European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a great honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), and I agree with absolutely everything he said.

Before Christmas I spoke in the debate on this motion and in the debate on no deal, and I outlined my position in favour of the agreement, so I will concentrate on two aspects relating to today’s subject: exports and the finance of our business more generally.

The Secretary of State outlined clearly the success of British exporting over the past few years, with exports up by 38.1% since 2010, to £630 billion in the year to November 2018. This is happening when we are within the EU; I do not see that the EU has shackled us in our export performance in the past few years. I fully accept that there are areas where we could do still better, but we need to build on what has been achieved under the coalition Government and the most recent Conservative-led Governments, because it has clearly been successful. We need more emphasis on supporting SMEs into exports and on promoting our trade links and our trade network. I declare an interest, as one of the Prime Minister’s trade envoys. We need to see a greater emphasis on the already increased amount of UK export finance, and we need to see that going to the smallest possible businesses. I ask the Chancellor and the Secretary of State to ensure that as we leave the EU we redouble our efforts on exports. Of course our businesses, particularly SMEs, will face challenges as we move into the new situation under the Prime Minister’s deal, but with that support they can do very well.

The second point I wish to make is about the financing of our businesses more generally. We often hear of the great amount of inward investment we have in the UK, and that is to be welcomed, but one reason why we have so much inward investment is that we do not invest in our own businesses. The City of London is not as good as it could be in providing capital to British-based businesses so we do not see the kind of businesses that we see in Germany with the Mittelstand or in Italy with its equivalent—I do not know its name—where family businesses have turnovers of billions of pounds, euros, dollars, because they get the finance from their capital markets. We have pretty much the biggest capital markets in the world, but, with a lot of noble exceptions, they do not support British-owned businesses as much as they could. So as we leave the EU, I want to see this from our capital markets and the British Business Bank. It has been excellent in the work it has done but it could do five times more than it does, perhaps along the lines of the German Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau and other development banks. I want to see British institutions support British-owned businesses.

Along with that, we have to be absolutely sure that we invest in innovation and research, which is where the role of our universities is so vital. I declare an interest, as a trustee of one of our universities. It is vital that universities are supported in whatever way possible. If they are going to lose some research funding, that needs to be replaced—and more.