Economy: Growth

Lord Marland Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for organising this excellent opportunity to debate this matter. It is critical that we have debates such as this, and they are not to be confused with the manifest subjects involved with the Queen’s Speech. It is a slight shame that it is taking place in the graveyard slot of lunchtime on a Thursday but it is an important issue.

I also wish to apologise to the House for the fact that I have to leave after I have spoken because my boss has called me. There are very few people to whom I say yes but he is one of them. Therefore, I give my apologies if I have to leave.

The Prime Minister has put trade and the enhancement of British trade at the heart of economic recovery. I congratulate him on the leadership he has shown—he has led huge delegations all over the world. Wherever he goes abroad, he takes a very big delegation with him to further those efforts.

I have the honour of being the Prime Minister’s trade envoy and have visited roughly 30 countries in the past 18 months. To respond to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, I have been to Mozambique, Angola, two or three times to Algeria, Morocco and Libya. I am planning on being in Gabon in the next month and, I hope—if that is the appropriate word—Ghana in July. The noble Lord is absolutely right: Africa is an important area for us. It has been left unnurtured for far too long by successive Governments. We have been complacent over it and so we are going into overdrive. My noble friend Lord Green, the Minister for Trade and Industry, has also travelled extensively, taking big delegations with him.

We have reorganised UK Trade & Investment with a change of board, having brought in commercially focused people from industry. We have reorganised the way that they interface externally, working with our ambassadors, who are being driven by the Foreign Office to be much more outward-focused. We have set up a trade envoys programme. We have eight trade envoys from across the parties—Liberal Democrats, Labour, Cross Benches and Conservatives—to focus on territories on which we have not focused previously. We have a business ambassador’s programme, where business ambassadors who are leaders of industry across the country are sent to various countries, and I am also honoured to chair that programme.

I note in her place the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, whom I would call a friend, although she is not a “noble friend”. She is a friend to this country in the work that she does overseas, particularly leading delegations in the Gulf region. She has just returned from Saudi Arabia—a vital market.

We are establishing a Ministers travel programme, where Ministers will continue to lead trade programmes, and of course we have invested time and money in making the export guarantee fund a very flexible fund to support businesses.

Everywhere I travel, I discover that people want the British offering. One feature of the Olympics was that they gave us self-confidence. They reminded us of the incredible bandwidth of skills that we have as a nation, from airlines to the arts, and from music to mechanical engineering and so on. The Olympics showcased those skills not only to ourselves but to the rest of the world. Excepting that bandwidth of skills, why do people want to do business with Britain? Simply, we are a transparent nation. Transparency is the key to how we do our business.

I had my misgivings about the Bribery Act but now I am completely behind it because it sets us above other countries which continue to indulge in corrupt dealings. It sets Britain apart, and that is something of which we should be unbelievably proud. Indeed, we can take our open government programme and what we have done through the Bribery Act to overseas countries which are desperately trying to find a way through this corruption. Of course, we also have the rule of law, which is a fundamental basis for doing trade and is being adopted by many countries.

I shall not dwell for too long on the headline deals that have been done in the past few months alone but they include a £10 billion contract for Shell in Abu Dhabi, a new cybersecurity programme in Kuwait, an award for the new Kuwait airport, companies being appointed for the metros throughout the Arab world, and warships being sold to Brazil to protect their coastlines against piracy. All manner of big sums are being generated through this trade activity.

The Government are creating the weather. Government is an enabler and it has to create the weather. In many ways, we are turning a marathon into a sprint. That is what we are driving ourselves to do. As Mervyn King says, there are signs of good news out there. However, the key point he makes is that this is not a time for complacency, and he is right. A damning statistic from the Federation of Small Businesses shows that only 20% of its members’ businesses export. That is a terrifying figure for a trading nation which, as the noble Lord, Lord Soley, mentioned, for years has gone out and exported its trade. Another damning statistic is that 70% of small and medium-sized businesses export only when someone from abroad has knocked on their doors to buy something. This is a damning and frustrating challenge not only for us in government but for the businesses themselves.

My plea to everyone in this House, the other House and elsewhere is to persuade the local companies you have got to know to get out there and trade and make investments overseas. We are doing our best to take the horses to water but they have to drink it. They will only do that if they work through UK Trade & Investment and the various business associations in which many Members of this House are involved, where they allocate funds for export and travel, and ultimately take the risk. However, the most important thing is that we have a Government focused like no other on helping them to trade.