Fertility Treatment and Employment Rights

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) on her wonderful campaign. If I can support it, I will do so.

By coincidence, this morning we were discussing general cultural issues related to getting pregnant. The conclusion was that if a man had a child—if it is clear what I mean—that would be an excuse for the employer to give him a pay rise and to change his job. If a woman gets pregnant, she is just put to one side. We have heard how the whole fertility treatment process is very stressful. In fact, we have only heard about a portion of it. If we read about the number of tests that they need and the details of how they go through it, we can see how very frightening it can be. I think we have to remember the effects of that stress on people’s work.

It is not just women who are involved in this; males can have infertility problems as well. They can be due to lifestyle habits, for example smoking, or hormonal changes, for example low testosterone. That leads me to mention some figures produced by AXA. One of the most important was that 85% of employees undergoing fertility treatment said that it had had a negative impact on their work. A phenomenal number of people involved in this process experience a profoundly negative impact on their work.

We have already heard that a third of those undergoing IVF treatment—in fact the figure that I saw was 38%, so it is a little higher than a third—have either considered or have actually quit their jobs as a result of the impact on particularly their mental health. Although we have tried to separate mental health from other reasons for approaching this subject, we cannot separate them. They are intimately linked, and the mental health applications that take place have to be looked at very carefully and with a great deal of consideration.

I cannot understand why a business would not want to allocate time specifically for fertility treatment. I cannot understand why it is not part of their natural, compassionate approach to dealing with employees. They are compassionate in many other ways, which is to be applauded, but given that this issue directly affects the work that people undertake and the way in which they operate, I cannot understand why businesses do not allocate time for fertility treatment.

I am pleased by the number of companies that my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster has already signed up to her campaign, and I look forward to their involvement and to being able to take it forward. As we have heard, this issue is a major problem not just for this country, but for the western world. Unless we take it seriously, we will end up in even greater trouble than we would otherwise be, and I thank my hon. Friend for the work that she has done to make sure that we are all aware of it.

Newport Wafer Fab Sale

John Howell Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Solloway]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. The evidence of the scale and severity of human rights violations perpetrated in Xinjiang against Uyghur Muslims is far reaching and paints a truly harrowing picture. China must be held to account for its human rights violations. As the Foreign Secretary set out in his statement to the House on 22 March,

“the evidence points to a highly disturbing programme of repression”

in Xinjiang, and the world

“cannot simply look the other way.”—[Official Report, 22 March 2021; Vol. 691, c. 621.]

He announced the imposition of global human rights sanctions alongside the EU, US and Canada on the perpetrators of the gross human rights violations taking place against the Uyghurs and other minorities in China. He also, on 12 January, announced a series of measures to help ensure that UK businesses and the public sector are not complicit in human rights violations.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of what the Chinese have promised as part of the deal? I recognise the need to make semiconductor producers more efficient and, if she looks at Taiwan, she will see a company that has had billions poured into it to make it more efficient. Have the Chinese promised that for Wales?

[Amanda Solloway]

The Government have looked closely at the transaction and do not consider it appropriate to intervene at the current time. However, to reiterate, the Prime Minister made it clear at the Liaison Committee last week that he has asked the National Security Adviser to review that. Of course, the Government are reviewing their policy in the industrial sectors following the publication of “Build Back Better” and the introduction of the National Security and Investment Act. Significant support has been available through research and development funding. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is keen to support developments in supply chains and specific markets for UK growth.

Vauxhall at Ellesmere Port and Battery Manufacturing Strategy

John Howell Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I think the hon. Gentleman is quite right. There are two issues here: there is a local issue, and I can only imagine the uncertainty under which the excellent workers in his constituency and at that site are working; and there is of course a national issue. The question we must ask ourselves is whether we are committed to having gigafactories in this country. We are 100% committed to that, and I am very hopeful that we can reach a satisfactory conclusion about the continued investment and support for Stellantis in his constituency.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con) [V]]

I am grateful for what the Secretary of State has said about the amount of investment being made in batteries, but may I ask him for his support for companies such as those at the Culham Science Centre, which he recently visited, that are undertaking groundbreaking research in batteries, including in aviation?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am very pleased that my hon. Friend has raised that question. I had an excellent visit a few months ago, as he remembers, in his constituency in Culham. I spoke to many business people who are driving the net zero agenda, and, alongside him, I am very happy to support those efforts.

Energy Efficiency Measures: Net Zero Buildings

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) for his comprehensive assessment of the issue.

I wish to make a couple of points during my equally short contribution. It is worth reflecting that building regulations first included energy conservation as long ago as 1972. Since then, year after year, those regulations have been tightened up to achieve much greater energy conservation than before. The problem is that the last substantial upgrade of the regulations to achieve a very good energy conservation outcome was in 2013; there has been no substantial upgrade since that date. That is worrying. Minister, when will the building regulations next be upgraded and what will that include?

In 2015, the long-standing policy of the Cameron Government to achieve zero carbon for new homes was abruptly cancelled. That may seem like a little while ago, but it characterises a lot of the discussion about this issue. I hope the Minister can comment on that in his summing up.

The issue came up during the election campaign. I sat with a company that operates in the sector, in a village where a huge development is taking place. We worked out together how much it would cost to make the houses zero carbon as they were being built, from scratch. We calculated that the total increase in cost would be about £5,000; the total cost of retrofitting the houses was about £25,000. That is a huge difference, and retrofitting also comes with enormous problems—we have already heard about some. The firm I met specialises in alternative heating. Everybody wants a ground pump to be put in to get the best approach to heating, but that is not possible in many houses and is not the best solution. Other options, such as biomass boilers, should be considered, as we move forward.

We need to address this area in more detail, because there are significant opportunities for the UK. Residential and commercial buildings account for 60% of electricity consumption in the world today—a phenomenal amount. I have two points to make about that. First, there has been a lot of talk about increasing the ability of district councils to introduce regulations on net zero carbon. That is missing a trick. I invented neighbourhood plans that have gone out of their way to give communities the freedom to decide lots of important things about where housing should go. They have to work within a strategic framework that is set by the district council, but many neighbourhood plans are trying to achieve more than the district council wants. This is an opportunity to give them the freedom to take that forward.

My second point is about developing countries. Whether you support Brexit or not, we are a global player and we need to ensure that what we do helps in developing countries. Many such countries have a housing crisis—we must recognise that. Whatever we do there will have to involve sophisticated commercial financial options. Our international aid budget should reflect that, as well as the opportunities for British companies; many of the existing programmes will not sit very easily within that framework. Throughout my time as trade envoy to Nigeria, I have tried to encourage solar energy there, but the translation of that into better housing is quite a long way away. There is a lot that we can do to help that process.

The building in Africa that stands out as the best net zero example of its type is the Belgian embassy being built in Morocco. When that is the situation in a developing continent, we have to ask why, and what we can do about it.

UK Oil and Gas Industry

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.

Earlier in my career I was involved with the oil and gas sector as a taxation expert, dealing with the taxation of oil and gas companies. I echo the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) that, in the Budget that is coming up, there should be no changes that rock the oil and gas industry. We do not need to throw bricks at an industry that is already doing so much to help with the net zero carbon targets that we are trying to achieve.

The context is the enormous decline in revenues from the oil and gas sector. Back in 2008-09, revenues were at something like £13 billion; they are now down to just over £1 billion. That is a colossal collapse, and we need to do something to encourage the oil and gas sector and to help it survive.

The sector also needs more capital investment. Capital investment has fallen to one of the lowest levels in history and is now down to about £5 billion a year. That is coupled with a decline in drilling and an increase in the rate of decommissioning costs to almost £2 billion, which is quite a large increase—I see that the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) is about to intervene on me.

[Jamie Stone]

The hon. Gentleman read my body language extremely accurately. Contingent on what he has rightly said about how the industry is changing, thinking about the UK’s future in what—whichever side of the argument we are on—is going to be a period of change, and having been in the industry myself, what worries me is that we do see a slight deskilling in terms of welding techniques and working in stainless steel. Those skills could be pertinent to the hydrogen industry, and they are very hard to replace. I am not saying there should be a fiscal change, but we must be aware of those skills and safeguard them for the future, whichever way this country goes.

[John Howell]

In just a second, I will tackle an issue that I hope will help with the hon. Gentleman’s concerns.

The figures have already been quoted for the number of people employed in the oil and gas sector in the UK. Just over 30,000 are employed full time, but in the supply chain, which is the most important part and which I want to concentrate on, the number is close to 150,000. That is a phenomenal number of people to have to deal with.

I have been, and still am, the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Nigeria. The link here is in the Aberdeen sector of the supply chain, which I have been involved with, to try to get people to go to Nigeria. Why should they be interested in Nigeria? The skills that we have in Aberdeen are just the sort required to set the Nigerian oil and gas sector on the right course. Historically, a huge amount of the income from that sector has not even reached the Ministry of Finance; it has got nowhere near—it has simply been diverted. When so much of the industry is essentially black market, it is difficult to get efficiency, but we have all the expertise in Aberdeen and other places throughout the UK to be able to bring that.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I have been told that Aberdeen has the highest percentage of Nigerians of any place in the world outside Africa, but we have a real problem in Aberdeen with the visa system. When people come over for university and things like that, actually staying afterwards is very difficult for them. I find the visa system incredibly obstructive for my Nigerian constituents. Does the hon. Gentleman think that the flow of information and expertise would work better if the visa system was a bit more flexible, allowing people to develop their expertise in Aberdeen before going back to Nigeria?

[John Howell]

I like to think that it is something to do with the activities I have been conducting on behalf of the Government that there are so many Nigerians in Aberdeen. I suspect I cannot claim full credit for that, although I have tried to encourage companies in Aberdeen to go out to Nigeria and encourage people to come back. Nigerians can learn a tremendous amount from companies in Aberdeen, and I think they recognise that. The commitment to the oil and gas sector shown by President Buhari is a good indication that he takes it seriously. I hope we will be able to do something with that—something much better than we have done in the past—in order to take things forward.

This is all about getting better control, including over the net zero target set in not only the UK but globally as well, and our ability to see that target gain traction through what we do and the investments that we make. For somewhere like Nigeria, the ability to get to a net zero approach in the oil and gas sector at the moment is quite low. Again, the expertise that we have here is crucial to getting to that. My hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine mentioned two elements of that—carbon capture and storage and hydrogen production. The relevance of this to my constituency, which may seem a long way from Aberdeen and the companies I am talking about, is that Invesco, in my constituency, has a great interest in helping to fund hydrogen production as part of the energy mix here.

The other link to my constituency is a former Member and Minister, Tim Eggar, the chairman of the Oil and Gas Authority. I draw the House’s attention to a recent speech in which he made important comments on how the industry could move towards a much better net zero target. This man knows the industry extremely well and has worked in it for much of his life, and I hold his comments in full.

If we keep in mind those remarks about how we are helping the oil and gas sector to stay profitable and to get out and sell its expertise around the world, that will keep us in good stead for the future.

Retail Strategy

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist). She has highlighted the structural changes that are occurring in our high streets. She is right to point out that the retail sector employs a lot of people and is therefore extremely important. It is also fair to point out that rent and rates play their part.

I want to stress the structural changes, which the hon. Lady hinted at, and the move away from face-to-face to online shopping, which we are all doing. In those circumstances, a retail strategy is very difficult to bottom out. It is very difficult to come to a view on how an overall strategy should be managed, because the decline that is occurring takes place in different ways in different businesses. I will illustrate that in a moment.

I want to make some general points about things that might help. To start with, I welcome the future high streets fund. It is a much better way of facing the future, rather than harking back to the past and “how things always were”. If we look around the country, there are a number of different councils that are doing things in different ways. Great Yarmouth, for example, is developing cultural quarters as a way of encouraging businesses and people into the centre of town. It is all about the creation of place. Others, including Henley, see themselves more as events destinations; the Henley regatta has just finished. It is interesting to note that shopkeepers in Henley always have a difficult view on the regatta; they claim that when it is on, they lose business because young people are all tied up in the regatta and cannot go shopping.

[Sir Mark Hendrick]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that city centres have to look at other offers as well as retail to help enliven them. Preston has tried to do that through leisure. Unfortunately, the major business interest that was driving the leisure offer has just gone bankrupt. On the future high streets fund, Preston, a city that is much in need, has just had its bid rejected. That is not good enough. These little pots of money are put there to act as sticking plaster for town centres.

[John Howell]

The future high streets fund is looking at how high streets can be transformed for the future, not harking back to how things were done in the past. It is looking at imaginative schemes to take things forward. Two things that the future high streets fund grants funding for are improving transport access to town centres, which is absolutely crucial—if people cannot get in and out, the town centre is likely to die—and increasing vehicle and pedestrian flows, which follows on from that. That is a major improvement for the functioning of our town centres.

I have two examples of different types of business that are handled in different ways. The first is pubs. The reduction in the number of pubs has been going on for a number of years, for many reasons—we all seem to want to reduce our alcohol consumption for health reasons; there are the changes in the law on smoking, although they have largely worked their way out; there is a case for saying that many pubs have not got over the recession and are still struggling; and there is also the pricing of alcohol, which means it is often much cheaper to drink at home than in the pub. Alongside that, however, employment in pubs and bars has remained quite steady, and has even increased slightly, which needs to be considered in parallel.

My second example is banks. The decline in banks has been going on for 30 years. It is even more significant now with the rise in online banking. I have probably not visited a bank in two or three years—I do all my banking online because it is much more convenient to do that.

My final point is about the integration of housing in the mix. It is important to try to get people to live in the centre of our towns again, so that there is a mix of retail and living accommodation. In my role as Government champion for neighbourhood planning, I will give an example. The town of Thame had about 700 houses earmarked in its neighbourhood plan. It deliberately chose to spread them around the outskirts of the city rather than to have a big development at one end of the town, which would have meant creating a new area and a new shopping area. The reason it spread that housing all round the town was to increase the flow into the centre of town. That is a very good example, which I would endorse, to everyone who is looking to sort out how their towns are organised for the future.

Trade Union Access to Workplaces

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Andrew Stephenson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid) on securing today’s important debate, and commend the impassioned speeches by the hon. Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), for High Peak (Ruth George), for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney), for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), and for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock).

I am very pleased to engage in this debate. Before I address the individual points made by hon. Members, I want to put it on record that the Government recognise the important role that trade unions play across the United Kingdom, and I personally recognise the important role that they play. In my role as a constituency MP, I have worked closely with trade union representatives at Rolls-Royce, which has a site at Barnoldswick in my constituency, and since my appointment as Business and Industry Minister, I have met trade union representatives at BAE Systems here in Parliament and trade union representatives at British Steel on a visit to Scunthorpe.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I am glad that the Minister mentioned all of those organisations, but there is another organisation that he should mention, which is the Council of Europe, of which we are a member. The Council of Europe has always taken a very strong line on this issue. For example, it runs facilitation courses to help people to understand the role of trade unions and how they can participate in them. That is something that we should be proud of.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

6. What steps he is taking to support the UK space industry.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

24. What steps he is taking to support the UK space industry.

[The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Chris Skidmore)]

In the past month we have invested £18 million in the OneWeb satellite constellation to deliver global 5G communications, which I announced at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands. Last week we announced £7 million for the SMILE—Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer—mission. In addition, we announced £25 million for the PLATO—planetary transits and oscillations of stars—observatory mission, and last week we signed the Square Kilometre Array treaty, which will see £180 million invested in the world’s largest telescope.

[Chris Skidmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question; we had a positive meeting with the spaceport team last week. I am keen to do what I can to progress the hard work that has been done to put together an exciting project. The Government are investing £50 million to kick-start operations for a UK spaceport, including a £2 million fund for spaceports planning to host air-launched rockets and sub-orbital space planes. I will come down to Cornwall next month.

[John Howell]

Can the Minister confirm that it remains his intention to help the UK space industry by developing an alternative to the European Union’s Galileo system?

[Chris Skidmore]

The Government have committed £92 million to developing options for a domestic alternative to Galileo. The UK Space Agency is leading work with the full support of the Ministry of Defence. Contracts are being let with UK companies. Around 50 have made expressions of interest in the process, which will help to keep important skills and expertise in satellite navigation.

Solar Industry

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I am aware of the issue. I think those people were misled at the point of signing, and then were trapped in contracts that they found very difficult to execute. I know there have been some very detailed radio programmes that have covered the position of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents and others.

In my area, however, solar has been a success and people are keen to get involved in solar projects. In fact, that is true not only of solar. In Church Minshull in my constituency we have a wonderful Archimedes screw. That is not a cocktail or anything salacious, but a hydropower project that produces enough electricity to power the equivalent of 77 homes. Nevertheless, despite the success of such projects locally, the prospects for solar power nationally are rather bleak. The UK was recently rated 20th out of 20 for global solar photovoltaics prospects between 2018 and 2022 by SolarPower Europe’s global market outlook.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

When the scheme was closed down, there was a lot of talk about alternative technology. My hon. Friend just mentioned the Archimedes screw, and there are other alternative technologies such as batteries. Have they come to fruition at all?

[Antoinette Sandbach]

There are huge changes coming forward in battery technology. Of course, battery technology will be the key not only to solar energy, but to small-scale wind projects, particularly in relation to how we harness and store such power. There are a number of new and exciting technologies in renewable power. As someone who is keen to see as much of our power as possible coming from renewable sources, I know that the Government are committed to looking at how we can encourage those kinds of projects to go forward, and in the battery sector there is the Government’s Faraday battery challenge.

Given the prospects outlined by SolarPower Europe’s global market outlook, it is clear that the sector needs some positive news, and I hope that the Minister can deliver that today. However, businesses need reassurance more than anything. The Government have been consulting on the replacement to the feed-in tariff regime: the smart export guarantee. The consultation on that measure closed just over four hours ago. However, the export tariff, which is a key part of the FIT, ends on 31 March, which leaves just 18 days to resolve the questions surrounding a replacement before we risk falling into the void that will be created between the old policy closing and the new one beginning.

I welcomed the Minister’s reassurance last November that

“solar power should not be provided to the grid for free”.—[Official Report, 20 November 2018; Vol. 649, c. 701.]

However, there is a risk that that is exactly what will happen if there is a gap between the two schemes, so I would like her to give some reassurance that the replacement scheme will be fully operational in time. This should be a baseline to build upon, not a standard to live up to. What the sector really needs is a minimum floor price.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. The Home Office has written to more than 17,000 businesses reminding them of their obligations to submit their modern slavery statements. We are committed to the Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, a UN initiative, and we are proud to be the first country to have an action plan in place, but, as with all these things, we will continue to keep them under monitoring.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

In my role as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Nigeria, I am aware that Guinness Nigeria is being sold by Tesco. Is the Minister aware that Diageo and other companies in Nigeria have pledged to eradicate modern slavery from their supply chains?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I thank my hon. Friend for his suggestion. He is quite right. That is just another example of where the sector, working with Government, is taking action to stamp out these practices where they identify them and telling us how they are taking action to eradicate them.