Education (Careers Guidance in Schools) Bill

Debate between Jim Shannon and Craig Williams

2nd reading
Friday 10th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon]

I certainly do. To be fair, the hon. Member for Workington said that in setting the scene, which is why I am very happy to support the thrust of his contribution.

In Northern Ireland, we have seen a growth in business and financial services, with excellent wages and opportunities for advancement. Although our wage structure in Northern Ireland is not as high as on the mainland, we can already see opportunities for better wages. It is essential that we future-proof and engage our young people to ensure that they can take the opportunities that exist across Northern Ireland.

As I said, that is a devolved matter. I am not convinced that we have fully grasped this approach in Northern Ireland in relation to engineering; it seems that we must not have if there are as many as 800 job opportunities available and people have not taken them up.

[Craig Williams]

It has been a parliamentary ambition of mine to intervene on the hon. Gentleman, so I am happy to fulfil that today. He is making a powerful point about the devolved nature of this matter. Does he share my view that we must push to get measures such as the Baker clause and the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mark Jenkinson) into the devolved nations, and will he implore them to look at today’s debate and put something together in a devolved fashion?

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I send all my contributions in this House on to the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland. I hope that the relevant Minister reads them. I cannot be sure, but in this case I think she will, because she happens to be a colleague of mine; she is not only a political colleague, but she is elected to the same constituency, Strangford, as an MLA. For me, it is critical to ensure that what is happening here today can be replicated in Northern Ireland. I have already taken up directly with the relevant Minister the issue of the engineering dearth and the importance of filling that gap, but I will follow this through again today.

It is important that we forge a way forward that can deliver the career opportunities that the hon. Member for Workington referred to. It is my belief that the meeting of all these things should be facilitated by a direct Government strategy to bring them together. I know that the hon. Gentleman hopes to get that response from the Minister, and I am quite sure that he will. I know the way the Minister responds to these issues, and the hon. Gentleman will certainly get a good response on investing in our greatest and most important resources—our youth and their ability.

Information and communications technology is concerned with software development, databases and so on. Many questions and strategies are based on a database; no matter what field it is—whether it is health or education—we need the database. I therefore believe that ICT is another career opportunity for young students and pupils.

Let me conclude by congratulating the hon. Member for Workington on bringing forward the Bill and thanking all those who have had a chance to intervene. We look forward to a positive response from the Minister for the hon. Gentleman. I congratulate him on having his Bill before the House in a very short time. I hope that I will be as successful with my Bill later on.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Jim Shannon and Craig Williams

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon]

I thank my hon. Friend. That is exactly what I am saying and exactly the point that we are trying to put forward today. It is about east-west trade and west-east trade. It is about how this affects our agrifood sectors. It is about how our businesses can continue to operate and not be restrained in any way.

The hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) referred to the fishing sector, which is very important for me in my constituency. At one time, Portavogie had 120 boats in its harbour, but owing to EU regulations and all the bureaucracy that came in, that number is now down to approximately 60. We hope that through this our fishing sector can grow, and we are quite convinced that that will happen.

Our amendment, which is not for debate today, reflects the point that my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) made. It states:

“In making these regulations, the Secretary of State must have special regard to the need to maintain the integral place of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom internal market.”

It also requires that we must

“have regard to safeguarding unfettered access of NI businesses to the UK Internal Market.”

That is the very point that he refers to and that our party has consistently uttered in this Chamber—that we want to have the same rights as everyone else.

I have yet to hear a single convincing argument that tells me that Northern Ireland does not deserve the same recognition. I think we all know that, and hopefully it will be delivered whenever this Bill is finally concluded. I have yet to see one single statement that points me to the holy grail of the Belfast agreement that is being waved about as a reason we cannot have our place in the United Kingdom. There is no clause in the Belfast agreement that precludes us from maintaining our place in the UK outside of Europe. We believe that our position on this Bill today will be one that all of us, on all sides of political opinion, can support.

Again, we hark back to the legal opinion. It is important in this debate to have a legal opinion that is balanced. Martin Howe QC has unequivocally stated that

“there are good arguments that the government’s clauses will not breach international law. First, there is a general principle of international law that treaty powers should be exercised in good faith, and an EU blockage of reasonable ‘goods at risk’”

between GB and Northern Ireland

“could be classed as a bad faith exercise of treaty powers…Secondly…the alteration of the constitutional status of NI (which across the board tariffs on GB to NI exports would entail) would breach the core principle of the Good Friday Agreement...International law does not justify a later treaty to which these community representatives are not parties being used to over-ride the rights they enjoy under the earlier treaty”.

That legal opinion is very pertinent to this debate and to the importance of where we stand. It also states that

“section 38 of the Withdrawal Agreement Act preserves Parliamentary sovereignty and makes it quite clear that Parliament has the right to pass the clauses which the government is proposing and thereby override these errant clauses in the Protocol.”

That is why I can support the Government in what they put forward and reject the Opposition arguments, while ever understanding that people have differences of opinion. We can agree to differ on these things while feeling very strongly on the stance that we have. That highlights the importance of this debate in terms of the legal and moral necessity of our opinion as stated in our amendments, which we are not pressing.

For me, this is all about free trade. It is all about having the same opportunity. It is about businesses in Strangford and across the whole of Northern Ireland being able to trade east-west and west-east. It is about my fishermen being able to land their fish in Portavogie harbour and not be subject to a tariff that would make it nonsensical to do so. It is about my fishing sector growing. It is about my agrifood sector, which employs some 2,500 people, growing. I believe that that could happen through this Bill.

[Craig Williams]

On day four in Committee, it is tempting to regurgitate all the points that have been made previously, but I can assure Members that I will resist that. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon); I agree with much of what he said about our precious Union. It was also a pleasure to hear from my near neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Dr Davies), and my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) about the non-tariff barriers. Those two key points—non-tariff barriers to trade and market access for our Union—are why I was so exercised that I put myself forward to speak in this debate.

I want to briefly talk about market access. We have heard some Members getting exercised about the creation of this market access framework, but much of what is in the Bill replicates the EU market as it was. Much of the political debate around the Bill thus far has been a regurgitation of the former Brexit argument—it is just the same old politics in a different guise.

A third of my constituents in Montgomeryshire travel across the English-Welsh border every day, whether that is for education, jobs, skills or goods. It is entirely porous. It is essential for my constituency—I task the entire Welsh nation with this—that we get market access right, with no distortions and no non-tariff barriers internally or externally, for the rest of the world. It is critical that this is done at a UK level.

I want to touch on amendment 9 and the perceived attack on devolution. This is one of the single biggest transfers of powers to the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament —70 powers. I will happily take an intervention from anyone who can name a single power that the Welsh Parliament will not be able to exercise because of this Bill. Indeed, the Counsel General of the Welsh Government went as far as to say that

“this doesn’t specifically prevent the Senedd from exercising its powers”.

All the noises to date in this Chamber and in the press are a lot of politics.