UK Trade and Investment

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Julian Smith

Thursday 15th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) on securing the debate. The fact that we have had a debate on trade with India and today’s debate on UKTI—two debates in two years—shows the interest of the coalition Government, and particularly of Conservative Members, in trade.

I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on being here. He and I had Front-Bench roles in opposition, and I regret to say that I am going to shine a light in a few dark places he might not wish me to, but here goes. High levels of exports and foreign direct investment have always been an indicator of the health of an economy. It is vital to promote exports and foreign direct investment. We know from the very recent past that we cannot rely on consumption fuelled by debt, or on Government spending funded by debt, to drive growth. As I said in one of my first speeches after the general election, it is only through exports and FDI that effective growth will come into the country. That is how important they are to the economy. As a result of our history, we boast strong economic and cultural links across the globe. We should capitalise more on the fact that English is the universal language of business.

The effectiveness of the work of UKTI is vital to our economic recovery. A company in my constituency called Renishaw plc, chaired by the excellent David McMurtry, is doing incredibly well. Its revenues for the past six months, ending 31 December 2011, were up by a record 11% —that is £1.47 million—and as a result it is now employing 16,050 staff, with 130 vacancies, including 25 apprenticeships and 30 graduate positions. That is the real importance of exports: the growth of the economy, but also employment prospects—graduate and work placement prospects, which are so vital for youngsters leaving education.

Exports are also important for the companies themselves. It is estimated that between 1996 and 2004—the Minister will know this, because I have used these figures many times—the productivity of firms that export went up by 34%, but that of firms that did not export went down 7% to 8%. Exporting firms tend to have higher productivity. It is estimated that less than a quarter of the 10,000 medium-sized firms in the UK export, and most of them receive help from UKTI. However, the Government have recognised the fact that we must help more companies, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet said, in his autumn statement the Chancellor granted UKTI an extra £45 million, to meet the target for the number of small firms exporting, and bring it to more than 50,000. We will need to work hard to achieve that target.

I pay tribute to the Gloucestershire chamber of commerce. I was contacted on Tuesday, by Suzanne Hall-Gibbins, the chief executive, who asked me to pass on in the debate how important she felt the role of chambers of commerce could be, in exporting. I hope that the Minister will say a little more about chambers of trade and of commerce. Along with the local enterprise partnerships, they have a supremely important role, because they can identify a lot of opportunities.

[Julian Smith]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one opportunity for British Chambers of Commerce would be for them to produce some of the market reports currently produced by UKTI? I think that the BCC believe they can do them quite a lot more cheaply.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend is right, and, as my hon. Friend the Minister will know, we had that debate often in opposition. We could make more of the knowledge, on the ground, of chambers of trade and of commerce, as well as organisations throughout Europe. We could use them more—that is what they are there for.

I want to take up the point made by the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), who is unfortunately not in his place at the moment. In 2010 50% of our exports went to EU member states, and a further 16% went to the USA. The problem with that is that it is estimated that those markets will decline by 30%. On the other hand, by 2030 the BRIC—Brazil, Russia, India and China—countries will have increased by 41% their share of global GDP. In other words we are exporting to the wrong people. We are exporting to the countries it is easy to export to; but we are not encouraging our companies to export to the real high-growth markets. If we carry on as we are, we shall sink further downhill.

The markets in question are not always necessarily difficult to export to. The Minister may know that I recently visited Morocco, as did our trade ambassador Lord Marland. There is huge opportunity there, not only for trade with Morocco itself, but to use it as a hub for exporting into west Africa. We have all been looking east, towards Asia, but some west African countries’ growth is higher than that of Asian countries. Mr Tarab, the excellent CEO of the main phosphate company, which has 60% of the world’s reserves, is an Anglophile and joint chairman of the joint chamber of trade. He said to me that we should use Morocco as a hub to get into west Africa. In particular, our banks should use the opportunities that they have through shareholdings in Morocco to get into some banks in west Africa. West African countries such as Ivory Coast, Senegal, Nigeria, Angola and Ghana have had huge growth rates in the past few years, as a result of their oil and gas reserves and discoveries. We are missing a trick. They are friends, ancient trading partners, and many are members of the Commonwealth. We need to consider that market closely.

The previous Government’s policies on exports and attracting inward investment were incoherent, which prevented UKTI from implementing a rational strategy. One simple reason for that incoherence was a revolving door for trade Ministers, and another one for trade priorities for UKTI. I suggest gently to the Minister that he should set some priorities for UKTI, stick with them and ensure that we achieve them.

UK businesses that export reap significant benefits, but many are reluctant to start exporting, because they do not know where to begin, or they are unaware of the benefits. That is where UKTI comes in, but because it lacks a coherent strategy, as I have mentioned, it has not reached out to small companies well enough. I still think there is a mismatch between what UKTI does around the world, or in London, and what happens on the ground. Ninety per cent. of the companies in this country are small ones, and 4.5 million companies employ fewer than four people; if 1 million of them took on an extra person it would almost solve youth unemployment overnight, so that is a very important area. UKTI, through our embassy network around the world, could be more proactive in identifying the opportunities in those countries and relaying them back to London. Then, through our databases on our websites, we could relay the opportunities to the businesses.

Things tend to happen the other way around. What UKTI does is reactive. It tends to rely on a company approaching it and asking whether there is a market in Nigeria for the valve that it makes, which supports the oil industry. That opportunity should be identified by UKTI long before that happens, and passed back to the relevant companies. That is a change of thinking, and UKTI needs to think about it.

We need to think what incentives we can give to small companies to export. However small a company is, exports should be discussed at every board meeting. It might not want to do anything about them, but they should be on the agenda. We could encourage small firms more with corporation tax breaks. Perhaps we should even skew the national loan guarantee scheme towards companies that export. The Government need to do more to encourage small businesses.

We have not talked enough in the debate about inward investment. Too often we are delighted when big firms come to this country. Then we leave them to fend for themselves. An example is the £1.5 billion development by DP World at the London Gateway port, with investors from the United Arab Emirates. There have been huge planning problems. We should be monitoring and nursing those big investments, with someone senior from UKTI saying, “You have got a planning problem; this is who you need to go and talk to.” We need to get a reputation in this country for really caring, not just about firms bringing their investment to the country but about looking after them afterwards. That brings me on to infrastructure and the prospect of allowing it to fall behind.

Critics of High Speed 2 and Crossrail are wrong: we need the best infrastructure in the world. People need to be able to get about; we need to be up there on a world scale—certainly as good as any of our European competitors.

We need to deploy our UKTI people in the right places. Returning to my visit to Morocco, I found that we had four based in Casablanca, which is fine because that is where most trade is done, but we did not have a single UKTI representative in Rabat, although it is the centre of Government in Morocco, where all the Ministers are. The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) is right, business happens by networking, and we should be asking our UKTI people to network around the world. If they are to seek out the opportunities that I mentioned earlier, they need to network with the right people.

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Performance)

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Julian Smith

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

In America the official unemployment rate is 9.5%; unofficially, it is 13%. Americans face the worst fiscal deficit since the slump of the 1930s, and, despite the huge fiscal stimulus package introduced by President Obama, the US economy is not producing enough jobs to reduce those rates of unemployment, let alone to create enough jobs for new entrants to the job market.

Unfortunately, our economy faces similar conditions, and, as I said in my speech during the Budget debate on 23 June last year, it is essential that as the public sector contracts, everything is done to encourage the private sector to grow as fast as possible in order to take up the necessary slack and to create desperately needed jobs, particularly among the young. At this time, small and medium-sized enterprises collectively account for 99.9% of all enterprises, 59.8% of private sector employment and 49% of private sector turnover. It is clear that our economic recovery will be fuelled by those firms, to which the Government should provide all possible help. The Government have taken a number of steps to help in doing so. They have reduced corporation tax, both large and small; increased the threshold at which employers begin paying national insurance contributions; they are consulting on reforming employment tribunals; and there is a welcome and significant increase in apprenticeships.

There are significant problems out there, however. The banks are lending to certain favoured sectors, and even in other sectors their arrangement fees have increased hugely over the past year or so, thereby increasing borrowing costs. The introduction of regulation on flexible working and paternity leave, although desirable in themselves, could have serious negative implications for small businesses, which can ill afford to lose a member of staff for a considerable time. It is vital that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills wins those arguments with other Departments, and that business policy is ruthlessly put first.

[Julian Smith]

Does my hon. Friend agree that on family-friendly policies, which are vital for supporting the improvement of children in our country, small businesses with very few employees need to be given special attention? They are special cases, and we need to look after their needs as much as possible.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend is prescient, because I was about to move on to that subject. The European Union has what it calls a “Small Business Act”, which requires the EU to look at every new regulation before it is introduced and consider its effect on small businesses to see whether very small firms might be exempted from it. We should do more of the same here.

The greatest challenges and opportunities lie in inward investment—foreign direct investment, FDI—and exports. As I identified when I was shadow Trade Minister, the previous Government’s policies on those matters were incoherent, particularly with regard to the enormously expensive regional development authority offices that were based throughout the world, often in the same city, and competing for the same inward investment to UK. Thankfully, we have put a stop to that, and I am delighted to hear that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is about to produce a White Paper on trade. That will be very welcome, indeed, and I am sure it will address several measures that I am going to discuss in my speech.

If the newly created local enterprise partnerships are not to have any role in FDI, presumably UK Trade & Investment will deliver the policy centrally from London, with small teams on the ground in the regions, something that I have advocated. Perhaps the Minister, when he makes his winding-up speech, will confirm that, because FDI is a vital part of the economy. We must not only seek new FDI from throughout the world, but carefully look after what we have. I was alarmed to see that Hua Wei, one of the world’s largest IT companies and based in Beijing, has just moved its European headquarters from Basingstoke to Düsseldorf. Eventually, that could affect 6,000 jobs, and the Pfizer decision today is another reminder of FDI’s importance.