Carillion

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I absolutely agree. The directors of the business were not invested in the business. They were not part of the pension fund that collapsed and, as the hon. Gentleman said, Richard Adam, the finance director who oversaw the accounting practices that helped to contribute to the collapse of the company, sold his shares as soon as he could because he knew what we all now know: this business was a failing business that would not be around for much longer.

What we found in Carillion was a board focused on short-term fixes and growing payouts, with no plan for what would happen when the illusion was shattered. Looking at the poor treatment of suppliers when the company was solvent and the trail of destruction the management of the company has caused, I cannot see how Carillion’s directors can make any claim that they had anything other than their own personal interests at heart. In the latest responses that we have published today, Carillion’s directors continue to refuse to demonstrate any culpability for the state the company was in. They have denied that our report is accurate, but have given no evidence whatsoever to support their case.

Let me be clear: the directors of Carillion are culpable for the company’s collapse. They should be ashamed of their performance and they should not be allowed to take the helm of a company ever again.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Ind)]

My hon. Friend is making a first-class speech. Does this not bring to mind the quotation from John Maynard Keynes that capitalism rewards bad behaviour?

[Rachel Reeves]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Bad behaviour was being rewarded at Carillion, but the people being rewarded were not the people investing in the business, or the people working for it and saving for their pensions with the business; the people being rewarded were those making the decisions about where the money went—making the decisions about whether to plug the pensions deficit or pay dividends to shareholders. Those are the people who should be paying the price, but under the system we have today, they walk away with their bonuses and their dividends intact. It is other people—the people who are not responsible and did not make the decisions but who did the work—who are paying the price, and that is what needs to be reformed.

When corporate governance is failing, there should be checks and balances, but our inquiry found a regime that was not up to the job of doing that. The first line of defence should have been those who were auditing and advising the company. KPMG, Carillion’s auditors for 19 years, continued to give a clean bill of health to the business, even just a few months before the July 2017 announcements that heralded its swift but painful decline. In the report we have published today, KPMG’s chairman, Bill Michael, denies any issues with the clean bill of health that his company gave to Carillion just months before it began to publicly collapse. Mr Michael is burying his head in the sand, which reflects badly on his understanding of the impact of Carillion on the reputation of his company, and of the future of audit as an industry. The status quo is simply not sustainable, and the big audit firms must understand that and respond to it.

Competition in industry is supposed to drive up quality and bring down costs. It is not working in the audit market, where a cosy club of four hoover up huge fees before, during and after any corporate failure, yet their audits and accounts, as one investor put it to our Committee, read like a mystery novel—a fiction, with the reader searching for scant clues on what is really happening. The big four firms audit all the FTSE 100 businesses and all but a handful of the FTSE 350 top businesses, as well as providing them with advice on a range of services. There are conflicts of interest at every turn, and it was left to the least conflicted, PwC, to clear up the mess during the liquidation process.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend is making an important point about the audit companies. Is it not a major problem that they are ostensibly there to represent the shareholders’ interests against those of the managers but that they are actually employed by the managers, and that if they do not give the managers what they want, they will not get the next contract?

[Rachel Reeves]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The people who rely on audit are the shareholders, and also the small businesses that supply the company, the people who work there and the pensioners who have saved for their pensions with that business. But they are not the people who employ the auditor, and they are not the people the auditors are accountable to. The auditor is accountable to the audit committee of the business, and it is often appointed by that committee on the advice of the chief financial officer. So, as my hon. Friend says, the incentives are all wrong.

I am pleased to see that our report has prompted some long-overdue soul searching in parts of the audit profession. While the written reactions of the big four accountancy firms to our report differed, they all seem to recognise that there were issues to be addressed. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has recognised this as a watershed moment, and it is leading a review of the audit profession. I hope that that review will propose some radical solutions. We have now referred the audit market for investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority. The new chair of the CMA, Lord Tyrie, was endorsed in his role by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, and he should now demonstrate the same determination he showed in this place leading the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards when he looks at the future of the audit market. I am convinced that we have to find a way of making the audit market more competitive and audits themselves more trusted, and of ending the conflicts of interest that can damage the reputation of some of our economy’s major firms.

Behind the company and its auditors and advisers, there are statutory regulators who should have been expected to step in when the business and the audits were seen to be failing. Carillion’s finance directors and auditors were subject to scrutiny by the Financial Reporting Council. Now that the company has collapsed, two former CFOs are under investigation for the preparation of financial statements, and Carillion’s auditors are subject to further scrutiny. During our inquiry, we heard that the FRC had already taken an interest in the situation at Carillion, and that it had concerns about the quality of previous audits by KPMG. However, the regulator had been far too passive. It accepted extra disclosures being made by KPMG and Carillion the following year without any further follow-up action and, although it found repeat issues with KPMG’s wider audit work across other companies, it seemingly took no firm action there either.

Carillion’s huge pension debt was a matter of concern to its pension trustees and the Pensions Regulator, the other regulator involved, but the regulator’s response, again, was feeble. It threatened to impose a contributions schedule and then left the power unused. It sought to negotiate a payment agreement and then agreed precisely with what the company wanted. It launched action only once the company collapsed and then it was too late. Again and again, the Pensions Regulator barked but did not bite. While plugging the £2.6 billion hole in the pension fund would not have saved the company, it could have reduced the largest ever burden on the Pension Protection Fund, which will see pension holders receive less than they have been promised by their company’s scheme. It is telling that none of Carillion’s directors was in the collapsed scheme.

The Committees found serious concerns about the performance of both regulators, including their powers, remit and leadership. If regulators are not working well, employees, investors, suppliers and customers can have little confidence in the businesses in which they are invested. Statutory regulators need to be doing more. Across the work of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, we rarely find ourselves criticising regulators for being too bold. Instead, we keep hearing timid bodies apologising for letting consumers down. That needs to change, and the change should be led from the top.

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[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Ind)]

I cannot possibly deliver my speech in three minutes, but I will do my best.

I am pleased to be able to speak in this significant debate on an issue that marks a turning point in Britain’s politics and economics. The collapse of Carillion should see the end of a huge policy mistake—the dogma-driven tragedy of the privatising, outsourcing and marketising of our public services. It is now time to accept that mistake, and to begin the process of rebuilding the public utilities and public services established in the early post-war decades that underpinned the enormous social advances achieved in those times.

The neoliberal economic model has brought political and economic instability, slower and erratic growth rates, and greater inequality—a world where the mega-wealthy and unconstrained private banking and corporate power have prospered at the expense of the rest of us. The death knell for neoliberalism was sounded by the 2008 crisis, when a catastrophic financial collapse was prevented only by spending billions of taxpayers’ cash to prop up the corrupt and out-of-control banking system. But the Frankenstein’s monster did not quite die then, and has limped along for another decade despite financial scandals and failures, with the public purse being ripped off time and again. The collapse of Carillion is one more nail in the coffin of the monster, but it is still not dead. It is time to ensure that it finally dies, and soon.

I am a member of the Select Committee on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs, which is an excellent Committee with a first-class Chair and brilliant staff. As we have heard, the Committee has just produced its own report, which is very well written and contains much good material, but I was unable to support it because it did not draw the obvious conclusion that the drive to outsource and privatise—to hand vast sums of public money to grasping private companies through PFI schemes and outsourcing—has been an enormous and costly mistake, driven by ideology and not the public interest. We should have said in the report that PFI should be abandoned forthwith, and that the process of insourcing should be supported and accelerated.

The report says:

“PFI financing costs more than government financing because the state can borrow at a cheaper rate than the private sector. While we are confident that PFI costs more than conventional procurement, neither…the National Audit Office nor the Public Accounts Committee can find any evidence of the benefits the Government claims”.

This is pretty damning, but the report stops short of saying that PFI should be stopped now and for good and confined to the dustbin of history.

We have been here before—long before Carillion—with the collapse of Jarvis 14 years ago. At that time, I put a question to the then Prime Minister in the following terms:

“My right hon. Friend will be aware that the private finance initiative contractor, Jarvis, has been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy for weeks now. This is putting at risk a large number of school repair schemes and other public sector works. Would he not think it sensible, given that Jarvis’s share price has now collapsed to junk levels, to buy out all those public sector schemes, get them done in the public sector, and save billions of pounds of public money?”—[Official Report, 14 July 2004; Vol. 423, c. 1408.]

As hon. Members may have guessed, I received no sensible answer. Now, 14 years on, we have Carillion, and the present Government are still persisting with the failed models of privatisation, including the appalling PFI.

Some public authorities are beginning to insource, with significant financial and service benefits, but the drive to privatise continues, especially in the national health service. The failures of the model are legion, from prisons to probation, and from long-term care to smaller issues such as building control. But perhaps the greatest—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order.

GKN

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

For the first time in British corporate history, we have secured a commitment to spend, as a minimum, what the incumbent is already spending on research and development—that should be welcomed. Obviously, the reports of accounts and the disclosures that will need to be made to the markets will shine a light on the debt, but it is striking that it has been suggested today that £150 million was accounted for by unpaid suppliers’ bills at the end of the last quarter—I gather that is in the filings that have been released today—so I imagine the hon. Gentleman will want to study very closely with a beady eye the reports of accounts as they are published in the months ahead.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Ind)]

I am reminded of the Cadbury experience when it was taken over by Kraft. Undertakings were given about the factory in Bristol, which was sold off almost before the ink was dry on the deal. GKN is a company of national strategic importance not just to defence but to the wider economy and, indeed, to the Government’s much-vaunted industrial strategy. GKN should play a big part in that future.

If GKN were a German company in Germany or a French company in France this kind of speculative takeover would be prevented one way or another. One way to prevent it would be to have substantial stateholdings in such companies, and France, in particular, has done that over many years to make sure French companies remain French. Will the Government not look to France and Germany for the best way forward?

[Greg Clark]

Kraft’s takeover of Cadbury is exactly why we changed the rules so we can now have binding undertakings that are legally enforceable, unlike the situation that prevailed when the hon. Gentleman was in government. When it comes to the German system, in fact there is a substantial record of German companies being taken over.

Industrial Strategy

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman knows Teesside very well. One of the things he would welcome is that in recent years the long-standing disparity, going back decades, between constituencies like his and others in the country has narrowed. There is a real sense of progress and achievement on Teesside that I experience every time I go up there; I was up there a couple of weeks ago. However, he is absolutely right that we need to continue that progress. We need to reflect on the fact that, as I said, many of the industries, skills and attributes that are in demand across the world now—marine engineering, for example—are abundant in areas like Teesside. We must capitalise on that, and we have a massive opportunity to do so. The industrial strategy, as he knows—our friends and colleagues on Teesside contributed very fully to it—has, for the first time in an industrial strategy, a real, very clear attachment to the importance of recognising the contributions of different places. This came out very strongly through the consultation, so he is absolutely right.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Ind)]

We have just seen a hostile takeover of GKN. Some of my constituents work at a GKN plant in Luton. Does this not look like a return to the kind of cowboy capitalism we have seen in the past, where hostile takeovers lead to asset-stripping that will make short-term profit, rather than being about the long-term interests of the economy and our manufacturing sector?

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman knows that I have a quasi-judicial role to exercise in response to certain takeovers, so I cannot comment on that particular case. I would say, however, that in technologies such as automotive and aerospace, there is a high degree of interest and, indeed, optimism about the future capabilities of companies right across those sectors and their supply chains. I mentioned marine engineering; aerospace and automotive are also examples of areas of British strength. The industrial strategy commits to build on that. My intention in implementing the industrial strategy is that our current strengths will be extended.

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[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Ind)]

I am very pleased to speak in this important debate, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to see that an industrial strategy for the country is at last back on the political agenda, although I have to say, without being unkind to the Tories, that we need a Labour Government prepared to make the right kind of interventions to make sure that it works.

The truth is that Britain has suffered from a long and disastrous period of deindustrialisation, which accelerated from the late 1970s and has left the country in a perilous economic state. We import too much, make too little and have suffered from a growing and now gigantic trade deficit primarily with the rest of the EU, and with Germany in particular. The industry that we have left is good—much of it is, anyway—and it has to be good to survive, but even then, our productivity levels are often too low and investment has been too little.

I am delighted that Peugeot has just announced plans to manufacture a new van at the Vauxhall plant in Luton, and we have to hope that this is a first swallow in a new industrial spring. I have put the case to motor manufacturing representatives that the recent depreciation of sterling relative to the euro should provide a sound basis for expanding supply chains in the UK manufacturing sector. That is true for other sectors, too. I was pleased that the head of Peugeot suggested just such an intervention at the time of the takeover of General Motors Europe, which included Vauxhall.

However, let me get back to the general case that Britain’s manufacturing base has been seriously eroded in the last decades and that we need desperately to rebuild the sector on all fronts. We have lost out massively in trade, and in manufacturing trade in particular. The figures are stark, and I shall quote just a few to make my point. The UK current account deficit in 2016 was £111.3 billion, or 5.8% of GDP. We in the UK are paying out to other nations the net figure of nearly £2,000 per person every year. The goods trade deficit in 2017 was even larger, at £138 billion. The UK’s overall trade deficit was £33.7 billion, but was a staggering £80 billion just with the EU. That was balanced only partially by our trade surplus of £39 billion with non-EU countries. At the core of this problem is the loss of much of our manufacturing capacity.

In 2017, the UK’s manufacturing trade deficit totalled £98 billion, £79 billion of which was with the EU and some £19 billion or so with the rest of the world. That disastrous yawning chasm in trade contrasts markedly with the performance of another major European economy—namely, Germany. In 2014, Germany had a current account surplus of $280 billion, contrasting with Britain’s current account deficit of $152 billion. We import four times more motor vehicle products from Germany than we export to it, which is just a simple illustration of the grotesque imbalance between our two countries.

Britain’s balance of payments deficit has been getting dramatically worse in recent years. In the crisis year of 2008, the deficit was £55 billion, but it rose to £113.6 billion in 2017. That is simply not sustainable and has to be addressed by Government action. A re-creation of our historical industrial strength has to be the key factor in rebuilding our economy for long-term sustainable prosperity. Central to that strategy must be a benign macroeconomic environment, and an essential component of that must be an appropriate parity for sterling—an exchange rate that helps our domestic manufacturers and restrains manufactured imports. We must not price our goods out of foreign markets, above all the EU.

Britain’s economy has been dogged by sterling overvaluation for many decades, and it has chronically damaged our competitiveness. Devaluations and depreciations have relieved the economic straitjacket from time to time—in 1931, 1949, 1965 and, most significantly, after the disastrous collapse of the exchange rate mechanism in 1992. A big depreciation after the 2008 crisis saved the UK from complete catastrophe, but the pound-euro exchange rate crept up again in 2016, causing more economic damage. The post-referendum depreciation has helped our manufacturers, but the balance of trade is still in dire straits.

Britain’s primary exchange rate problem is with the euro—not just sterling’s overvaluation but the serious undervaluation of the euro. In my view the euro is, in reality, the Deutschmark in disguise—a Deutschmark with weaker economies bolted on to it, holding down its value and giving Germany an unjustified competitive advantage both against other eurozone economies and against Britain. Britain’s uncompetitive exchange rate has been our economic Achilles heel for a very long time. An appropriate exchange rate, sustained for the long term, is vital for a new industrial strategy to be successful and for a revival of Britain’s greatly diminished manufacturing sector. It is an essential component of many modern industrial strategies, but not a sufficient condition for success.

Finally, I suggest to Ministers and the Secretary of State, who is not in his place, that we need to re-establish Neddy—the National Economic Development Council—in which I was personally involved when I worked at the TUC in the 1970s. The disastrous collapse of industry took place after Labour’s Government. It was in 1979 to 1983 that we saw a fifth of manufacturing disappear—a crime for which the Tories must always bear their guilt. Neddy brought together Government representatives, business representatives, employers and trade unions in a forum for manufacturing, ensuring that its vital interests were advanced to the benefit of the country and the future prosperity of all its people. Neddy should be reinvented and recreated, but it should be made much stronger.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this important debate. The industrial strategy is an important document that contains crucial objectives relating to skills and young people. The importance of the skills agenda is particularly demonstrated in my own area, where the offshore renewables sector is playing a major role in the area’s economic expansion. Indeed, the Government have referred to the Humber estuary as the “energy estuary”. We have a number of important training facilities, such as the CATCH facility in Stallingborough, which was set up as a joint operation funded by the Government, local authorities and industry. The Secretary of State himself has visited the Grimsby Institute, where he launched a previous skills initiative. Leaving the European Union provides us with many opportunities, but we need to invest in research and development, and we also desperately need to invest in our infrastructure. I am pleased to say that the Government have taken that matter particularly seriously.

A crucial element in the document is regional growth, and I know that the Secretary of State is particularly committed to that. He has visited the Grimsby-Cleethorpes area on a number of occasions, and I know that he is familiar with the problems and the opportunities that exist there. He will, I am sure, have taken note of the importance of the seafood processing industry in the area, as well as the offshore renewables sector and the chemicals, ports and logistics industries. We also have two of the country’s six oil refineries. Cleethorpes, being the jewel in the crown of the east coast, is very important for tourism. I can see that you are eager to visit it yourself, Mr Deputy Speaker. You would be most welcome, and you would enjoy the best fish and chips in the country.

I am sure that Ministers would be disappointed if I did not mention page 226 of the document, which refers to the Greater Grimsby town deal. In fairness to Governments of both colours, there has been much investment in our cities and city regions over the past 20 years, but that has emphasised the relative decline of some of our smaller towns in the provinces, particularly our coastal communities. To combat that, the local authority, the local enterprise partnership and, crucially, local industry have come together to create the Greater Grimsby project board, which has put forward several important proposals encompassing a town deal that would boost the area tremendously, reducing the differential between our cities and towns. The Prime Minister herself has referred to “left behind” towns, and our coastal communities sadly fall into that category.

As I mentioned, the project board is led by the private sector, but it includes the local enterprise partnership and local authorities. We have put detailed proposals to the Government, and they are grinding their way through the various Departments, but the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is primarily responsible for town deals. Our most recent meeting was with Lord Henley, who has now taken over day-to-day responsibility for the strategy, and I urge the Minister to give us some indication of when we can expect a decision on the deal. At that meeting, it was suggested that we might get a decision by June or July. I suspect that the Minister will not want to give a definite date today, but I urge him to push things forward as quickly as possible.

The industrial strategy clearly presents huge opportunities for areas such as northern Lincolnshire. The shadow Secretary of State, in fairness to her, did acknowledge that even a future Labour Government would not go about picking winners, but it was rather depressing to hear the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) turning the clock back to the days of the Neddy—I think there were even “Little Neddies”—with prices and income falls and the winters of discontent. All that could come again if, sadly, the Labour party comes to power.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I remember the 1970s very well, but it was between 1979 and 1983 that we saw a collapse. We had a Tory Government who were determined to introduce the new free market world, which saw British industry almost disappear.

[Martin Vickers]

The hon. Gentleman may or may not be correct in his analysis, but the reason why we had a Conservative Government in 1979 was the collapse of the economy during the late 1970s. There had to be a big shakeout and an acknowledgement of the failed policies of the ’60s and ’70s, so he should reflect on the fact that this industrial strategy is about the future and how we can become a global trading nation in the post-Brexit economy.

In conclusion, I hope the Minister will acknowledge my point about the town deal, which is the main point of my contribution.

GKN: Proposed Takeover by Melrose

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

It is not for me to evaluate the competing bids, given that I may have a quasi-judicial role in determining whether to intervene. However, I thought it was right to set out the areas on which I would invite the bidder to state its intentions so that those intentions are clear not only to shareholders but to this House, including the hon. Gentleman, and members of the public, and they can make their own assessment.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Ind)]

I have constituents who work at the GKN plant in Luton, and I recently met trade union representatives who are understandably concerned about the future. Older Members in the Chamber, of whom I am one, will remember that hostile takeovers, merger mania and short-termism were core factors in the devastating era of asset stripping and deindustrialisation that led to the disappearance of vast tracts of British manufacturing and to our current yawning trade deficit. The Government are paying at least lip service to an industrial strategy, so will the Secretary of State now make that strategy real by stepping in to save one of our most historic and valuable manufacturing companies by simply stopping this takeover?

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman is aware of the regime under which we operate. I hope that he agrees that it is right, before the shareholders make their final decision, to encourage the company to set out more clearly than it has done its future intentions, not only so that that information is known, but so that, where it makes commitments, were it to succeed, it can be held legally to account for those.

Vauxhall (Redundancies)

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

The devolved Administrations are of course rightly involved in all those conversations. I was heartened today to hear the head of Cheshire West and Chester Council say that they were working closely across the border, because they understand that so many people working in the plant commute across the border every day. It is interesting that that is perceived as the economic area, which crosses the border. It is absolutely right that we should not let artificial boundaries get in the way. On the issue of artificial boundaries, all of us in this House want a thriving automotive industry. As we have done with other strategic decisions, the more that we are all on the front foot on this together—showing that we are the place for future investment, rather than taking lumps out of each other across the Dispatch Box—the better.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I would remind the hon. Lady that we are substantial net importers of motor products from the EU and especially of high-value-added components in the supply chain. Now that we are leaving the EU, will the Minister and the Government look to using state aid and public procurement programmes to benefit British motor manufacturing and Vauxhall in particular?

Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 16th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

It is very clear that membership of Euratom requires membership of the European Union, which is why we have this Bill. We have been satisfied with the arrangements we have, and part of the negotiation will be to ensure the greatest possible continuity, but that is to be negotiated with Euratom and the partners involved.

I have mentioned that the first requirement flowing from our commitments on safeguards is to have a domestic system that allows the state to know what civil nuclear material there is and where it is located, but the second fundamental principle of the global non-proliferation and safeguards regime is that there is some oversight of the system independent of the country itself. That provides obvious and necessary reassurance to the international community that material from civil nuclear programmes is not used other than for civil activities.

The UK has been a member of Euratom since 1 January 1973, and Euratom has carried out elements of both the domestic and the international activities set out in our agreements with the IAEA. The UK’s agreement with the IAEA on safeguards is a trilateral agreement, reflecting the relationship between the UK and Euratom. Upon withdrawal from Euratom, however, the UK’s main agreements with the IAEA will become ineffective, as they are predicated on Euratom membership. We are in discussions with the IAEA to agree replacements that reflect the UK domestic regime, including continued international verification by the IAEA. The Bill gives us the ability to give effect to precisely that regime. We have been working closely with the Office for Nuclear Regulation to ensure it will be ready to take on responsibilities for nuclear safeguarding that are currently delegated to Euratom inspectors.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Many professionals in the nuclear industry and outside academics are seriously concerned about the ongoing problem of what to do with nuclear waste from the civil programmes. Will the new arrangements simply parallel exactly what Euratom is doing or will they be stronger? Is the Minister not concerned that we still have to deal with the serious problem of long-term storage of civil nuclear waste?

[Greg Clark]

Let me say two things. First, we want to see maximum continuity of the standards—we do not want any reduction in them, as they have served us well and they give confidence to the industry. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman knows, from his many years in this House, that successive Governments have taken forward our long-term disposal of nuclear waste, and work on a long-term repository is being conducted, but that is a domestic responsibility, as it always has been.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The truth is that UK manufacturing capacity has languished at too low a level for many years. However, the depreciation of sterling to a more sensible parity has seen a number of companies, including Rolls-Royce and Nissan, boost their investment. Now that we are leaving the EU, will the Government look to use state aid and public procurement programmes to further boost British manufacturing?

[Claire Perry]

The hon. Gentleman points to one of the impacts of the referendum result, which is that many industries have had a substantial currency tailwind, which has helped sectors such as aerospace and steel to deliver rather impressive results this year. He is right that we need to keep those sectors thriving. We need not only to get the most frictionless and wide-ranging trade deal that we can with the EU, but to export right across the world, where British goods and products are very well regarded.

Taylor Review: Working Practices

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

I heartily agree. This is all about improving work so that we have good work, with people who are able to grow in their careers, and a system in which those who are low-paid to start with need not be low-paid forever but can aspire to a better future. That will benefit British productivity and, as my hon. Friend suggests, improve the competitiveness of British companies.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Vital protection for all workers is provided by trade union membership and by trade union recognition. Since my time at the TUC more than 40 years ago, trade union membership in Britain has halved, while workers’ and trade union rights have been undermined by Tory legislation. When will the Government reverse that legislation?

[Margot James]

The Government cannot mandate people to join trade unions. Trade unions are still an important force for the protection of workers’ rights among the sectors of the economy in which they are still dominant, and I commend them for their work.

Opel/Vauxhall: Sale to PSA Group

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I pay tribute again to the workforce in both plants and in Vauxhall’s other operations in this country. They are efficient and highly committed, and they have been very flexible. As technology changes, we need to keep their skills up to date. The automotive sector is aware of that and is working with the Government on institutions to train not just apprentices, but other people in the industry. That will have my full-hearted commitment.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that the Luton workforce are brilliant. They produce a superb vehicle. Today’s news is very positive, but Britain is still a net importer of motor vehicle products, in particular high value added components. Will he discuss with PSA the possibility of developing more high value added production in the supply chain over here, particularly in view of the recent depreciation of sterling, which looks likely to be permanent?

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his engagement over the past few weeks. He knows the workforce in Luton well and what he says about them is absolutely right. There is a big opportunity across the automotive sector to increase the supply chain. It is one of the areas where we can make further progress in what is already a successful sector. We will do that through the industrial strategy and it will have my personal engagement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

As the Prime Minister said in Prime Minister’s questions last week, this country is fully committed to the Paris climate change agreement—as are all the countries that endorsed the Marrakech proclamation—and we hope that all parties will continue to ensure that it is put into practice.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

T6. Since the EU referendum, the depreciation of sterling has boosted British manufacturing and exports, but, as we are leaving the EU, will the Government now start to use public procurement and necessary state aid to support the vital expansion of our industries and the promotion of import substitution?

[Greg Clark]

We want British business and British industry to compete on the basis that they are price-competitive. There are opportunities that come from being outside some of the bureaucracy, which affects small businesses in particular when it comes to public procurement, and those are opportunities that we will be able to take.