The Government’s Productivity Plan

George Kerevan Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Solloway (Derby North) (Con)]

It is a great honour to follow the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin); I always listen to him with great enthusiasm. It is also great to be here with fellow members of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. To add to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), it is a great privilege to serve under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright).

Productivity is an essential driving force for the country’s economy, with direct implications on our long-term growth, living standards and wages. Its importance was highlighted by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his autumn statement back in November, when he spoke about how the UK is trailing behind several countries in terms of productivity, including the US and Germany. In seeking to tackle that problem, he announced £23 billion of investments, designed to improve output, with particular emphasis on infrastructure and housing. Along with the productivity plan and industrial strategy, that illustrates the Government’s commitment and determination to making the UK the best place in the world—

[George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)]

I hope the hon. Lady will forgive me for interrupting her in her stride—she is making an interesting argument—but the largest proportion of the Chancellor’s £23 billion productivity innovation plan is for house construction. How does that add to productivity?

[Amanda Solloway]

I will come to that later in my speech. I apologise, but I am having difficulty seeing today, so Members should shout loudly if they want to intervene.

I was saying that the Government’s commitment to making the UK the best place in the world to do business should be warmly welcomed by the House.

I have spent most of my life in retail and manufacturing, so I am acutely aware of the challenges faced by the sector, which are clearly not unique to the industry and can be seen throughout the business community. With the right foundations, business and industry can and will flourish; we just need to provide the right conditions, which the productivity plan rightly addresses. In doing so, it is essential for us to focus on improving the quality of our primary and secondary education to provide an adequate starting point for young people heading into further education, apprenticeships and employment. I welcome the Government’s recognition that improvements to basic skills such as numeracy and literacy play a vital role, and the fact that they are putting those skills at the heart of their reforms. It is skill provision in general that I shall touch on today.

The UK’s competitiveness in the open market is now more important than ever. Following the result of last year’s referendum, as we seek to find new avenues for investment and trade, the potential opportunities for and contribution to our nation’s productivity should not be underestimated. New capital, more competition, and new technologies will all be vital as we look to compete with the rest of the world.

From a Derby North perspective, the success of the midlands engine is incredibly important to me. The midlands engine strategy can be a vehicle to deliver policy that will not only increase productivity but support the vision for a successful United Kingdom. We have a strong offering in the midlands that can deliver growth that is not only balanced by sector, geography and trade, but sustainable, in that it creates skilled, highly productive roles backed by private sector investment. The midlands engine must focus on elements that give us competitive advantage, central to which is our expertise in key sectors, especially advanced manufacturing.

In my constituency alone we have a high density of original equipment manufacturers—such as Toyota, Rolls-Royce and Bombardier—and a well-established supply chain that serves them all. It is essential that we have the training and skills that match local employers’ needs, which is something the productivity plan looks to address.

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[Michelle Thomson (Edinburgh West) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I commend the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) for his contribution and for his leadership of the Select Committee. I reiterate a point that he made: the productivity plan, “Fixing the foundations”, was published in July 2015. We should step back and think about the radical changes we have seen since then, because it is ever a moving target. We have a new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, a new Prime Minister, a new Cabinet, an industrial strategy Green Paper and, fundamentally, a new relationship with the EU. In terms of the estimates, it is indeed a moving target. There is a real challenge in the macro relationships of how we get policy provision to guide us going forward among all that shifting.

Obviously the most important of those changes is Brexit, and how the Government respond to it will be crucial for the future of any industrial strategy or productivity plan. Prime Ministers come and go and Departments get renamed, but leaving the EU is the sort of event that is going to take massive energy to achieve anything positive. Worryingly, the rhetoric I have heard so far does not fill me with a great deal of faith. We are undermining some of the noble intentions of the productivity plan and industrial strategy. Putting up barriers will have an impact on productivity. I am in no way convinced by some of the grandiose sentiments along the lines of, “If everything doesn’t work out, we can always revert to World Trade Organisation rules”—most people do not seem to be aware that the fundamental work of revising and agreeing schedules is a massive amount of work in itself.

It is probably not a surprise to my colleagues here that I will focus briefly on Scotland, as is my wont in every BEIS Committee as well. A good job has been done with productivity in Scotland. We are now at the point where our output per hour is much the same as the UK average, and that has happened over the past 10 years. We have managed to close the large gap, but, as has been commented on previously, we are, frankly nowhere in terms of the wider UK. I managed to dig out the statistics that I quoted last year and the research that I had done in the House of Commons Library, which showed that Norway’s productivity was 77% ahead of the UK, and that continues to shock me.

The analysis paper of the respected think-tank, the Fraser of Allander Institute, on the impact of Brexit suggests that Scottish productivity will be negatively affected by leaving the European Union. To me, that is absolutely fundamental. Ending the free movement of people and thus reducing labour mobility is a fundamental issue for us in Scotland, and it cannot be overstated. One impact could be reduced inward investment, which could affect higher productivity.

Commitment 55 in the productivity plan report calls for a continuation of

“the long term decarbonisation of the UK’s energy sector through a framework that supports cost effective low carbon investment.”

The industrial strategy Green Paper then adds to that by calling for an upgrade in infrastructure and a delivery of affordable energy and clean growth. However, from my point of view, this Government are actively undermining these laudable aims by selling off the Green Investment Bank with undue haste. I understand in principle why one might want to capital raise, but I remind the Minister that the Green Investment Bank is quite clear that it does not need to capital raise until 2018. Furthermore, in terms of the nature and the type of projects that have been selected to address market failure, I now have a concern that there will continue to be a gap. Yes, market failure has been affected, and even blocked, by the introduction of the Green Investment Bank in some areas, but it has yet to be addressed in other areas.

[George Kerevan]

Is my hon. Friend aware that Macquarie Bank wants to buy the Green Investment Bank for the brand name, so that it can exclude competitors from taking part in local authority environmental investment schemes? Selling the bank will mean less competition in environmental investment, which in turn means reduced productivity in the long run.

[Michelle Thomson]

I am aware of that, and I have had conversations with the Minister, Macquarie and the Green Investment Bank. The fundamental concern is that, potentially, Scotland risks losing an asset in terms of the headquarters in Edinburgh. Despite the assurances of the preferred bidder—let us call it Macquarie—I will be watching this matter very carefully, because there is a risk that we will lose head office functions and the board. Going back to my hon. Friend’s point, it is building an infrastructure that enables productivity and these kind of things to succeed. If we put in public capital investment and we then do not get the value from it, that seems to me to be short-sighted and misguided. Equally, without the firm commitment to maintaining jobs in Scotland, all the productivity plans and industrial strategies in the world will not address the regional disparities that we see in Scotland, especially if we promptly roll away all these things.

On carbon capture and storage, we have spent £100 million on two competitions to try to kick start this new technology. We heard yesterday on a BEIS Committee day trip to Edinburgh that that is very difficult, and I accept that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin) commented, we must be prepared to take risks to drive things forward for future gain. We accept that £100 million has been spent, but if we do not press ahead with some of these proposed projects, our country could once again lose its competitive advantage, and we cannot rule that out and forget about it.

I am most concerned by some of the narrow-minded views that have been exhibited in some of the debates around Brexit. They have a pervasive narrative that sounds isolationist and deeply disappointing when it comes to the wealth of opportunities of renewable energy. For example, a new interconnector between Scotland and Norway will soon allow the transfer of wind power and hydro power between the two nations, allowing them both to cut their emissions. This is not the time for retrenching and retreating. Construction has also started on a new 1 GW interconnector to France, further demonstrating our inter-dependence with our European neighbours.

Let me move away from energy and quickly dwell on some of the other issues that have been most affected by Brexit in the productivity plan. The first is the issue of international students. In the BEIS report on the productivity plan we said:

“We recommend the Government does not allow migration pressures to influence student or post-study visa decisions. It is illogical to educate foreign students to one of the highest standards in the world only for them to leave before they have had an opportunity to contribute to the UK economy.”

I have a story from my constituency of Edinburgh West. A remarkable young man, Mr Olubenga Ibikunle, won a substantial sum of money to do a PhD in civil and coastal engineering. As soon as he completed his course, he was turfed out. The level of his ground-breaking research, commitment and dedication to self-improvement means that he is exactly the sort of person that we would like to keep in Scotland.

The Prime Minister refused to consider removing students from net migration targets when she was in front of the Liaison Committee. I hope that she will reconsider her position, because international student numbers are already beginning to fall as evidenced by the latest immigration statistics. We cannot allow our position as a world leader for international students to be eroded by a dogmatic fixation on an arbitrary target of tens of thousands of migrants.

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[Amanda Milling]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention, and some Members might hope that I do not start to talk about rail in too much detail, because I have spoken about it a lot in the House. My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point, and one of the issues with the west coast main line is capacity in terms of not only passenger trains but freight trains. That is a key part of the transport infrastructure piece we need to look at. This is about road and rail, among other things.

One question I want to ask the Minister is: what is being done to look at the drivers of this regional disparity so that the different regions can understand what they need to do to address it?

[George Kerevan]

On that point, there is perhaps a third reason why manufacturing areas such as hers find it difficult to compete with European levels of productivity, which is that we have a very small equity market for medium-scale industrial firms. They have to rely on bank financing, which is very inefficient. In the United States and Germany, firms can get equity funding, and it is much easier for medium-sized manufacturers to expand.

[Amanda Milling]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, and it is one that the Select Committee explored in relation to access to finance. There is an over-reliance on bank lending. There is a plethora of ways in which we can finance small businesses, but people do not necessarily look at all the options available to them.

Let me go back to the point about the regions. In the context of devolution, we have combined authorities and local authorities, and in my area we have the midlands engine. I would be interested to hear what support the Government will give those different bodies to try to improve productivity in their areas.

Another point I want to pick up on is that it is very evident in the productivity plan and the industrial strategy that they require cross-Whitehall buy-in, and a number of Whitehall Departments are involved. Before I go into detail on that, let me say that the productivity plan was really led by the Treasury, while the industrial strategy is largely led by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. That raises a couple of questions. To what extent does the Treasury have input into the design of the industrial strategy? What is the relationship between the productivity plan and the industrial strategy? Is the industrial strategy the successor of the productivity plan? If not, how will the two work together, and who will manage them, given that they came from different Departments in the first instance? We have talked about transport, skills, and digital infrastructure. In looking to deliver the industrial strategy, we need many Departments to be fully bought into that. For instance, during this Parliament there has been a real focus on various Departments owning exports and taking a degree of responsibility for that area. It is welcome news that the Prime Minister chairs the Economy and Industrial Strategy Committee and the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy serves on a lot of Sub-Cabinet Committees. What are the Government doing to ensure that the industrial strategy is truly embedded into each of the Departments and that they take responsibility and are accountable for its delivery, thereby in turn improving our productivity?

I want to make a point about measuring success. My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington touched on this. It goes back to my original point about the productivity plan. We had concerns as a Committee that the productivity plan was lacking in measurable metrics and delivery timeframes. During the course of our inquiry, it was really noticeable that if we asked people how they defined “industrial strategy”, we got a whole wide range of answers. We need to be very clear about what it is, but also how it is going to be measured so that we can assess whether we are succeeding or otherwise. As we all know, it takes time to see whether we are improving our productivity, so I would also be interested to understand what is being done in the short term to assess our progress on that.

I think we all welcome the focus on productivity. A number of Members have talked about the balance between productivity and employment rates. We need to try to tackle this ongoing issue that we have faced for decades. As a west midlands MP, I think we really do need to look at how we can rebalance and improve our productivity in the regions. I do not want to see the west midlands at the bottom of the English areas in this regard. I welcome the industrial strategy because it looks to have productivity at its heart, but we need to have a commitment to it across Government. We need to look at how it works at a regional level, and to have clear metrics.

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[Robert Jenrick]

I apologise if I chose my words poorly, but the point that I was trying to make is that we need to exercise great caution, because two things have had an effect. The first is that high levels of immigration have meant that wages have been supressed, but as we leave the European Union we also need to ensure that people continue to do those jobs, whether they be in the care sector or, indeed, in the food production industry in my constituency. There is a challenge ahead for the Government not only to maintain employment levels, but to ensure that there is a better-paid workforce.

Secondly, as has already been said, a major contributor to our loss of, or stagnating, productivity in recent years has been the decline in the financial services sector since the financial crash of 2008. That has happened not just in London, but across the country, including Edinburgh in Scotland, Manchester and my own city of Nottingham, where the related company Experian is based. There are fewer jobs and less productivity. Nobody is a friend of investment bankers, but they are highly productive members of the economy and we need to be careful about how we accommodate the financial services sector post-Brexit. Personally, I am fairly optimistic about the future, given that those investment bankers and lawyers to whom I have spoken will not follow the entreaties of Mr Macron and move to France, with its sclerotic, socialist economy, any time soon.

We need to be careful, however, about how we proceed in tackling the productivity gap. I am particularly cautious about spending more money and getting the country into further debt. The national debt, of course, is £1.8 trillion and it is increasing at a rate of £5,000 per second. Levels of austerity have been grossly overstated: public spending has fallen by only 5% or 6% in real terms since 2010. Although it has fallen as a percentage of GDP, it remains a major problem, and I am particularly concerned that fewer and fewer right hon. and hon. Members even mention the debt and the deficit as part of our national dialogue. That needs to change, because the greatest threat to our economy and productivity is the debt we are leaving to future generations.

[George Kerevan]

I presume that the hon. Gentleman is aware that when Harold Macmillan was Chancellor of the Exchequer, the national debt was double what it is now. Even though it has doubled in the past 10 years, it was double the current figure as a proportion of GDP, and the economy was growing even faster and productivity was even higher.

[Robert Jenrick]

The problem with higher levels of debt lies not just in passing it on to future generations, but in the consequences of that for them. It will mean higher taxes, a less competitive economy and poorer productivity for generations to come. Just because many of our competitors around the world, including the United States under President Trump, have chosen to go down that path, that does not mean that we should follow them. I for one want a Government who in the years to come tackle the debt and deficit as aggressively as they have done in the past.

I am cautious of trying to tackle the productivity gap by spending money on high-expenditure infrastructure projects that have over-optimistic claims—a result, I am afraid, of politicians being both their promoter and their scrutineer. I suspect that HS2 falls into that category.

I welcome the National Infrastructure Commission. I hope that it has teeth and that it will provide balance and ensure that we start investing in those infrastructure projects that actually improve productivity and take long-term decisions for the future of the country. Given the current scale of the national debt, borrowing for rushed, so-called shovel-ready projects will have a limited multiplier effect and will only add to the debt burden, thereby necessitating future tax increases and a less competitive economy in the years to come.

I am in favour of us investing in those infrastructure projects that promote long-term growth which do not necessarily cost the earth and have the highest productivity potential. I am also interested in supply-side reforms that cost either little or nothing at all, such as deregulation and tax simplification, or that are likely easily to pay for themselves, including the creation of a lower-tax economy that will benefit us for years to come. Let me take each of those points in turn.

In relation to creating a longer-term, higher-growth investment plan that will tackle low levels of productivity, I have some sympathy with some of the areas that have already been discussed. The congestion on our roads is a major issue. As hon. Members have mentioned, our roads are among the most congested of any country in the G7. This does not necessarily require the most expensive road investment strategies, but it does require investment in bypasses, junctions and mending potholes. My own town of Newark is one of the most congested towns in the midlands, and freeing it up would give a major boost to the economic prospects of the whole of the east midlands.

We should take some long-term decisions even though they are expensive, such as investing in Heathrow. No Government who actually believe in tackling the productivity gap or in putting us in the right position to be a global trading nation can afford to let such a decision be pushed further into the future. Less sexy decisions to do with long-term infrastructure are also important. We heard my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) talk about trying to sort out the problems of freight on our road and rail. I am sure that my friend Sir John Peace, the head of the Government’s midlands engine, will make that a priority in his forthcoming report.

Lastly, it is very important to take seriously the need to reduce energy costs for manufacturing and other parts of our economy. It is of course important to produce a sustainable energy economy and ecosystem, but we are pricing out many of our most important manufacturing businesses with expensive energy projects. I am particularly concerned about some of the Government’s decisions in recent years that have produced extremely expensive projects, for which we will have to pay for years to come. It was imprudent of us to have closed some of our power stations, such as Cottam in my constituency, which were operating perfectly well and helping to keep energy costs down for consumers and businesses.

On supply-side reforms, I think tax simplification is extremely important. Frankly, no Government since the chancellorship of Nigel Lawson have taken tax simplification seriously in this country. The former Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), took an interest in this matter—he created the Office of Tax Simplification—but, in fact, relatively little happened, and the tax code only increased in length. Tax simplification need not cost the taxpayer anything at all, but it would make a huge difference by making it easier, not harder, to employ people, to grow the economy and to get investment into this country.

On our tax competitiveness, it is extremely important that we continue the pattern created by the previous Chancellor of reducing our corporation tax to levels that are among the most competitive in the world. Clearly, there may be new challenges ahead with the United States, if indeed they materialise, but it is extremely important for us to persist. I thought the former Chancellor was right, despite some rather opportunistic criticism from the Labour party, to reduce capital gains tax. Even with the changes, capital gains tax will remain higher under the Conservative Government than it was at the end of the Gordon Brown era, so that intervention by Labour was really baffling. We need an economy that is the most tax competitive we can possibly make it.

We have already spoken about research and development. Incentives for research and development, such as the reliefs created by the coalition Government, have been extremely effective, as I know from speaking to large and small companies in my constituency, and I would like them to continue.

As we approach Brexit, it is extremely important that the Department starts to look, industry by industry, at what low-cost deregulation could be achieved that does not sacrifice workers’ rights or infringe sensible environmental protections, but may be a game changer in those industries. In the two or three industries I have worked in—the legal sector, and running an auction house —there are European regulations the repeal of which would not be offensive to most people in this country, and that would give us a small but none the less significant competitive advantage over our major competitors in other countries. I will not bore the House with the details of such regulations, but the Government, in preparation for our departure from the European Union, should now work on a sectoral or industry-by-industry basis to work out which they are.

The penultimate point I want to make is that we should give greater thought to the long-term sustainability of the British economy. I am concerned not only about the deficit, but about welfare, and the Government should look at our state retirement age. It is inevitable that with an ageing population all of us will need to work longer. This produces a number of major challenges, particularly for those who work in sectors, such as on the shop floor or in heavy industry, where the work is extremely tiring. There is no doubt that people will need to retire or change career at a later stage. It is inevitable that the Government will have to look at this and act quickly if we want to signal to the markets our continued careful stewardship of the economy.

It is extremely important now, particularly as we are leaving the European Union and setting our sights on the world beyond, that we invest more of our time and effort in creating the kind of entrepreneurial culture found in the United States that this country has never quite managed to replicate. This will mean more allowances for entrepreneurs. I would like to see entrepreneurs’ allowances preserved, if not increased. I would be interested in them being focused on longer-term investments. At the moment, most reliefs are available after, I think, only a year of holding assets. They could be focused on investments further in the future.

Green Investment Bank

George Kerevan Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)]

It is, as ever, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I join colleagues on both sides of the Chamber in commending the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Michelle Thomson) for securing the debate. I underline the fact that she is a well known entrepreneur in Scotland. She speaks not as someone who is simply anti-market, but as someone who has worked very hard in her own right to make markets work in Scotland. It is on that basis that I wish to ask some questions of the Minister.

I agree with most of what has been said so far, but there is one issue we need to take a bit further. Perhaps the Minister in his summing up could explain a bit more the Government’s reasoning. The Green Investment Bank was set up to deal with a very specific form of market failure. I am interested in the subject because when a green investment bank was first mooted, I was a senior journalist on The Scotsman in Edinburgh, which is celebrating its 200th birthday today. We organised a campaign, which I was very much involved in, to bring the headquarters of the Green Investment Bank to Edinburgh, and we were successful.

The perceived market failure is obviously to do with the funding of environmental projects. Some of us, though—I do not say this to make a cheap point—believe that the rush to sell the Green Investment Bank, only two years after it really started being in operation, was a product of the wish of the previous Chancellor to raise capital to meet his target to balance the books and abolish the deficit. That is understood. Now that the Government have given way on the ex-Chancellor’s 2020 target to get into surplus, and given that in some sense his colleagues seem less happy with his activities, so much so that he is not the Chancellor any more, it might be a chance to look more at the nuts and bolts of whether market failure is being addressed, rather than simply to try to raise capital.

The market failure being addressed was not a lack of capital in general, but a much more specific form of market failure. Most large infrastructure projects are funded by consortiums of banks and investment houses, because the projects are usually too large for any one undertaking to take all the risk. The failure in the past decade in the UK has been getting the consortiums together. That was partly exacerbated by the fall in investment appetite and risk appetite after the 2008 banking crisis.

The Green Investment Bank does not put its own money in per se; it puts together the consortium of the banks. It puts up a little money to underwrite some of the risk and show that the risks have been properly looked at, and it brings other people in. That model is growing and has proved successful on a small scale. It would be worth while leaving the model in place until we see at the end of a decade whether it has enabled significant consortiums to be put together for major projects, rather than simply considering the small projects that the Green Investment Bank has been involved in to date. If the Government abandon the GIB now, they have to prove that it will continue under private ownership to address that specific market failure.

When the Minister responded to the urgent question tabled by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), he seemed to suggest that the proof that market failure had now been addressed systemically was that private sector interests were prepared to buy the bank. I challenge that assertion. I know the Minister will not mention Macquarie, but I will. I do not do that to stand by some of the criticisms of Macquarie. I want to address Macquarie’s business model, because it or a company like it may become the owner of the Green Investment Bank.

Macquarie puts together consortiums of investors, but it does that to buy existing infrastructure projects that earn a capital return. In December, it put together a consortium and bought the gas pipeline business of the National Grid. That is understood. It is a very sensible long-term model, and it is very profitable for Macquarie, which might explain why it is known in Australia as the billionaires’ bank—it has made many billionaires. The problem is that buying existing assets is easy, but that is not where the market failure is. The UK capital market is more than able to address that problem. The market failure is in building new asset classes. The Government have admitted in their new industrial strategy that the problem is that we somehow under-invest in infrastructure, despite having a huge capital market in comparison with other countries.

The Treasury Committee is undertaking an investigation and we have uncovered one of the major issues. When an infrastructure project is built, it is not retained in ownership by the people who built it. It is passed on ultimately to the ownership of pension funds and insurance companies. They use it as a long-term investment to pay annuities and long-term pensions. The insurance companies are crying out for regulatory change because they say they are unable—my second question to the Minister is to ask him to look at this—to invest capital in new infrastructure, and the new environmental projects they are desperate to invest in and own, because the regulatory and capital requirements are too onerous. The result is that British insurance companies find it easier to buy into American new infrastructure projects than into British ones. If Donald Trump turns on the spending tap in the United States and spends $1 trillion on investment in new infrastructure in America, inevitably in the present regulated climate, British pension funds and insurance companies will underwrite that investment rather than investing here.

My point for the Minister is that the market failure is still there. Using the sale of the Green Investment Bank to Macquarie or any company like it will simply be using it as a cash cow rather than underwriting risk for a future infrastructure investment. That will not resolve the problem. The Government must prove to Members on both sides of the House that the sale to any company will solve the underlying market failure. The sale to Macquarie, given its business model, will not solve that problem.

One question is whether Macquarie is a fit and proper company to own the Green Investment Bank. The Minister will probably avoid answering that question and will not mention the Macquarie name but, in the most systemic way, can he prove to us that the sale of the Green Investment Bank in such a short period to another owner will resolve the market risk of having a player—the Green Investment Bank—as the referee that brings the consortium together from the rest of the capital market? In the absence of that, the Green Investment Bank must be left in place and we must question why the British capital markets as a whole do not fund infrastructure investment and have not done so successfully for several decades. That is a regulatory issue and the ball is in the Government’s court.

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[Mr Hurd]

May I make a little more progress?

This has been a good, well informed debate. There is clearly disagreement about whether it is right to sell the GIB, and I respect that, but there is clearly common ground—this is worth restating—that the GIB has been a fantastic success story. In fact, exactly that language has been used by Members on both sides of the House. That success has been achieved in very short order by a relatively small group of people who were given a very challenging mandate. That is genuinely impressive. The Government are therefore keen, as I am sure the House is, to place on the record our appreciation of the work of not just the GIB’s senior management team but everyone who works in that organisation. It is particularly important to show our appreciation for the professional approach of the GIB’s staff, because as those who have been in the commercial world know, these kinds of transactions drag on and create uncertainty and anxiety.

The GIB has been a success story. It was set up to accelerate private investment in green infrastructure. It has a fantastic success record of turning every £1 of public money committed into £3 of matched private sector commitments. It has achieved a series of firsts—not least the first ever offshore wind fund, which has now reached final close having raised more than £1 billion of capital, making it the UK’s largest renewable energy fund. There is also agreement that if we do sell the bank—there is disagreement about that—the Government will be responsible for securing best value for taxpayers and getting a deal that we can justify to the public, whose money has been invested in this institution. It is important that Parliament holds the Government firmly to account for that.

I think something has been missed in this debate. There has been a lot of assertion about the motives of any potential preferred bidder or even the motivations of the Government. There has even been the suggestion that this sale represents a sapping of green ambition on the part of the UK Government, but that could not be further from the truth. I meant what I said on the Floor of the House yesterday.

I will come on to the criteria, which we will be very robust in sticking to when it comes to reviewing any proposal before us. However, one of the things that we are looking at most closely when considering a proposal from a preferred bidder is their forward commitment, not only to people—particularly in Edinburgh, which I hope will reassure the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), in whose constituency the HQ of the bank is located—and to an ongoing institution with a clear identity in the future, but, critically, to forward investment. That is because hon. Members are right: we need more funding and we need more private capital coming into our green infrastructure. That is obvious; every country needs that.

Part of our starting premise, which has not been reflected in this debate at all, and part of the motive for privatisation, is to confront the reality that the GIB, however successful it has been, is constrained at the moment by the framework in which it operates. I do not think that people get up in the morning thinking, “Thank God I’m working for an instrument of public policy”—I do not think that is quite how people see things—but they are constrained in what they can do by state aid rules and the number of restrictions that come from being a public sector organisation. We feel that this organisation, when liberated from all that, can do more and we want it to do more. We need to be reassured by any future owner that they share that vision, are committed to it and are prepared to back up that commitment. That will not be just the evaluation of Ministers or officials in Government—

[George Kerevan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hurd]

I will just finish this point. I want to reassure Scottish Members of Parliament, and I have already told the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West this in our meeting, that when it comes to making any final judgment we will be led by the judgment of the chairman—Lord Smith of Kelvin, who is highly respected—and the board about the credibility and integrity of future commitments made by a bidder, and the degree to which they can be bound into contractual arrangements.

[George Kerevan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hurd]

I will just finish. That is a dimension to this transaction that has been completely absent from this debate, which has been bogged down a bit by a lot of assertion and prejudice about the character and values of a preferred bidder.

Industrial Strategy Consultation

George Kerevan Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

In a number of ways, I think. My experience of such businesses is that sometimes what constrains their ability to fulfil growing order books is a lack of skilled staff whom they can employ. The big focus on technical skills, and on improving the standard of technical education by working closely with employers, will make a big difference, especially to small and medium-sized business that cannot operate large training institutes themselves.

[George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)]

How does the Secretary of State reconcile his commitment to innovation and insurgency with the wholesale pillage of the cream of British high-technology firms through foreign takeover, not least the current takeover by Mastercard of VocaLink and the prospective sale by the Government themselves of the Green Investment Bank to Macquarie?

[Greg Clark]

I regard it as a badge of pride that this country is open to overseas investment, from which we have benefited hugely. When I was with my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) in the west midlands on Friday, we met the chief executive of Jaguar Land Rover, which is owned by an Indian company and has been a force for great good in the area. I want to be open to overseas investment.

Green Investment Bank

George Kerevan Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I am forced to repeat myself again. We have set up, in a process agreed through Parliament, a mechanism for protecting the integrity of the green purpose of the organisation. Beyond that, because we are serious about selling the bank as a going concern and want to see positive proposals for growth and future investment, we are evaluating proposals from bidders through that lens. We are, and will continue to be, influenced in that process by the attitudes of the senior management team and what they feel about the proposals.

[George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)]

Last year, Macquarie—to cite a company at random—made its largest ever profit, and it did so, as the markets will tell the Minister, by selling off Moto, Britain’s largest motorway service company, taking the cash out of the company and giving it to shareholders. Will the Minister tell us what in the current safeguards will prevent the future buyer, whoever they may be, from doing what Macquarie has always done: selling assets, taking the money out of the company and using it to pay its shareholders?

[Mr Hurd]

Again, I must repeat myself. The hon. Gentleman has chosen a company at random, but I am not going to talk about any companies. What I have tried to labour is the seriousness of purpose behind this process and the safeguards we have set up, which are protected in law and also by the criteria we have set in evaluating any bids. An important part of that is the forward intention and the intention to mobilise private capital in future.

Industrial Strategy

George Kerevan Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman way?

[Chris White]

I am sorry; I will not give way again.

Clearly, an industrial strategy needs to establish a framework—from how many children are studying STEM subjects at primary school, right through the industrially strategic pipeline to how many businesses are exporting. Where have targets been met, and where is further intervention required? As the strategy becomes more embedded, those things will not come as shocks, but more as minor adjustments to the levers of policy. We used to say quite a lot about the long-term economic plan. We need an economic plan, and underneath any economic plan, we need a strong and robust industrial strategy.

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[Stephen Hammond]

There will be some real opportunities. We will have the chance to re-examine our regulatory regime and competition policy to ensure that the UK is at the forefront of not only oversight, but competition.

If the movement of labour is restricted, there will be an acute skills shortage in this country, so we urgently need to look at ways of curing that. The Government have been at the forefront of one of such initiative, namely specialist academies for major infrastructure projects that allow us to build some of the skills that we have lost, but we need to do more. The Crossrail tunnelling academy is a prime example, and several other major rail projects are establishing academies alongside their projects. We would do well to continue to push that forward.

The recent Institution of Civil Engineers “State of the Nation 2016: Devolution” report recommends the creation of regional pipelines for infrastructure to identify where opportunities exist so that industry and academic institutions can invest in the training required.

In the longer term, there are two things the Government should urgently study and consider. The first is giving 14 to 18-year-olds an understanding of the fact that academic skills are not the only requirement for success in life, and that other things should be set alongside such skills. Why not have a national vocational qualification, alongside GCSEs and A-levels, to attract people into engineering? Equally, it would be perfectly possible for the Government to set up outreach projects that go beyond the theoretical and teach the application of STEM subjects.

Secondly, on finance, I hope the Minister will take the opportunity of our being rid of the state aid rules to consider some of the possibilities open to us. Almost inevitably, sovereign debt is chosen as the way to fund projects, because the weighted average cost of capital is cheaper. However, many countries look at possibilities in the private sector, such as pension funds, venture capital and sovereign wealth funds. The UK still seems to be suspicious of such funding. We should encourage the UK pension industry and other industries to set up direct investment funds. Equally, with the new freedoms they will have, the Government should explore setting up regional infrastructure and industry bonds, or regional equity schemes. This could be the new popular capitalism—the Mayism of the new century, just as popular capitalism was the Thatcherism of the 1980s. That will mean that people can invest in their country and region, and invest in their country’s success.

[George Kerevan]

The Scottish Government have already set up a Scottish investment bank, managed by Scottish Enterprise, which has significantly increased equity investment in small businesses.

[Stephen Hammond]

I am delighted to hear that. I am sure that the Scottish Government will want to take the opportunity of raising a sovereign wealth bond as well.

[George Kerevan]

indicated assent.

[Stephen Hammond]

I see that the hon. Gentleman agrees. My point is that we could now do this regionally, probably by using local enterprise partnerships as a delivery mechanism.

With any infrastructure policy, there is the challenge of what the Government need to do to organise the machinery of government that will support it. The National Infrastructure Commission represents a great strategic advantage to this country. The Minister has already heard me talk about the need to ensure that the IPA delivers on making the Government a smart client. Equally, the Government should look at the machinery in place and then sweat that machinery to ensure industrial success. Many of the LEPs can play a role in helping with regional skills and financing.

Finally, many incubators have already been set up in universities, which is fabulous. My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) mentioned the one in his constituency, and there are others around the country, such as the agri-corridor in East Anglia, and particularly those in Cambridge, Leeds and Manchester, and across the north. However, we now want accelerators, which are for the next stage up. Businesses that have been in an incubator and have received some support are sometimes left to drift, and that is where universities can play a big role by bringing forward accelerators to help those businesses to reach the next phase of growth. We have talked a lot about picking winners, and if I had not spoken for longer than my eight minutes, I would have said much more about that. The Government need to ensure that universities focus those accelerators on our areas of comparative advantage. I know that the Minister—wearing not only the business hat he has on this afternoon, but his universities hat—will make that point to them. I am grateful for the opportunity to have spoken in the debate.

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[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

It is with considerable trepidation that I rise to speak in a debate led by my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White). The last time I did so, I think I persuaded the Government to accept only the first clause of his three-clause social value Bill, but he kindly asked me to serve on the Bill Committee, by which time the civil service had vastly expanded it into something of a Christmas tree Bill. I very much hope that on this occasion there will be a different outcome, but it was of course a great pleasure to serve on that Committee.

Competition on the merits is a perfectly reasonable industrial strategy for the Government to adopt. It is the one that creates the most wealth and it has been proven to lift people out of poverty. I encourage any Member and anyone listening to have a look at the website HumanProgress.org and its Twitter feed for bite-sized snippets that illustrate just how well entrepreneurship, strong property rights and freedom to contract in a market economy not only facilitate production but engage other social forces that are healthy. It is social co-operation through the mechanism of competition in the market. Other mechanisms have always brought about poverty and misery. The goal of the Government’s domestic policy should be to lower anti-competitive market distortions, and it is on that concept that I wish to focus my remarks.

Anti-competitive market distortions adversely affect economies and contribute to high costs. If we reduce distortions in both the UK and the world we could, according to the Legatum Institute’s productivity simulator, see a significant increase in productivity and public welfare. One of the great problems with domestic suggestions is that they increase the level of ACMDs, which can lead to higher costs and push more people into poverty.

I would like to offer a taxonomy of ACMDs from a paper in the competition law journal, Concurrences— No. 4 of 2014—entitled, “The effect of anticompetitive market distortions (ACMDs) on global markets” by Singham et al. The authors classify those distortions into six areas, and I offer them not as a menu from which interventionists might pluck their preferred action, but as a description of areas in which Governments take policy choices that push people into poverty by prejudicing competition.

The first and most obvious is the type 1 distortion, described as

“government laws, regulations or practices that eliminate competition completely. Examples might include a local content regulation that eliminates foreign production from competition, or a capital adequacy regulation set so high that some banks are forced to exit the market.”

That produces monopoly or oligopoly.

Type 2 distortions are

“government laws, regulations or practices that lessen competition. These are laws, regulations or practices that make markets less competitive, but do not necessarily foreclose competitors from the market entirely.”

Those distortions

“elevate the costs of certain companies.”

[George Kerevan]

I thank my colleague on the Treasury Committee for giving way. Does he accept that there is a middle way whereby Government can encourage competition, as we have seen with the superb Catapult centres, which are an example of an industrial strategy that works? By offering prizes for competitive solutions to technical problems, it is possible to create the ecology that the hon. Gentleman seeks.

[Mr Baker]

Well of course, the great prize in a free market should be a profit, which one is allowed to keep and invest in further production. I do not wish to bore the hon. Gentleman or the House, but by the time I get to point 5, he will see that I will turn to competition authorities.

I was saying that type 2 distortions that lessen competition create dead-weight costs in the economy. Examples would include distribution laws that increase costs for certain suppliers. Types 2a and 2b can be split up—[Interruption]—but I shall not go through them all. The hon. Gentleman has generously indicated that reading from this fascinating paper is perhaps not the most engaging speech for him, so I shall cut some of it down.

Type 3 distortions

“apply different rules to different firms”.

One would have thought that in a society governed by the rule of law, no one would stoop so low, yet they do. Other countries around the world—particularly, I am afraid, India and the Philippines—have such regulations.

Type 4 distortions

“are largely caused by state-owned enterprises”,

which include “government privileges in licensing” and distortions relating to the pricing practices of state-owned enterprises and to “abuse of regulatory process”; while type 5 are

“largely due to action or inaction by competition agencies”.

I will happily share with the hon. Gentleman some of the detail on how competition authorities, either by acts of omission or commission, fail properly to promote competition.

Type 6 distortions are

“caused by anticompetitive state aid or support”

whereby firms are given

“subsidies and other subventions that may or may not be anticompetitive”.

The point is that it is now well known in academic literature that various categories of Government interventions make us poorer. They can be subjected to a taxonomy, and their costs can be estimated—[Interruption.] I apologise if the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) does not like me using a particular word.

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[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I declare an interest in that I have worked for a competition regulator, Ofcom. The hon. Gentleman is suggesting that a lack of competition is always the fault of the Government, either by doing or not doing something. Does he not recognise that it is possible—indeed, it is what the literature shows—that companies acting in monopolistic ways or capturing markets are themselves responsible for a lack of competition?

[George Kerevan]

He’s read his Adam Smith.

[Mr Baker]

I have; I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, my colleague on the Treasury Committee, for saying that. I absolutely have, but perhaps not the same extent that he has. I certainly cannot quote the passage that I know he has in mind.

I say to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central that I certainly did not suggest that a lack of competition is due only to the Government. I think she has applied her own ideas about what I stand for in order to come to that conclusion. I shall certainly read Hansard very closely tomorrow to see whether I suggested that. What I am suggesting is that in a taxonomy of six different categories of anti-competitive market distortion set out in a serious journal of competition law, two sub-categories of one category relate to mistakes that can provably be seen to be made by competition authorities. They are not perfect; no human institution is perfect, including competition authorities.

We are undergoing a process of becoming more open to trade, as indeed we should—seeking comparative advantage, seeking to supply new markets, and seeking to buy from new markets in order to drive down prices. However, the experience of trade negotiators whom I have consulted is that if we go and talk to nations in which the largest segment of the economy is agriculture, we find that we cannot do a deal with them if we take agriculture off the table. Why? Because of the extent to which we subsidise it. We must ensure that agriculture is well looked after, within the expectations that the Government have set; we must ensure we can continue to supply food. What we must not do, though, is try to negotiate with other nations if we ourselves are substantially distorting our own domestic markets in such a way that they cannot hope to compete with us.

I want to impress on the Government—there is substantial literature about this issue—that it is conceivable that both domestic and global productivity could be radically improved for the long term by means of a productivity and consumer welfare Act, which would entrench the very best of competition policy in British law in order to eliminate anti-competitive market distortion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

At the autumn statement this year.

Let me give Members a broad overview of the context in which we are developing the industrial strategy and a flavour for some of the principles guiding us as we do so. First, however, I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) and the hon. Members for Hove (Peter Kyle), for Edinburgh West (Michelle Thomson)—who is no longer in her place—and for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) for securing the debate and making such powerful contributions.

The UK economy has delivered a huge amount of growth and employment over recent years. Unemployment has been reduced from 8% in 2010 to 5% now, while full-time employment has climbed from 70% to 74% over the same period—a faster rate of employment growth than France, Germany or the USA. But, as the Prime Minster has made clear, our economy is not working perfectly. Gains are not always shared across the country and too many people are losing out. We want to deliver an economy that works for everyone.

[George Kerevan]

Will the Minister add to that catalogue of statistics that exports have flatlined for the past five years?

[Joseph Johnson]

Our export performance is one of the features of our economy that we are seeking to improve through our industrial strategy, and I am looking forward to explaining a bit more about how we will do that.

The UK has the second lowest productivity in the G7, a fifth below the G7 average, and closing just half that gap would add £250 billion to the economy by 2025. A proper industrial strategy can play a key role in that, by delivering real benefits to the work and lives of businesses, consumers and employees.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

Our research base is globally competitive, and organisations and scientists from around the world are keen to collaborate with institutions in this country. Collaborations between institutions in the UK and others around the world have some of the highest impacts of any science undertaken anywhere. We are desirable partners for collaboration, and I have every expectation that, with the support of the Government, we will continue to be a globally competitive science power in the years to come.

We are competitive in science, but we are also at the cutting edge of industry—for example, in advanced manufacturing. In the UK, almost 1.6 million cars were produced in 2015, up 4% on 2014 and up by nearly 60% since 2009. The hon. Member for Hartlepool asked why the Government did not procure cars for its fleet solely from Nissan in Sunderland. I must point out to him that we make fantastic cars all over the country. I believe that the Prime Minister drives a Jaguar XJ that was built in Castle Bromwich in the west midlands. So there is no need to buy cars from only one place in the United Kingdom. Globally competitive cars are made in a vast number of locations in the UK.

[George Kerevan]

Surely, the Minister is aware that we have a net deficit in trade in automotive products. We assemble car parts that are brought in from the rest of the world.

[Joseph Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman might recall that there was a point during the last Parliament—I think, in 2013—when this country became a net exporter of cars for the first time since 1975, when the then Labour Government nationalised British Leyland. It is the automotive policies of this Government and our predecessor coalition Government that have taken the car industry to the heights that it currently enjoys and that have not been seen since the early 1970s.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)]

I am glad to be tail-end Charlie. Fortunately for someone in this situation, my book on industrial policy is published next month, so I may save time and send it to the Minister.

The challenge is: is there is an industrial policy? I accept that there is no generic policy—the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) is correct—but there is industrial strategy in the here and now. Its definition is what the state does to help to provide competitive advantage to the companies in that state. If the state does not do that, other states will help theirs, which will wipe out those companies. I remind the hon. Gentleman that that is why the UK’s exports have flatlined for the past five years.

I put that point to the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday, and he spoke about international conditions and lack of demand. Yet Germany’s total industrial exports have risen by a third in the past five years, helped by the German Government. They tax industry more than it is taxed in this country, but they pour the money back into industrial support. In the United States, generations of productivity growth have been funded by investment in its defence industries, which flows through into the private sector. The point about the state picking winners is that there is a partnership in which the state backs up its industries, and particularly its companies. The state gets out of the way where it needs to, but there has to be such a partnership.

I do not have a lot of time, so I will do something really strange, which is to support something that has been a Government policy for the past five years. I was originally very cynical about it, but the more I have researched it and talked to people in the industry, the more I think it has been very successful, although it may have been stumbled on by accident. That is the policy of having Catapult centres. Public money is put into centres for technology that small companies cannot buy on their own, so that such companies can use it, which helps to provide a competitive advantage. Catapult centres provide competitive grants and challenge companies to come up with solutions to problems, and that works. Catapult centres are the solution. They are not about picking winners, but about creating a competitive environment and providing resources. If we do not do that, other countries will.

To give a very simple example, there is a close correlation between exports as a percentage of GDP and how much is spent on research and development—not blue-skies R and D in universities, but industrial R and D. In countries that have a higher share of exports in their GDP, industrial R and D is orders of magnitude higher than the amount we spend, because their Governments and their military put money into it. The hon. Member for Havant (Mr Mak) made a very good point about the role of the military.

I found a statistic that my good friend the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) might like, as an ex-RAF officer. At the moment, the RAF has 475 aircraft that were built in Britain. For the first time, the majority of its aircraft have been bought from abroad—507 of them. I should say that I tried to bump up the number of British-built planes by including the Spitfires in the Battle of Britain memorial flight. If we buy from Boeing and Lockheed, and let those companies use their technology, we cannot survive. We have to use the weight of the state behind our companies. That is what industrial policy is about.

My final point is that the budget for the Catapult centres is about £600 million a year. That sounds a lot, but if we look at a comparable organisation in Finland, we find that its budget is about 75% of that. The UK spend is peanuts. We should treble that amount. Will some of that money be wasted? Yes, but some will produce the ideas and new technology that we need.

Hinkley Point C

George Kerevan Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I will indeed. In the past 24 hours, EDF has made a commitment to me that 64% by value of the content will be spent with UK companies. That shows the tangible benefits to the whole economy of this programme.

[George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)]

The Minister has said that the Hinkley decision will not burden the national balance sheet. Can he clarify the status of the offer made by the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer to give EDF a Treasury guarantee of £2 billion to supplement the company’s liquidity? The National Audit Office has said that that offer puts the taxpayer at risk.

[Greg Clark]

I am delighted to answer that question. In fact, EDF has confirmed to me that it will not be taking up that £2 billion guarantee, so the taxpayer is fully insulated from the costs of construction.