conservative - North Cotswolds)Department Debates - View all Geoffrey Clifton-Brown's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Newport Wafer Fab Sale
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con) [V]
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy if he will make a statement on the sale of the Newport Wafer Fab semiconductors plant in Duffryn, Newport, to the Chinese-owned firm Nexperia.
Thank you very much for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. I thank the Minister also for being present to answer it. I understand that the Government cannot comment on security matters, but the purpose of the urgent question is to give Parliament an opportunity to make its views known about the strategic importance of the Chinese takeover of Wafer Fab, a semiconductor manufacturer based in Newport.
The Chinese firm Wingtech Technology has a controlling stake in the acquiring company Nexperia, which supplies Chinese companies that create smartphones, including Huawei. The Prime Minister stated at the Liaison Committee last week on 7 July:
“This Government is spending a huge quantity of taxpayers’ money to make sure that we get Huawei out of our telecommunications networks.”
Would it not therefore be completely inconsistent if Government policy allowed the takeover of a firm creating microchips of such importance to our national security? The Prime Minister also stated that we need to be more self-reliant, and that he was told that it costs £9 billion to build a semiconductor factory. Why would we allow such sophisticated national infrastructure to be sold?
Finally, while I agree with the Prime Minister that we do not want an
“anti-China spirit to lead to our trying to pitchfork away every investment from China into this country”,
in this particular case the security issues should be paramount. China considers this matter vital for its national security, as do other countries, including our ally the United States. Why are our Government not taking the same view?
Mr Speaker
We have gone slightly out of order. The hon. Member was meant to just ask the urgent question, and then come back. If the Minister can roll the two together, I will then go to the shadow Minister.