Oral Answers to Questions

Henry Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I agree wholeheartedly with the right hon. Gentleman on a number of points. First, we need to ensure that urgent action is taken to restore the transport links and that is why I will chair Cobra this afternoon, bringing together the problems of the power reductions, the floods and the effect on transport. Secondly, we must ensure that we go on investing in rail schemes and this Government are putting record amounts into such rail schemes. The third point, on which I totally agree with him, is that we need to continue the analysis of the resilience of our infrastructure that is now carried out by the Cabinet Office. Where extra investment and protections are needed, they must be put in place.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Q9. The Prime Minister recently visited Vent-Axia in my constituency, a company that has brought manufacturing jobs back to this country from China. What are the Government doing to encourage more reshoring of jobs to the UK as part of our long-term economic plan?

[The Prime Minister]

It was a huge pleasure to go to Crawley with my hon. Friend and see that company, which makes ventilation equipment, bringing jobs from China back to the UK. That is a small trend at the moment, as 1,500 jobs in manufacturing have been reshored since 2011. If we manage to ensure that our energy market is competitive, if we keep our labour markets flexible and competitive and if we make this a friendly country for business with low tax rates, including low corporate tax rates, there is no reason why we should not see more companies coming back to Britain. We will not get that with an anti-enterprise, anti-business, anti-growth Labour party.