Oral Answers to Questions
Julian Sturdy Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng
The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I have been to Coventry many times to discuss this issue and that we have landed gigafactories in Sunderland. There were none when I became Secretary of State and we now have two, and we are working all the time to land more of them here in the UK.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
Greg Hands
My hon. Friend is a consistent champion for his York constituents, and I assure him that we remain committed to delivering on the fastest sustained uplift in research and development funding, reaching £20 billion per annum in just two years’ time, from £15 billion today. That is a huge uplift, and of course we are going to make sure that all parts of the UK benefit from it. I am sure that part of that will be in and around York.
Oral Answers to Questions
Julian Sturdy Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng
I think it is very easy for the right hon. Gentleman to get obsessed with the words “industrial strategy”. What this Government are committed to is action. That is why we launched the decarbonisation industrial strategy. That is why we are pursuing the fourth auction round in offshore wind. That is why John Kerry, who I was very happy to meet two weeks ago, said that this country is a world leader in decarbonisation.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con) [V]
Kwasi Kwarteng
My hon. Friend will know—if he does not, I will let him know—that when I took office two months ago, the things that the travel and hospitality sectors assured me that they needed more than ever were a road map and support. I am pleased to say that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister came up with his road map on 22 February and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor extended unprecedented support to the economy on 3 March. I am happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss whether he wants to see further actions, but we have committed £407 billion—an unprecedented amount—to supporting the economy at this terrible time.
Oral Answers to Questions
Julian Sturdy Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Paul Scully
We call out British Gas and other employers if and when they are using unfair pressure in negotiations, but we do say that we need to retain flexibility as well, so that big companies can save as many jobs as possible in difficult times.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con) [V]
Paul Scully
I know the hospitality business in York has been affected, as it has around the country. Yes, we will continue to look at this and, when the data allows, we will move York and other areas into more forgiving tiers. For the hospitality sector—as I say, it welcomes Government support, largely, but wants customers—this is what is going to help the pubs, bars and restaurants in York and beyond to be able to survive and thrive.
Oral Answers to Questions
Julian Sturdy Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
Nadhim Zahawi
My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is a very difficult decision that we have grappled with. Independent bookshops are of great importance to local communities, with books playing a vital role in people’s mental health and wellbeing. The decision to close non-essential retail is part of a wider package of measures to make it clear that people should stay at home and accept this for a limited period of time. Of course, bookshops can offer delivery and click-and-collect services, which I am sure that her constituent, David Campbell, is probably considering.
Julian Sturdy [V]
The Government’s new support measures for businesses provide a genuine lifeline. However, support to stay closed is not the long-term answer, and many will only remain viable if they can be open as normal for the pre-Christmas season. May I ask what the Minister is doing to urgently lobby Government and the Prime Minister on the necessity of keeping businesses going and getting them reopened from 2 December, including in hospitality, which is so important to a city like York?
Nadhim Zahawi
My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point, and I absolutely agree with him. This is not the long-term answer, and I fully appreciate that retailers across England will be desperate to reopen in time for the important Christmas trading period. The regulations, as the Prime Minister said, will expire on 2 December, and we will return to the local restrictions thereafter—the tiered system. Of course, Ministers and officials are regularly engaging across Government, including my colleagues in BEIS, to ensure the sector can reopen safely on 2 December.
Oral Answers to Questions
Julian Sturdy Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Alok Sharma
Within days of taking office I spoke to our major automotive manufacturers, and I have had meetings with a number of them. However, the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We want to encourage electric vehicles, and we are also committed to securing investment for a UK gigafactory. Last year we announced up to £1 billion of new money to support R&D and supply chains for electric vehicles.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Alok Sharma)
The Government are already increasing public spending on research and development by £7 billion over five years, the biggest increase in public funding for R&D on record. Every pound of public expenditure on R&D leverages a further £1.40 of additional private investment, generating even greater returns for the UK.
Julian Sturdy
Given that nearly 50% of the core science budget currently goes to just three cities in southern England, can the Secretary of State assure me that the increase in R&D funding will do more to favour the regions outside the south, so that in future both my city of York and other regional hubs across Yorkshire, such as Leeds and Hull, will receive their fair share for the purposes of research and innovation?
Alok Sharma
I know that my hon. Friend is hugely supportive of R&D, and that last month he opened the Institute of Technology at York College. I absolutely agree that that is part of our levelling-up agenda. We want to support centres of excellence across the country. In December last year UK Research and Innovation awarded £24 million to the University of York for a quantum communications hub, and we will set out our ambitious play strategy for R&D in the second half of this year.
Oral Answers to Questions
Julian Sturdy Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Nadhim Zahawi
The hon. Lady just reeled off a list, so I will reel off my own list of good news, starting with the fact that Government announced £1 billion to increase the capacity for electric car development. On 10 October, Nissan launched the new Juke model after investing £100 million in Sunderland. On 26 September, Jaguar Land Rover announced its latest investment in the Gaydon facility, close to my constituency. On 18 September, INEOS Automotive announced that its headquarters and assembly plant for its SUV will be based in Bridgend. BMW’s new MINI Electric launched in July. JLR has made a massive investment in electric engines at Castle Bromwich. On 20 March, Toyota announced a collaboration with Suzuki to make an electric version of its Corolla model. That is all real investment, not “hot air”. The Labour party would crash the economy, raise taxes and have nothing—nowt—to spend on the green economy.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Andrea Leadsom)
After two years as a sole trader at this Dispatch Box as Leader of the House, it is a huge pleasure to be here today with such a superb ministerial team. In addition to my Department’s vital work to help businesses to prepare for Brexit, we have set out three key priority areas for BEIS. First, we aim to lead the world in tackling climate change. From the Prime Minister chairing a new Cabinet Committee to our hosting of COP26 in Glasgow next year, our pathway to net zero is well under way. Secondly, we will seek to solve the grand challenges facing our society, from new support for our life sciences sector to developing fusion power to setting out how amazing UK innovations can solve the challenges of low productivity. Thirdly, we aim quite simply to make the UK the best place in the world to work and to grow a business.
Julian Sturdy
Will the Secretary of State reassure me that her Department is fully assessing the potential of UK peatlands and peatland restoration in regions such as North Yorkshire, where my constituency lies, in getting us to net zero? Peatlands are a carbon sink that absorb more emissions than the world’s oceans each year.
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend is right that peatlands have a vital role to play in delivering net zero. In addition to £10 million to help to restore more than 6,000 hectares of peatland over a three-year period, we are working with Natural England on a number of pilot projects, including one in North Yorkshire, to test our approach for moving all peatlands in England on to a path of recovery and restoration.
Oral Answers to Questions
Julian Sturdy Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Andrew Stephenson)
I regularly speak with a range of steel companies. Since 2013 the Government have provided more than £291 million to the steel sector for the costs of renewables and climate change policies, including over £53 million compensation during 2018.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
Greg Clark
I can indeed, and I commend my hon. Friend for bringing this matter to the attention of the House. The life sciences sector deal has provided a means for investment to take place right across the sector. In fact, that deal has been so successful that we are on the second version of it, and further investments will be announced shortly.
Industrial Strategy: North-East of England
Julian Sturdy Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs Hodgson
Inequality and the wealth gap still exist, probably in all regions—we see it here in London too. Prosperity has never reached some parts of our region, which has led to disenfranchisement in some of our communities. We are now feeling the brunt of that in how they are voting.
Growth is good, but it is important to know where that growth comes from. The quality of communities and how they are sustained by the economy is an important part of keeping the fabric of society vibrant. The role of the Government in the economy must be more than simply growth and redistribution; they should aim to ensure that the country’s growth is responsible and has a social value, so that everyone lives a better life. That is something that the Labour party is committed to, with the introduction of a Minister for manufacturing.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
The hon. Lady makes some really important points, especially on the wealth gap, which I, as a Yorkshire MP, would say is between the north—rather than the north-east—and the south. Skills and education play a key role in improving the lives and opportunities of everyone. Does she welcome the technical education offer, and the announcement of 12 new technical institutions? Two are in the north-east and Yorkshire: one, York College, is in my constituency and the other is New College Durham. Surely we have to grasp that opportunity to ensure that we improve skills and technical education in our region—I say “our region”, as a Yorkshire MP—as the north moves forward.
Mrs Hodgson
I am happy to say that I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Skills are so important. We hear from employers all the time that they often cannot find the necessary skills in the local workforce, which is heartbreaking when many young people are desperate to acquire those skills. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) mentioned, we need to ensure that prosperity is shared among everyone. The rise in the number of apprentices is also welcome, and the technical colleges that the hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) mentioned play a huge and important part in that.
The Government often point to low unemployment figures as proof that their approach is working, yet in-work poverty is on the rise. It is at its highest for 20 years, with 4 million people living in poverty despite being in work—it is not just me saying that; the figure comes from Joseph Rowntree Foundation research. One in four workers in the north of England is paid less than the real living wage, after a decade of stagnant wages and the rise of zero-hours contracts. That leads to the two-tier workforce that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North mentioned.
Although we are on our way to closing the gap and making businesses in the north-east a more valuable prospect, we are still recovering from the catastrophes that the region has faced in the last 50 years. Those catastrophes have made our communities resilient, but to ensure that we endure, one thing must be at the heart of any strategy: the environment. We must invest sustainably in our economy to ensure that future growth does not come at the expense of our environment. It is essential to confront the climate crisis in every Government strategy, especially an industrial strategy. I am proud that the Labour party has committed to do that, having already forced the Government to declare a climate emergency in May.
Nissan’s investment in battery technology and electric vehicles has put Sunderland at the forefront of the European market. It is the only plant in the UK that makes a purely battery electric vehicle, the LEAF. Nissan’s expansion on the back of the worldwide move to electrification offers the UK the chance to be a leader among European manufacturers, and our local communities will benefit most.
Sustainability should be at the centre of all sides of development. For example, with the expansion of IAMP, which I mentioned, I would like the local transport network to be developed to ensure that in years to come, the staff who work there will have an alternative to private motorised transport when going to work. An excellent way to do that—another opportunity that I never cease to mention—would be to expand the Tyne and Wear metro to Washington and IAMP.
Economic development is another concern in these turbulent times. The ongoing uncertainty of the Brexit process—I have mentioned it as well—may damage investment and businesses in the north-east, as 55% of Nissan’s exports go to the EU. We need a solid and sensible deal for exiting the EU to give businesses certainty. Parliament has made it clear that it rejects the possibility of a no-deal Brexit, yet the idea of reintroducing a no-deal option has been used numerous times by candidates in the Conservative party’s ongoing leadership campaign—I will name no names; I do not want to give anybody more publicity, not that anybody would take any notice of me—in a reckless attempt to bolster themselves. That is worryingly irresponsible and gives no assurance to UK manufacturers, some of whom described the idea of leaving the EU without a deal as “economic lunacy” this week.
The potential for a bright future in the north-east is high. Our region is growing well, and as my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside said, it is a great place to live, work and have leisure time, but there are more steps to take to ensure that its development can be sustained and work for everyone, which I hope the Minister will consider.
Young Carers Support
Julian Sturdy Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing the debate. Like several other hon. Members, I declare an interest as a former young carer. I would like to thank both the organisations in my constituency and the other organisations that I worked with across Scotland as a volunteer with young carers services in later years. This issue is close to my heart, and I think it is of paramount importance that we should be having this debate.
Lanarkshire Carers Centre in my constituency works with, and for, carers to develop and deliver services that make a positive difference to the lives of carers in Lanarkshire. The services that it provides include one-to-one carer support, carer support groups, short breaks for carers, and carer training opportunities. South Lanarkshire Carers Network empowers carers with knowledge and information that will allow them to make informed choices about available services. It also aims to identify unpaid carers, develop and maintain a network for those carers and identify gaps in service provision.
Carers not only perform a vital role for the people whom they look after, but ease the strain on our public services, as we have heard from many hon. Members. In fact, this point was well made by the hon. Member for Sheffield Central. I recognise his incredible work and passion as a patron of Sheffield Young Carers. He rightly gives a voice to John, Holly and all the other young carers, who deserve to be heard in this House.
Other hon. Members from across the House talked about their personal experiences, which were heartfelt and touching. It is worth recognising the words of the hon. Members for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) and for Blackpool South (Gordon Marsden), who have done a great deal of work in their constituencies over many years. That commitment is recognised here, as well as by their constituents. I also recognise the work of Michelle Smith, whom the hon. Member for Blackpool South mentioned, and the work she has done in his constituency. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) rightly identified that she has employed someone in her office who is a young carer. That recognition and opportunity is vital. Every young carer hopes for a chance and we should ensure that they get one.
Young carers provide a vital service to our economy, taking a huge burden off public services, and addressing the constraints of an already decreasing budget. In Scotland’s case, they save the Scottish economy £10.3 billion, which is close to the cost of providing the NHS service in Scotland. There are approximately 759,000 carers in Scotland, which is 17% of the adult population. When we think about carers we assume that they are adults, but there are an estimated 29,000 young carers in Scotland, which is 4% of under-16-year-olds. Being a young carer has a big impact on a young person’s life.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making an important point. It is difficult to know the exact figures, but substance abuse and mental health issues are on the rise. We have not mentioned the number of young people who are out there caring but are not recognised, even by themselves, as young carers. How do we identify those young carers going forward?
Oral Answers to Questions
Julian Sturdy Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. Let me gently remind the House that topical questions, and the answers to them, are supposed to be substantially briefer.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Mr Sam Gyimah)
Realising the full economic and social benefits of the excellent research at our universities is at the heart of our industrial strategy. Through United Kingdom Research and Innovation, our industrial strategy challenge fund and the higher education innovation fund, excellent research can be commercialised and translated into businesses that create jobs and growth.