UK Trade and Investment

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Iain Wright

Thursday 15th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Wright]

It is impossible that Mr Amess is 60.

I must however add a sour note, Mr Amess, that is directed at your good self. I attended business questions in the main Chamber today and I heard you say to the Leader of the House that Southend is the best seaside resort in the country, if not the world. I have to correct you and say that Hartlepool and Seaton Carew is actually the best seaside resort anywhere in the country.

This has been a great debate, and an important and interesting one. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) on securing such a significant and timely debate.

In many respects, I am very optimistic about Britain’s prospects in the next half-century. We have innovative, dynamic, competitive companies in sectors from which the world wants to buy goods and services, and in which we are world class. We have a tradition of open, fair and global trading, which we need to exploit a lot more, and the world economy will double by the year 2050. The rate of growth throughout the world in the next decade will be about 4% to 5%––much higher than in the last 30 years. We need to exploit that to Britain’s competitive advantage as much as possible.

I mentioned this point in a previous debate, but it is worth repeating; indeed, the hon. Member for South Thanet referred to it earlier: there is a ferociously competitive global economy out there. British firms must be as nimble as possible, but my additional point is that there is a premium for coming first in the 21st-century economy, and we need to ensure that Britain and British companies go first into the new and emerging markets.

Let me quote from the CBI’s excellent report, “Winning overseas”, which says:

“We are not alone in seeking growth through exports – other advanced economies are facing similar constraints and are looking to boost their export performance. We cannot spend another decade simply playing catch-up: we need to be bigger and bolder in our ambitions.”

The report concludes by stating, very starkly:

“We are not being ambitious enough with our choice of markets and our decline in goods exports is unsustainable if we want to lead an export-orientated economic recovery.”

Exporting is incredibly important to the British economy, and not just in the simplistic and obvious sense that it generates revenue for our country, allowing us to pay our way in the world. All the evidence suggests that firms that export and that attract inward investment stimulate better research and development, productivity, innovation and hence competitiveness. The efficiency of our wider economy improves through exposure to new ideas and different ways of doing business. A paper from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills itself, entitled “International Trade and Investment - the Economic Rationale for Government Support”, states:

“export support is a highly cost effective means of generating additional business R&D, enabling firms to increase internal resources available for such investment, as a by-product of successfully helping them to gain access to new markets.”

It is clear that public money invested in export expansion and support reaps huge dividends for the businesses of this country, and it also improves the ongoing competitiveness and prosperity of our country. The CBI—I quote it again—states quite directly the challenge to us in this House as policy makers:

“Be clear about what the UK is trying to achieve and where its strengths lie in order to help UK business in the global marketplace. The UK must develop a strong brand that our exporters can leverage to their own advantage.”

I think that we would all agree with regard to that.

I am optimistic about the growing alignment between areas of UK competitive advantage and demand from emerging markets in the next decade or so. We have the rise of the global middle class, with about 1.8 billion middle-class people in the world. In the next few years, that is estimated to grow by 5 billion, so we are going to have a huge increase in people with more disposable income wanting to buy British goods and services. That will provide enormous opportunities for the UK in some of our real strengths: premium brand automotives, financial services, IT, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, creative industries and higher education.

I am optimistic, but we face challenges. It has been mentioned that we often have cultural and structural barriers to companies expanding their exports, or even starting to export in the first place. In terms of our cultural barriers, too many of our firms simply do not export. The key task of UKTI is to break down those cultural barriers as much as possible and identify the companies that could make a real success in exporting.

We export to a limited field of slow or no-growth countries. That point has been made by the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) and others. Some 65% to 70% of our exports go to the United States and the European Union. We need to ensure that the strategic focus of UKTI switches to high growth and emerging economies. The hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) was firm about making sure that we were at the forefront of N11 economies—the next 11 high growth economies.

There is a cultural barrier. How on earth does a firm in Hartlepool or elsewhere, with no culture or experience in exporting whatever, get into the business of exploiting foreign opportunities? As the CBI states, getting a swimmer to attempt a different stroke is much easier than getting them into the pool in the first place. Firms happen to chance upon exporting opportunities, rather than making a determined effort. We heard about the micro-brewery that the hon. Member for South Thanet mentioned. It is right that the Government have an objective to double trade by 2015 with Brazil, China, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the UAE and Vietnam. As the CBI says:

“It is clear that the UK needs to re-orientate its trade towards high-growth markets in order to boost its performance.”

Those countries are where the high growth, emerging opportunities will arise.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am sorry to labour the point, but the list that the hon. Gentleman has just read out did not include a single west African country. Some of the west African countries that I cited will have much higher growth rates than some of the countries that he mentioned. We must not neglect the countries of west Africa. Many of them are members of the Commonwealth. They are friends.

[Mr Wright]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. UKTI needs to look closely at where those high growth opportunities will be and ensure that, because of possible historical links, we exploit those opportunities first. I tabled a written question about how we are to double trade and what targets are in place. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North said—perhaps the Minister will comment on this—there are no stated bilateral trade targets for Egypt, South Korea, Bangladesh, Indonesia or the Philippines. The Minister said that UKTI provides a degree of service for UK companies seeking to do business, but that is not good enough. We need to be much more focused and determined to ensure that British firms can sell their goods and services in the areas that are going to grow the global economy in the next half century. We need a framework in place to allow that to happen.

I became interested in the course of the debate about where UKTI, with finite resources, should be concentrating those resources. The hon. Member for South Thanet and others mentioned the need to focus on small firms and make sure that we get in at the beginning to ensure that we can benefit and help to shape and mould their ambitions for exporting opportunities as they grow. I keep mentioning the CBI, because its report is excellent. The CBI states that UKTI could perhaps be more effective if it focused on mid-sized companies with real potential for high growth. They may already be exporting, but they require assistance to break into new markets.

I am interested in what the Minister has to say about what we need to do to identify, embrace and nurture medium-sized enterprises—those companies with a turnover of about £10 million to £100 million, with up to 500 employees, and, as I said, real potential for high growth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wright]

Effectiveness is at the heart of the debate. I made that point in response to the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith). I want to see as big a bang for the UK taxpayers’ buck as possible. How we go about doing that is important.

I was coming on to the figures regarding what rate of return we get for taxpayers’ investment. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North disputes these figures, but they are a good starting point. For every pound that UKTI spends on export promotion, the British economy and firms generate an additional £22 profit. That is an astonishing figure and a huge ratio. It is difficult to think of a comparable direct example in which Government investment and active involvement could produce such a return. When we factor in the law of diminishing returns and state that—plucking something from the air—every pound that UKTI spends will provide half that current return, on my rough calculation and even according to a conservative estimate, based on the UKTI’s current £333 million budget, this country’s businesses stand to lose well over half a billion pounds in additional profit. With the economy flatlining and unemployment rising, is that appropriate? Should we not be trying to invest more in UKTI?

As I tried to say in response to the hon. Member for Enfield North, every pound spent needs to be focused diligently on proactively seeking out firms with great potential for export capability in high-growth areas. As many hon. Members have said, that means being proactive and having a UKTI presence alongside Foreign Office staff in those emerging markets to advise companies of the ways in which to do business in that particular nation.

That does not necessarily solely mean advertising that the UKTI posts on Twitter and Facebook, and that companies have access to online materials. Certainly, the use of online materials—the internet and social media—is important. However, to use them at the expense of the face-to-face establishment of relationships, will not be an effective use of public money. To some extent, I saw that when I was a shadow Education Minister and the Government ended face-to-face careers guidance for young people. Web-based initiatives—the notion that someone says, “There’s a computer there with the internet on it. Just have a look and see what jobs you might be interested in”—are not an effective use of public money. Web-based media may be part of a complementary blend of materials, but they cannot be the full answer. I worry that, in tightening financial circumstances, people will rely on Twitter and Facebook too much.

People have mentioned the scrapping of the RDAs. That abolition of regional government architecture has not helped matters. LEPs are still in their infancy. We hope that they are a success, but we are missing valuable time. The world is moving on and it will not wait for us. We need to ensure that we are at the vanguard of this competitive environment. If structures are altered domestically, we will be penalised internationally.

I want to finish by making a number of points, one of which is about access to finance. Will the Minister update hon. Members on the progress made with the actions outlined in “The Plan for Growth” published almost a year ago? I put that question to the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), in the debate on British exports and trade a week or so ago, but he did not have time to answer it. How many SMEs have been helped as part of UKTI’s passport to export initiative? In “The Plan for Growth” the Government launched the export enterprise finance guarantee, which provides guarantees for lenders to facilitate the provision of short-term finance lines for export. How many firms have taken advantage of that?

The plan produced three new products designed to mitigate the risks for exporters and potential exporters. I understand that the bond support product was operational from April, so we have had almost a year of it. Will the Minister state how successful he thinks that has been in freeing up exporters’ working capital and how many firms have taken advantage of it?

I want to finish on the point about us having a sustained approach to trade investment and political lobbying. “Britain Open for Business” states:

“Government Ministers will also systematically lobby for UK commercial interests on all overseas visits and in meetings with their counterparts in other governments.”

That is welcome, but the point has been made time and again that every single Minister with a red box should be charged with selling Britain overseas. They should be making sure that they are trade ambassadors. To widen that point, we are missing the trick that hon. Members have huge influence in their constituencies. As mentioned, we are missing brokering opportunities overseas.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

By far the largest number of people who travel abroad at the taxpayer’s expense are civil servants and local government officials. A diktat should go down to every single one of them that they should be trade ambassadors for this country when they go abroad at the taxpayer’s expense.