Oral Answers to Questions

John Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

6. What steps he is taking to increase the number of apprenticeship places through Government procurement.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

15. If he will make greater use of Government procurement to increase apprenticeship places.

[The Minister for Skills and Equalities (Nick Boles)]

We are keen to look at ways that procurement of major infrastructure projects such as HS2 and new nuclear power plants can drive investment in construction and engineering skills. High Speed 2 will create up to 2,000 apprenticeship opportunities and Crossrail is on track to deliver its target of at least 400 apprenticeships during construction.

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[Nick Boles]

I certainly agree that there is more to be done, which is why I have had several meetings with Lord Deighton, the Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, to work out exactly how we can make it an integral part of the procurement process for all major infrastructure projects that there is a clear commitment by all successful bidders to invest in skills training and in the creation of apprenticeships.

[Mr Spellar]

I recognise that the Minister is new to this place, and that point scoring has its place, especially at this stage in the political cycle, but a previous answer of his did not match the seriousness of the situation. He referred to real apprenticeships leading to real skills, but we still have a huge skills shortage across the economy—for example, in construction, engineering, health and haulage, to name but a few areas. Will he make it a contractual requirement that bidders for national and local contracts have proper ratios of training places, and will he enforce those provisions if bidders fall short?

[Nick Boles]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving me an opportunity to clarify that. I think that it should absolutely be part of the procurement process for all major infrastructure projects that bidders are expected to make appropriate investments either in some form of skills training or, ideally, from my point of view—I am the apprenticeships bore—in the creation of apprenticeships. I hope that he, having criticised our record, will welcome the enormous number of apprenticeships that have been created in his constituency —50% up on 2009-10.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

The Minister for Women and Equalities was asked—

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

1. What assessment she has made of the effects of the under-occupancy penalty on disabled people.

[The Minister for Disabled People (Mr Mark Harper)]

The removal of the spare room subsidy is just making sure that the same rules apply in the social housing sector as apply in the private sector, as implemented by the previous Labour Government. To deal with difficult cases, the Government have made available a significant amount of discretionary housing payment to give local authorities the flexibility they need to deal with cases where disabled people need more support.

[Mr Spellar]

According to the Government’s own evaluation, 68% of those hit by the bedroom tax are themselves disabled or have someone in their household with a disability. Is the Minister not ashamed of that figure? When will the Government scrap that cruel and unfair tax?

[Mr Harper]

I note that the right hon. Gentleman did not deal with the point that I made. We are treating people in the social housing sector in exactly the same way as the previous Government treated them—[Interruption.] I hear someone heckling on the Labour Benches. Disabled people do not get a spare room subsidy in the private sector. Those rules were implemented by the previous Labour Government. This is a matter of fairness. The £345 million we have made available to local authorities over the past two years for discretionary housing payment gives them the flexibility they need to deal with individual circumstances.

EU-US Trade and Investment Agreement

John Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

The hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) mentioned the negotiating mandate that has not been formally published, but has, in an unorthodox way, been made available. That certainly does not talk about a Marxist global system. However, given the size of the economies and the potential scale of the agreement, setting mutual recognition standards on workers’ rights, environmental protection, consumer safeguards, trade rules and legal process can set the standard we expect, and lead other parts of the world on, in future deals.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend not agree that that last exchange was enormously revealing? There is a tendency in part of the Conservative party to follow the Tea party Republicans: the sort of 19th century Republicans that let the robber barons run loose. They even step back from that great Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, who took pride in being a trust buster. They are the party of the robber barons. They are the party that supports the tax evaders. They do not want to regulate at all.

[John Healey]

My right hon. Friend makes a strong and vivid point. It will be interesting to see the degree of unified purpose and support on the Opposition Benches, and the divergent, not to say conflicting, views on the Government Benches.

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[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) on securing this debate. It is fair to say that, although the issues we are discussing have exercised the financial press, their implications have not yet achieved high levels of visibility among the general public. I hope that this debate will at least go some way towards rectifying that. Given the limited time available, I will not talk about the more general issues. Instead, I shall focus on the implications of an EU-US trade agreement for my own area. My right hon. Friend mentioned the need for the Government to demonstrate what the potential impacts would be in local areas, and the fact that some of the issues would be of particular importance to the west midlands and the black country has not hitherto been recognised.

Historically, the area’s manufacturing has been dominated by the car industry, which has suffered for many years but is now undergoing a renaissance, largely as a result of the foreign direct investment by the Tata brothers and the revival of Jaguar Land Rover. It gladdens my heart when I see those vehicles queuing up at the docks awaiting export. About 80% of the cars we produce are exported, and the US is the second-largest market after Europe for those exports. Jaguar Land Rover holds second and third place with its Land Rover and Jaguar models, but if they are considered together, it holds first place.

[Mr Spellar]

I thank my hon. Friend and good neighbour for giving way. As a fellow black country MP, I know that it is good that foreign buyers are buying from Jaguar Land Rover, but would it not be even better if British public bodies, especially the police, bought from Jaguar Land Rover rather than from Mercedes and BMW, which they tend to prefer?

[Mr Bailey]

I know that my right hon. Friend has campaigned on this issue for many years and I totally agree with him. We need to look properly at procurement policies to realise that point, but I will not get tempted further down that path now.

As far as I can see, the big issue for the motor industry is that, for the UK and the US, tariff barriers are relatively low but that is not quite the same as the barriers between the US and the EU. One of the challenges for the British negotiators as part of the US team is to ensure that the EU does not concentrate only on overt tariff barriers. If that is the case, there will be a general benefit, but the EU will benefit disproportionately. In case anyone considers this to be an anti-EU argument, let me make it absolutely clear that I think we have a far better chance of prosecuting a good deal as part of the EU negotiation than we would if we were not part of it—but this particular issue does need to be addressed. The fact is that the removal of non-tariff barriers within the US is considerably more important for stimulating exports or reducing costs, and the British Government must concentrate on those as part of the EU negotiating team.

Let me highlight a few areas where I believe the British Government need to get behind those who are already engaged in this work. The first relates to how the myriad of technical regulations—quite understandably in respect of road safety and the environment—dictate a range of different regulations in different countries. Standardising them provides a big challenge. I know that the European Automobile Manufacturers Association and the American Automotive Policy Council are working on this at this moment, but it is up to the Government to see that that work comes to a positive conclusion and give it all the support they can.

Secondly, on the global scale, the United Nations is working on standardising global technical regulations. Although this might not be part of the specific brief of the EU negotiating team, it would be helpful if the EU and the US, working with the UN, standardised their approach so that the standardisation of regulation applies not just within the EU and the US but throughout the rest of the world. That would provide a further impetus for both sides.

Another issue affecting our dealings with the US is the disparate and federated nature of its regulatory bodies. There are national federated bodies involved in regulations on environmental protection and road safety, but there are, of course, state bodies as well. That provides a specific challenge to get the sort of coherence and pace of reform that we need to conform to the timetable.

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[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) on securing the debate and on setting up the extremely important all-party group on European Union-United States trade and investment.

Let me start by putting the subject in context. Even though the Chamber was rebuilt after the second world war, the ghosts of the 19th century and the debate on free trade seem still to be haunting it in today’s debate. I was slightly surprised that the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) did not pay tribute to the work of Robert Peel, who, after all, represented a neighbouring Staffordshire seat in Tamworth.

I want to look more at the period after the second world war, when the architects of the new world order fully understood that an open economy and world trade were important not only for prosperity but for peace. They had seen the significant problems in the inter-war period—the time of Montagu Norman, austerity, competitive devaluation and, in particular, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in the United States and competitive trade wars around the world—that resulted in a diminution of world trade from $5.3 billion in 1929 to $1.8 billion in 1933. That world financial crisis led inexorably to the rise of fascism and Nazism and into the second world war.

The post-war negotiators realised their responsibilities, particularly Keynes, whose searing intelligence and insight is lacking in some of the international discussions now. First, the negotiators recreated an international financial architecture through a World Bank and an International Monetary Fund, which were the preconditions for the other changes of freer trade, barrier reductions, the post-Korean boom, the consumer society—at which many elitists sneered at the time—and the huge surge in technical development. They also depended on significant transatlantic initiatives. We had the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, which then merged into the European Community, but before that we had the Marshall plan and the creation of NATO, and both were key parts of the changes brought about by that towering genius of foreign affairs and the British Labour movement, Ernest Bevin, who could see the opportunities —perhaps even more than some of those whose names are associated with them, such as George Marshall—for creating a new world situation. He saw them not as separate developments, but as interwoven and inseparable.

Now we face new challenges following the global financial crisis and the new architecture of the world economy. Although many underestimate them, the Atlantic ties are still enormously important. Many of the world’s democracies and the most productive economies are on either side of the Atlantic, as well as the most technologically advanced countries. Half of the world’s GDP would be encompassed by such an agreement.

Yesterday, the Commons debated Trident, and we also recently debated NATO and its future post-ISAF and Afghanistan. As we negotiate an evolving international architecture, trade and security go hand in hand. It is not just about the formal relations but about the cultural links, which are especially important and significant for the United Kingdom—as many Members have mentioned, we are uniquely placed to benefit from such arrangements —finance, business, security and defence. For the UK more than any other EU country, this is important.

As hon. Members, particularly the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans), have remarked, President Obama and his officials have made it very clear that they are not interested in doing a number of minor deals with different countries. They see the negotiations between the EU and the US as crucial and they see the advantages. That does not mean that we should enter into the negotiations naively. They will be tough; the Americans are tough negotiators. We should drive a very hard bargain. There is also a danger that some on both sides of the Atlantic will seek to smuggle in a neo-liberal policy to try to undermine many protections for consumers and workers.

[Mr Cash]

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of an article by Fred Smith in Forbes Magazine from about 10 days ago? It illustrates the fact that the United States is concerned about the importation into the agreements of regulatory and environmental standards. That might be a sticking point.

[Mr Spellar]

There is the possibility of many sticking points. That is why it is so important to keep an eye on the bigger picture of the huge benefits. Talks of this kind can always be undermined by a number of niggling details, and therefore by local campaigning. That is not unimportant, and we need to recognise that there will be losers as well as winners, but we should also recognise the huge benefits, not just for the US and the EU, but for the world economy. That is possibly what happened in the talks between the EU and Canada, and we need to be concerned about that. A number of difficulties have started to bog down those negotiations for those reasons.

An American official associated with the negotiations said that the talks needed to be

“done on one tank of gas.”

They need to move forward. Regard has to be paid to the checks and balances, but no one should deny the overall impact and huge benefits.

We also need to look at how we make sure that the benefits are shared with others in the world. No one should underestimate the huge impact that the expansion in world trade has had, not only on the economies of developed countries, but on the hundreds of millions who have been taken out of poverty all around the world, not least in China, where about 400 million people have been lifted out of poverty. We have also seen the largest migration of humanity in history from the countryside to the cities. The benefits have to be shared, and we need to ensure that the architecture of the agreement does not close off that avenue.

Having sounded that cautionary note, I think that we should wish the talks well, and I hope that they are conducted with speed and a degree of urgency. I hope that they go into the fast track with that one tank of gas. I say: “It’s time—let’s get rolling.”

Oral Answers to Questions

John Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is a spirit of innovation in our country of which we can be proud. It is one of the reasons that our exports to the emerging economies of India, China and Brazil—which are the most competitive and important economies of the future—are shooting up, even while, sadly, we are held back by the economic problems of the eurozone, brought on by membership of the euro, a policy advocated by the Labour party.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

3. What steps he is taking further to develop the motor and components industry.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Mark Prisk)]

Over the past 18 months, the United Kingdom automotive sector has secured more than £4 billion-worth of investment, including the decision by General Motors to build the next generation of Astras in Ellesmere Port. Through the Automotive Council, we are working hard to rebuild the UK’s supply chain and to encourage exports further.

[Mr Spellar]

I am astonished that the Secretary of State has not turned up today. Not only is it bad form, but I actually wanted to praise him—although that might have been bad for inter-coalition relations. He has shown a bipartisan continuity of policy in support of the motor industry, which is so important for encouraging long-term investment. As that policy is increasingly successful, as the Minister has indicated, will he now focus strongly on the supply chain, where too many components are still imported? Will he get his officials to work with the industry to get the main-tier suppliers to develop capacity in the UK, so that there is a major benefit to the British economy, British jobs and British workers?

[Mr Prisk]

It is rare that a Minister gets the opportunity to receive the praise intended for a Secretary of State, so I will just stand here for a moment or two.

I entirely agree with the principle mentioned; this House has an opportunity to put manufacturing beyond party politics. I want to do that, as does the Secretary of State. We are putting in £125 million specifically to target the supply chain, and I want to make sure that that is available shortly. We are working well with Birmingham city council and others, and I look forward to being able to develop things further.

School Funding Reform

John Spellar Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

There are many parts of the country that have serious problems with population growth, including Stratford-on-Avon, not least because it is such an attractive town that has enjoyed effective representation for many years.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I speak as Member of Parliament for one of the six boroughs that took legal action, and I wish to express our deep disappointment at the Secretary of State’s announcement, particularly for Perryfields and Bristnall Hall schools. Year after year, much-needed refurbishment and repair has been put on hold by the Department for Education, because those schools were in the BSF programme. They now face inadequate overcrowded buildings and a rising school population. Does the Secretary of State understand how let down they feel, and will he come and meet them so that they can get that view across?

[Michael Gove]

The right hon. Gentleman is a formidable constituency Member of Parliament. He invited me to make sure that I made this announcement before the House rose for the recess, and I am happy that I could do so. I appreciate that Sandwell, like many other local authorities, will want to make its case fairly, so I want to make sure that it is heard alongside every other local authority in a way that is fair to all.

Building Schools for the Future

John Spellar Excerpts

Monday 14th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. One of the weaknesses of the way in which Building Schools for the Future was designed was that it did not prioritise schools on the basis of dilapidation; they were prioritised according to other, political criteria. There are of course schools in Building Schools for the Future areas which are in desperate need of renovation, but there are also schools outside those areas, such as the Duchess’s school in Alnwick, which are in a similarly dilapidated state—a consequence of the failure to invest money efficiently over the past 13 years.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State’s initial remarks seem to indicate an attitude that the play was a success, but the audience was a failure. He did, however, move on and offer to look at those decisions with greater care. He will know that Sandwell is a hugely deprived borough with growing school rolls, and that many of its schools were told year on year that they could not have improvements because they were part of BSF. Will he now look at those cases again? People are faced with crumbling schools and, frankly, dashed hopes. Will he now listen to Sandwell’s representations in order to remedy that gross injustice?

[Michael Gove]

I appreciate the passionate and effective way in which the right hon. Gentleman makes his case. I had the opportunity to talk to Sandwell’s council leader on 5 August, when he brought a delegation of teachers, parents and young people to the Department for Education, and I am very, very happy to ensure that, in the process that we now have, I listen fairly to all the representations made by Sandwell and its Members of Parliament.