International Trade

Lord Marland Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland (Con)]

My Lords, I was flattered and surprised to receive a generous letter from the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, asking me to speak in this debate. I regret that I shall not be able to stay until the end—I have written to the noble Lord to inform him—because I have not been able to reschedule some of my activities. This will be a terrific debate. It is a very important debate, as the noble Lord has mentioned, and I congratulate him on securing it. I also understand that I am clearly the warm-up act for the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and I hope that he will say nice rather than nasty things afterwards. He is a very good tennis companion, but not necessarily a good debating companion on the other side of the Chamber.

When we look at the exam question that the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, has set, the answer is, “Yes, of course”. I have just finished being for two and a half years the Prime Minister’s trade envoy and chairman of his business ambassadors. Throughout that time I have had the great pleasure of working with parliamentarians, including the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, who is unique in her tireless work in the Middle East, and with trade envoys who are appointed from all sides of the House. They give of their free time to support the trade initiative. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint, who was an unpaid Minister. It has been a pleasure to work with them all, trying to sort out the problems we inherited and galvanising the United Kingdom back into what it was: a great trading nation.

The Prime Minister has rightly put trade at the centre of our economic recovery and, as the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, said, it is important, and incumbent on us all, to put our shoulders to the wheel to make sure that that happens. But it has been a significant challenge because businesses and Government had been focusing their activities almost entirely on Europe and the internal market. We had been a prosperous country for the past 15 to 20 years and orders were easy to secure both within our own market and overseas. Moreover, the Government themselves had failed to focus on the emerging markets of the world, instead maintaining strong relationships with those countries that had been our friends for ever. I think that the Government had become complacent about their relationships. Not only has there been a huge overhaul of UKTI and its focus, which was needed, but also an effort to tackle the horrendous fact, in my view, that 60% of small and medium-sized enterprises export only if someone comes and knocks on their door, and 60% of SMEs do not export at all. For a trading nation, those are extraordinary statistics. Repositioning, regalvanising and leading the way have all been very important.

It is easy to say, “The Government should be doing this and should be doing that”, but from my experience since I started my first business in 1982, which went on to become a global international insurance broker, the last people we wanted working with us were Government. They were slow and pedestrian, they taxed us, and they took too long to make decisions. As business people we want to be able to trade on our own. What we do want, when we get into sticky situations, is for the Government to intervene at a senior level and to ease the path for us. There are two or three things that the Government need to do in terms of providing access to markets. We should not expect Government to be the commercial, deal-doing arm of business, but we should expect them to have access at senior levels and to understand the routes to market: knowing who are the reliable partners in market that British businesses can deal with and understanding the rules and regulations within country so that businesses know about and recognise the problems they may face when going to market.

The frustration that I found as a trade envoy and chairman of the business ambassadors was that we could take the horses or businesses to water, but we could not make those horses or businesses drink. We would offer endless opportunities, but getting them to the table was difficult. That is changing, but it is an area where progress still needs to be made. To illustrate the degree of change, when I first went to Angola—I was almost the first government Minister ever to visit the country—I took five businesses with me. The last time I visited, I took 30, and deals are now being done with that country. But we should be taking 60 or even 90 businesses because today Angola is per capita the wealthiest nation in Africa. The oil industry is expanding enormously and there are going to be huge infrastructure changes. The other frustration is: why are we three years behind the Chinese and the Koreans in getting into Angola? It is because businesses have not looked at the potential initiatives there.

The most important thing from the point of view of British business and the Government is that we spend a lot of our time criticising ourselves and this nation but the truth is that in every country I visited we were in the top three countries in the world that that country would want to deal with. That is an extraordinary position to be in. It comes down to three or four things. First, business here is underpinned by the rule of law and we should compliment ourselves on that. The rule of law is fundamental to business practices and we are the leading exponents of it.

Secondly, we are transparent in the way that we do our business. I was very concerned about the Bribery Act when it came through but I now recognise it to be a very important and differentiating plank for British businesses when negotiating in the world. Now we see Governments being overturned for being corrupt by their people at the drop of a Twitter—or whatever it is; I am not going to ask my noble friend Lord Cormack because he does not know either—or the push of a button because they are not transparent. That sets us apart from the rest.

Thirdly, I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Harrison: the reason people want to do business with the UK is that we speak English, which is the desired language of all nations now in terms of commerce. Fourthly, London is a place that everyone wants to come to. I do not say this without humility but for this short moment in our lifetime London is the centre of the world to do trade. That makes it a fantastic place for us to do business.

Finally—and this may surprise noble Lords—we have an enormous bandwidth of skills. We lead the world in e-commerce, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, has led the world in e-commerce. We lead the world in high-tech. We lead the world in low-tech. Our medical capability is the envy of the world. Most importantly, our education system is the envy of the world. That is the thing that everyone wants to buy because we have a very strong education system and we have this ability to transfer skills.

Therefore, the Minister takes on a momentum that is beginning to happen. I support him and any initiatives that he sets about involving Members of this House which continue putting Britain on track to being what we have always been: a significant trading nation with a strong position in the world.