Ian C. Lucas
Main Page: Ian C. Lucas (Labour - Wrexham)UK Software Industry
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Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once more, Mr Weir, and to have listened to the various hon. Members who have contributed to our debate about an extremely important industry for the United Kingdom. The ICT industry has developed hugely over recent years. I remember that when I was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed candidate in 1997—I was one of the few Labour candidates to lose—we talked about giving computer internet access, as we then called it, to schools. Now, 13 years later, much of that optimism and much of the commitment made by the previous Government to putting schools online and introducing computers into schools has been realised. We easily forget the scale of the change that has taken place in our schools as a result of investment over the past 13 years.
There is no doubt that when the Labour party left office, the British software industry was strong on the national stage with 1.2 million people working in it to service the 22 million people throughout the UK who access IT and use computers every day in their work. We must try to ensure the continuation of our competitive advantage and knowledge base that has enabled the success of the international UK computer industry.
Today, thousands of students are marching in London in response to the Government’s proposals for university tuition fees. That is relevant to today’s debate, because over the past 13 years, there has been major investment in higher education and an increase in the number of students going to university. If one industry is knowledge-based, it is the IT and software industry. Those students who went to university and were attracted by all the games—of which hon. Members know much, and I know very little—have grown our IT industry. Many imaginative and successful small companies in the UK have come out of universities. My fear is that as we go forward, given that it is proposed that student tuition fees will rise to £9,000 a year, many people similar to those who went to university over the past 13 years will be discouraged from attending university and therefore from going into an educational, innovative atmosphere that could lead them into that innovative industry.
Dr Pugh
The hon. Gentleman will recall that he voted for tuition fees in the last Parliament and I did not. I say nothing about the current policy, but at the time I said that the introduction of tuition fees and top-up fees would reduce the number of people applying to university. As a matter of empirical detail, I turned out to be wrong. There is an outside chance that, regardless of the merits of this policy, the hon. Gentleman could also turn out to be wrong, as I was.
Ian Lucas
The hon. Gentleman is wrong to state that I voted in favour of tuition fees—I did not. I have always opposed tuition fees. There is a difference in kind between the tuition fees introduced through legislation in 2003-04 and the present position. The fees introduced in 2003-04 were supported by a generous bursary scheme that the Government put in place, which was the main reason why the proposals went through. We now have a situation in which fees of £9,000 a year are being proposed. Before the introduction of those fees, when Parliament will be asked to increase the cap to £9,000, we will not have any discussion about the bursaries that will be put in place. The White Paper on higher education—one of the most important subjects for our nation—will not be produced until after we have voted on the cap, and that is a matter of profound concern. I have always shown a great interest in this issue and, for the benefit of the hon. Member for Southport (Dr Pugh), I can say that it is one of two occasions when I voted against the Labour Government. The matter goes to the heart of whether the UK software industry succeeds in the future.
Of all the countries that compete with us, we are alone in cutting back on investment in higher education. Teaching grants for most of the subjects that will lead to people studying IT at university will be removed. That cannot make us more competitive as a nation, because it will make our students less knowledgeable. It is therefore necessary that we say that the removal of those teaching grants will have profound effects.
In its 2008 “Developing the Future” report, Microsoft stressed explicitly the importance of industry placements for students. When talking about the lower level of tuition fees, it stated:
“The introduction of tuition fees may have created a deterrent to students considering taking up a placement as they are likely to be more anxious to finish their studies as soon as possible in order to repay their loans and avoid further debt.”
How much greater will that deterrent be as tuition fees are set to triple?
That is not the only area of uncertainty created by the present Government. Labour made a clear commitment to universal broadband by 2012, but it has been scrapped by the Tory-Lib Dem Government. That will create a competitive disadvantage for many companies away from the south-east of England and centres of population in general. It will inhibit the development of innovative small businesses, which are so evident in the software industry. Even more serious is the uncertainty about the expansion of high-speed broadband services, which are key to the development of software companies. We all know that the £530 million docked from the licence fee will be insufficient to pay for universal high-speed broadband across the UK. Will the Minister please tell us where the Government believe the money for that will come from?
The Government have set their face against support for the video games industry by scrapping Labour’s games tax relief. We heard today that we need a clearer explanation of why the Government believe that that step—it contradicts the Conservatives’ pre-election stance, although we have come to expect that from the present Government—should be taken. My hon. Friend the Member for Dundee West (Jim McGovern) has been doggedly pursuing the matter for as long as I can remember, but he is still to receive straight answers to the straight questions that he has been putting. Why is an industry that we know is successful and that is in a very competitive environment not receiving the support from the Government that the Conservatives stated before the election that they would provide?
Justin Tomlinson
Will the hon. Gentleman clarify whether it is still Opposition policy to support those tax incentives? If so, how would they be funded and where would that funding come from?
Ian Lucas
Let me give the hon. Gentleman one example of what the Government whom he supports have chosen to do. They have chosen to reduce corporation tax rates year by year, and they are paying for that by taking away tax incentives for industry to make capital investment. The Labour party believes that that approach is wrong, because lower corporation tax has a huge effect on banks’ income, and the approach detrimentally affects investment and manufacturing in this country. We want to support investment and manufacturing in this country, so we favour tax incentives and relief for investment made by business. That is the line that we are taking. We took it in government, and we believe that it is correct.
Luciana Berger
Is my hon. Friend aware that the Red Book cites the amount involved in not introducing the video games tax relief as £200 million, but that that does not take into account the net benefit of introducing a video games tax relief, which conservative estimates have put at an additional £200 million?
Ian Lucas
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. That sounds like a good deal to me, so perhaps such an approach that should be followed. We have a successful industry. We should be encouraging it to prosper, not taking away its advantages.
Last week, the Prime Minister made a speech about information technology. Interestingly, he chose to make it in east London. I note that this debate was secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson). We want innovative companies throughout the UK—in England, including the north-east of England, in Scotland, in Wales and in Northern Ireland.
My hon. Friend made the excellent point that the north-east had one of the best regional development agencies in the country in One North East. She talked about Sunderland, its Software City and its computer city-approach. We all know about the success of the investment levered into the UK from Nissan by One North East, working with Her Majesty’s Government. That £400 million of investment came at a cost of £20 million. That is the type of work that has been going on in the north-east to bring innovative new companies and investors from abroad to the UK. Unfortunately, One North East has gone and, as we speak, Sunderland does not have a local enterprise partnership.
We heard the Prime Minister talk last week about a fund of £200 million for new technology and innovation centres, so I would like some information from the Minister about the money. Is that sum separate from the regional growth fund? If so, who will administer it and how does one access it? If part of the country, such as Sunderland, does not have a local enterprise partnership, how will it access finance from the fund? Is the fund intended to be solely for the benefit of east London or is it a national fund? [Interruption.] The Minister chuckles, but it tells us something that the Prime Minister shuttles across to the east of London to make such an announcement instead of going, for example, to the north-east of England, which has many great industrial stories to tell.
I would also like to pick up the point that the hon. Member for Southport made about Microsoft having a close relationship with the previous Prime Minister—or was it the Prime Minister before? There was evidence in last week’s announcements of another close relationship between a Prime Minister and a major multinational software company—Google. Strangely, however, the hon. Gentleman did not refer to that. In particular, there was an announcement of a review of the intellectual property system, which the Prime Minister himself said frustrated Google in this country. It is interesting that on the very day the Prime Minister announced that there would be a review of intellectual property rights in the UK, Google announced that it would be taking part in the east London high-tech city project.
Ian Lucas
We do indeed, but the hon. Gentleman raised the issue initially—specifically in connection with the Labour party and Labour Prime Ministers. I thought it only fair to illuminate the debate by highlighting the announcements that were made only last week.
When examining issues such as intellectual property, which is extremely important and does need to be examined, we need to be conscious of not only freedom of expression and access to information, which are of course vital and needed to make our nation competitive, but the rights of those who create original material, who are often the small people in all this and do not have access to Prime Ministers, and sometimes have difficulty gaining access to MPs. Their rights concerning their intellectual property need to be retained. I shall therefore be watching the review with great interest. It is important that there is broad input into the review and I encourage anyone who has interest in this area to contribute. We are at a positive stage for the UK software industry. We have great talent, great innovation and great originality. My contention is that much of that arises from the positive intellectual atmosphere that has been fostered generally in the UK, and specifically in our universities. I am worried that that atmosphere might disappear because of the environment in which we operate.
Jim McGovern
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way; I went to my usual seat in the Chamber over here, so I seem to have split from the Opposition.
On the subject of access to MPs, prior to the previous Labour Government’s March Budget statement, numerous Ministers—the Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Scotland, and Ministers from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport—visited Abertay university. They saw for themselves just how important the industry was to Dundee and, on the back of that, the Chancellor announced a tax break for computer games. However, since the general election, there has been not one visit to Dundee.
Jim McGovern
Prior to the withdrawal of tax breaks for the computer games industry, not one Minister visited Dundee. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) agree that that was unfair, at the very least?
Ian Lucas
We all benefit from close contact with not only our constituents but, for example, universities. I am delighted that the Minister will be visiting the university in Aberdeen—[Interruption.] Dundee; I am corrected. I am sure that he, like all of us, would benefit from such a visit. It is important that we understand how different universities are from when some of us attended university.
As I mentioned, another area about which I have particular concern is high-speed broadband. I speak as a Member of Parliament for Wrexham and for Wales, and I am worried that uncertainty around the proposals for developing high-speed broadband, and indeed universal broadband before that, is leading to an atmosphere in which businesses away from the south-east of England will suffer a competitive disadvantage. In an area such as software, that will be crucially important.
Justin Tomlinson
Will the hon. Gentleman clarify what speed he would classify as high-speed broadband?
Ian Lucas
Speeds of 10 megabits-plus are commonly perceived as high speed, although figures of up to 50 megabits are valued in some areas of the computer industry. Those are the sorts of speed that I would like to see. The problem is that there are many parts of the country—rural areas, which are not normally represented by Labour MPs—that do not as yet have even 2 megabits. Under this Government, there is no commitment to ensure that individuals from these areas will receive such support for broadband services in the future.
YouView will be introduced into this environment next year and demand for broadband services will increase as a result. This important area is at present below the radar—if I may mix all my metaphors and technological expressions—but it will become more evident in the next year or so because of the expansion of such services. If we are to maintain a broad-based industry across the country, it is important that we focus hard on this and also that we get some detail and certainty about how the investment will be delivered right across the United Kingdom.
Mr Vaizey
The hon. Gentleman indicates that he is simply acting as a buffer between Conservative and Liberal Democrat members of the coalition. I wonder what other conflict spots we could send him to, given that he is doing such an excellent job this morning.
I have mentioned the huge importance and success of the software industry in Sunderland. The hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) talked of the success of the UK software industry, and I heartily endorse what he said. More than 500,000 people work in it, and there are more than 100,000 enterprises, generating more than £39 billion of gross value added. The UK market for software products and services is the largest in the European Union and has sophisticated leading-edge consumers in sectors such as logistics and financial services. As a result, almost all the world’s major software businesses have a substantial presence in this country, whether in research and development, logistics or sales and marketing.
The software industry is not immune to the pressures being felt across the UK economy. In the longer term, globalisation will create additional pressures, as routine tasks and activities continue to be relocated to lower-cost economies. However, there are also tremendous opportunities for the sector, and I am certainly from the school that sees the glass as half full, rather than half empty. Innovative software technologies will underpin many of the fundamental shifts that we see in our society and our economy—everything from how we shop and access entertainment such as television and video to how we improve our transport networks and manage our scarce natural resources. In all those areas, new software systems will be the key enabler and driver of growth and innovation. As a result, the sector’s importance extends far beyond its direct contribution to UK GDP and employment, vital though that is. The sector will be in the vanguard of our broader economic renewal.
The coalition Government are absolutely committed to creating the right conditions to allow software and other UK technology companies to flourish. That means responding to the sector’s distinct requirements to ensure that the software businesses of tomorrow are nurtured today. Last week, the Prime Minister launched “Blueprint for Technology”, which clearly stated the Government’s ambition to make the UK the No. 1 place in the world to start and invest in a technology company, as well as our ambition to be the most technology-friendly Government in the world.
The hon. Member for Wrexham took huge exception to the fact that the blueprint was launched in Shoreditch, not Sunderland, and I assure him that I will be writing to the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) to tell her that one of her party’s spokesmen deems her constituency unworthy of the prime ministerial launch of a technology blueprint. The hon. Gentleman gave no reason, but if he wants to clarify why he has a downer on Shoreditch, he has only to intervene.
Ian Lucas
I would be delighted to intervene. I made it absolutely clear to the Minister, who clearly was not listening to my speech, that a commitment to the regions, which is so important to the future of the software industry across the UK, is lacking. I am sorry that Her Majesty’s Government, and particularly the Prime Minister, have not, for example, put in place a local enterprise partnership in Sunderland, which is an extremely important industrial city in the north-east, where one of the world’s most important automotive companies is based. I was illustrating the fact that the Prime Minister’s priorities appear to be focused on the south-east, which is where he launched the blueprint.
Mr Vaizey
The hon. Gentleman might as well say that the fact that we are having this debate in Westminster indicates that the Opposition’s priorities are focused on the south-east, rather than on Sunderland. It is slightly crass to rubbish the technology blueprint on the basis of where it was launched. It was launched in a Labour constituency, and the Government were absolutely adamant that it would be, to show our support for the Opposition.
As for the LEP, the hon. Gentleman well knows that individual local authorities and areas were invited to bid for an LEP. Sunderland’s bid did not get through the first phase, and it is now part of a wider bid for the Tees valley. I am certain that it will be constructively listened to and will progress. The idea that the north-east is somehow not getting LEPs is another complete myth; indeed, the hon. Gentleman’s speech was full of myths, to which I will return from time to time in my remarks.
For example, if the hon. Gentleman wishes to intervene again, perhaps he could elaborate on his remark that Google was rewarded for coming on board the east London project—along, I have to say, with important British companies such as Vodafone and BT—with a review of intellectual property. Is it his allegation that there is some corrupt deal between Google and the Government? If it is, he is free to intervene to make that point. I notice that he is not going to.
Software companies have said that their top priority is the ability to access the right skills in the right place at the right time. Those skills range from specialist capabilities in science and engineering through to practical know-how in systems maintenance. The relevant sector skills councils, including e-skills UK—the sector skills council for business and information technology—are working closely with software employers and the Government. The aim is to bring together the education system and workplace training to create the pool of skilled workers needed to generate and exploit innovative technologies. It is important to note that the Government announced early in their time in office the Livingstone-Hope review of skills for the video games industry, which is progressing extremely well and has generated enormous support from the sector. It will no doubt complement the other review that I mentioned.
The Government recognise that the software and technology sectors are globalised and highly mobile. We will therefore ensure that investors and entrepreneurs who want to operate in the UK can enter, while we are reducing the overall level of immigration to a manageable level. That is why the technology blueprint introduces a new entrepreneur visa to make sure that someone with a great business idea who receives serious investment from a leading investor can base their business in the UK.
Mr Vaizey
The hon. Gentleman shakes his head. We all know the Labour party’s record on talking about immigration, and we have been only too interested to see the leaflets that it was putting out during the election. Our policy takes a slightly more sober and reasonable approach to what can sometimes be an emotive issue.
Mr Vaizey
As to promises, the hon. Gentleman’s party said in, I think, the 2001 election manifesto, that they would not introduce tuition fees. So if the hon. Gentleman wants to accuse me of broken promises, perhaps he should look to his own party’s huge record of broken promises, not the least of which is leaving the British people with the biggest deficit in peacetime history, having promised to end boom and bust.
As I said, the telephone tax would have been a huge disincentive to investment. It would have hit small businesses and the poor—all for the paltry ambition of 2 megabits universal broadband.
Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)
It seems to me that that is a matter for debate, not for the Chair.
Ian Lucas
I want to correct the Minister simply on a point of fact. The change to 2-megabit broadband was to be funded out of the money that he is using from the BBC licence fee—money that was left over from the digital switchover. The telephone tax was for the development of high-speed broadband. That was the position, and if the Minister wishes to, he can read about it in “Digital Britain”.
Mr Vaizey
I have read that report, and I am happy to stand corrected. We are in a similar position, except for the fact that the Government are not imposing a tax; we plan to get superfast broadband to as many people as possible by 2015, while the Labour party remains stuck in the slow lane at 2 megabits.
I now tackle the thorny issue of video games and tax breaks. Again, I shall try to knock down a few of the myths that have been propagated. To hear Labour Members speak, one would have thought that the land of milk and honey had arrived with the last Labour Government. When I was Opposition spokesman, I sometimes felt like a lone voice when talking about the success of the video games industry over the last three or four years. However, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), who has been a fantastic advocate of the video games industry.
I remember that the Labour Government ruled out a video games tax break. When in opposition, we mentioned competition from Canada, and were told that the Government were going to refer the matter to the World Trade Organisation. However, a chance conversation with an insider revealed that that was a red herring. When I tabled a parliamentary question about it, the Government were forced to perform a U-turn and reveal that the reference to the WTO was an excuse for inaction. Finally, they were converted to a video games tax break.
At what point did that amazing conversion come? Was it at the beginning of a Parliament, when the Government had a strong majority and a lot of energy? No; it came with the last Budget of a discredited Government who were about to lose an election. They knew that they would not have to implement that tax break—and it was not implemented. It was an extraordinary U-turn; despite the comprehensive spending review of October the year before, that decision would still have had to go to Brussels for approval. The sound of Labour MPs clambering on to bandwagons now that they have no public policy responsibility for the matter is quite extraordinary.