Lord Willetts
Main Page: Lord Willetts (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Willetts's debates with the Department for Education
(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)
2. What recent assessment he has made of the effect on business confidence of the economy entering recession.
The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)
Business confidence has held up so far this year, and is well above its 2008-09 lows. The CBI business confidence index came in at plus 22 in April, one of its highest readings in the past five years.
Mr Hamilton
Does the Minister accept that consumer confidence is extremely important? If Beecroft’s fire-at-will measure is implemented, as proposed by some Members on the Government Benches, that confidence will sharply decline. I say that as someone who was unemployed for two and a half years; people cannot plan ahead or do anything, and it brings added jeopardy to families. This is therefore extremely important: if we want confidence, we must get rid of the Beecroft report.
Mr Willetts
It is very important to maintain confidence in the British economy, and people can take confidence from the fact that employment is up, and that inflation is down so their living standards are protected. They can take confidence from the fact that exports are up, and they can take confidence from the fact that public borrowing is down so interest rates are down. Those are the reasons why we are confident in the British economy.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
May I tell the Minister that the chief executive of Northamptonshire chamber of commerce has said that
“the news the economy was in recession paints an “unduly pessimistic picture”
as far as Northamptonshire is concerned? Mr Griffiths says the news is contrary to what he is hearing from his members, and his local quarterly economic survey shows a far “more positive picture”. He believes that that gives a
“more accurate indication of the underlying trends in the economy.”
Mr Willetts
There are great examples of business success across Britain, in both small and large companies. The coalition is committed to ensuring that we deliver growth and prosperity in the future.
Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)
Back in the real world, has the Minister seen this week’s report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, showing that more than half of manufacturers have no confidence in the Government and think the Government are performing badly, and only 14% think the Government are doing well? In the same week, the CBI said manufacturing output will fall sharply in the next quarter because of contracting demand, producing a double-dip recession made in Downing street. Does the Minister believe the manufacturers, who wish to engage with Government to create a long-term industrial strategy, or does he side with his Cabinet colleagues, who believe business should merely stop whingeing and work harder?
Mr Willetts
I agree with what the director general of the CBI said the other day. I thought he put it very well:
“We have always said that the path back to sustainable economic growth will be a long and difficult one, with many bumps along the way. To re-balance our economy towards exports and investment will take time and patience.”
We are absolutely committed to rebalancing towards exports and investment, and in my conversations with engineering businesses and others across the country it is clear they understand that that is exactly what the Government are doing.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Will the Minister join me in congratulating businesses across North Wiltshire, who are reporting extremely good conditions? Honda has just announced a new line, the excellent automatic hand dryer I used a short time ago in a House of Commons lavatory was made by none other than Dyson of Malmesbury, and a number of enterprise awards have been given to firms in the constituency. The picture is actually not bad at all. Will the Minister congratulate those companies?
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.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
7. What recent assessment he has made of the Government’s relationship with the business community.
The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)
The Department has an honest, constructive and positive relationship with business based on the shared belief that enterprise and Government working together can get us out of recession—not more taxation, regulation and borrowing. Ministers also have one-to-one strategic relationships with key international companies.
Susan Elan Jones
I am grateful to the Minister for that answer. Will he tell us why he does not agree with the chair of GKN, Mr Mike Turner, who is calling for a more active “industrial strategy”? Why does he not listen to him? Surely Mr Turner knows something about business.
Mr Willetts
I have great respect for Mike Turner of GKN. We do believe in the importance of an active industrial strategy, and we have seen the fruits of our approach in the announcement only the other day of the new investment by General Motors. We have also seen it in the announcement of investment by GlaxoSmithKline. We are up for working with business to deliver the industrial strategy and that is what we are doing.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
May I inform my right hon. Friend that relations with business in rural north Yorkshire are excellent but could always be improved? In particular, what can we do to promote the local enterprise partnership in rural north Yorkshire, east Yorkshire and York?
Mr Willetts
I am sure that there is always more we can do to promote LEPs, but they are already playing a crucial role in the allocation of the regional growth fund. I very much look forward to visiting Norfolk later today when I will have the opportunity of announcing further investment in that important county.
Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)
In the time that Ministers in this Government had dozens of meetings with Google, one of the few British IT companies to achieve global status, Autonomy, has been taken over and today tragically destroyed. May I suggest to Ministers that instead of spending so much time cosying up to American giants that just want to protect their monopolies, they should talk to people such as Mike Lynch, the founder of Autonomy, to understand why it is so difficult for British innovative companies to get the long-term finance on their own account that they need to become global leaders?
Mr Willetts
Let us make it absolutely clear. My fellow Ministers and I talk on an even and equitable basis with Autonomy and Mike Lynch, of course, and with HP and Google. Indeed, we have set up a council to plan our strategy for e-infrastructure and high-performance computing in which their advice is greatly valued. Yes, it is very important that we invest in high-technology companies, but I cannot believe that a former Secretary of State is actually saying that we should have direct controls to stop a company such as Autonomy being taken over.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
8. What recent assessment he has made of the employment circumstances of apprentices on completion of their placement.
Mr Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (LD)
11. When he last met representatives of the Russell group; and what matters were discussed.
The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)
I met vice-chancellors from the Russell group on 8 March at an event at Nottingham university. We discussed university access, research and international issues.
Mr Kennedy
I thank the Minister for that reply. On access, particularly for international students, he must be aware of how loudly alarm bells are now ringing in the Russell group and the tertiary education sector right across the UK because of the plummeting number of applications from international students as a result of the Home Office’s net migration targets. As this is worth nearly £8 billion a year to UK plc, can he not put pressure on his Home Office colleagues to see sense?
Mr Willetts
The latest evidence from UCAS shows that applications to British universities from outside the EU are going up, but it is absolutely right that we should back our very successful higher education sector. It is not a business, but it does have a lot of exports and the 400,000 students who come here from abroad to study can be regarded as an export success. That is why there is no limit on the number of genuine students who can come to the UK to study. There is no cap on their numbers.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
I want to reinforce the point that the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy) just put to the Minister. The new visa regime is causing huge instability and sending a very discouraging signal internationally. Given how important the HE sector and the Russell group are to trade, and given that it is such an important exporter, will the Minister speak to the Immigration Minister and urge him to change these rules?
Mr Willetts
Of course we are in close contact with the Home Office on the implementation of these rules, but the key point is that there is no cap on the number of overseas students who can come to Britain. I take every opportunity on trade missions abroad, as do the Prime Minister and other members of the Government, to communicate very clearly in crucial counties such as India that there is no limit on the number of legitimate students with the appropriate qualifications who would be very welcome to come here and study at British universities.
Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
12. What steps he is taking to promote exports to the far east; and if he will make a statement.
Norman Lamb
I will rise above it, absolutely.
Exports to the far east are growing very significantly. UK exports to China have grown by 15% over the past year, for example, and we are working hard to secure a free trade agreement with Japan, which would deliver significant benefits to the UK.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
20. What recent assessment he has made of the contribution of the higher education sector to economic growth.
The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)
Higher education contributes to growth. We have just had universities week, celebrating our universities’ contribution to the Olympics, to the economy and to national life, and estimates by Universities UK indicate that higher education contributes more than £31 billion to our GDP. University education is of course, however, also worth while in itself—in ways that cannot be measured by economists.
Paul Blomfield
The Minister acknowledges the importance of higher education as a major export earner. Does he therefore agree with his hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), who wrote an excellent piece in the Financial Times last week, arguing that we should catch up with our competitors and stop classifying students as migrants, as part of a strategy to win a bigger market share for our world-class university system?
Mr Willetts
I absolutely support the objective in that statement of winning a greater market share for our higher education sector, and we can be very proud of the international demand from students wanting to study at our higher education institutions. There is no cap on the number who come here, and we will do everything possible to correct any misunderstandings around the world that may be inhibiting people from applying.
Mr Thomas
At a time when many mainstream universities are extremely worried about where sufficient funding for research, which is vital to Britain’s long-term economic growth, will come from, why does the Minister think that a multi-million pound VAT cut for commercial universities is a good use of public funds?
Mr Willetts
One reason why we have protected the science and research budget and, for the first time, included the research funding going to universities via the Higher Education Funding Council for England is so that our universities can be confident that they have secure and protected research funding for the life of this Parliament.
Mr Jones
Durham university is not only world-class but, along with the other four universities in the north-east, a key driver of the regional economy. What assessment has the Minister made of the visa changes and the capacity of Durham, and those other four universities, to attract overseas students, especially when we read in the press that students from India and other countries are choosing Canada and the United States, rather than the UK?
Mr Willetts
Let us be clear about what the Government have done. We have tackled abuse in bogus colleges and the issue of overseas students who, sadly, did not have the necessary academic qualifications to benefit from coming into higher education in this country. That abuse had to be tackled. We now have a clear message that legitimate students are welcome, with no cap on numbers, to come from anywhere in the world to study at British universities. I work very closely with our universities, including the university of Durham, on trade missions to get that very positive message out across the world.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
16. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change on the potential effect on process manufacturing of the Government’s policy on energy pricing.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)
My Department has a key role in supporting the rebalancing of the economy and businesses to deliver growth while increasing skills and learning. May I repeat, Mr Speaker, that the Secretary of State has a long-standing commitment to be in Berlin and Düsseldorf and therefore regrets not being able to be with us today?
George Freeman
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the UK’s life sciences in areas such as biomedicine, clean energy and agriculture offer a huge potential opportunity for us to drive a sustainable recovery here in the UK by supporting sustainable development in the developing world, and that our science base, not least in Norwich research park in my county of Norfolk, has a key part to play in that revolution?
Mr Willetts
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, I will be visiting Norwich research park later today and will be able to announce £250 million of research funding going into life sciences across the country. Alongside the commitment to human health that we have already made, this will be a commitment to research in animal health, plant breeding and the agricultural industries of the future.
Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)
This Government inherited an economy that was growing, with unemployment falling and a recovery settling in. The revised GDP estimate for the first quarter of this year, far from being revised up, as some expected, has just been revised down. With the country in a double-dip recession created by this Government, 50 businesses going under every single day, and over 2.6 million people out of work, this shambolic Government have been squabbling over a report produced by a millionaire Tory donor that suggests that all would be well were it not for people’s rights at work. Why on earth are they going along with this nonsense instead of, for example, implementing the active industrial strategy that we need?
Mr Willetts
Let us be clear: this coalition Government also inherited an economy that had been hit by a major financial crisis because of Labour’s failure to regulate financial services, and unsustainable levels of Government borrowing which the head of the International Monetary Fund said earlier this week caused her to shiver when she thought what would have happened if they had not been tackled. We are committed, rightly, to reducing the burden of red tape and regulation on the economy, and alongside that we are constructively investing in and supporting the industries of the future.
Mr Umunna
This is a no-growth Government with their head in the sand. They blame businesses, they blame the people who work in them, and now they blame the eurozone, when countries such as Germany and France are not in recession and we are. They said that they would increase lending to small businesses, but there has been a net contraction in lending to small businesses in every single month of this Government. They said that they would support different industries, from defence to renewables, but they have failed to do so. They boasted that their regional growth fund would create more than half a million jobs, but the National Audit Office tells us that it has created less than a tenth of that. We have always known that Tory-led Governments are heartless. Do today’s figures not demonstrate that they are hopeless too?
Mr Willetts
That pre-prepared speech had nothing to do with the reality of the industrial strategy being pursued by this coalition, which is delivering big increases in exports to the big markets of the future. Exports to China are up 18%, exports to India are up 29% and exports to Brazil are up 11%. Employment is up, inflation is down and public borrowing is down. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) is usually such a measured and emollient fellow. He must calm himself.
Mr Willetts
We are committed to working with all our partners across the British economy, including business, to ensure that there is investment in the high-tech businesses of the future. The recent announcements of investments in General Motors, Jaguar Land Rover and GlaxoSmithKline show that the strategy is bearing fruit.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
T6. Last week, UK Trade & Investment put on an extremely useful event for businesses in my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey). Subsequently, my constituent, Simon Chater, has expressed concern about the cost to small and medium-sized enterprises of using the overseas market introduction service. Will the Minister confirm that UKTI is doing all it can to support SMEs that are seeking to export, including working with other Departments to identify new markets?
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
When it comes to growth in small businesses, I commend the Minister for Universities and Science for the energy and intelligence with which he has enacted high-tech policies for high-growth industries. However, we must be careful not to pick individual winners within those sectors. Does he agree that backing Britain’s successful high-tech sectors is the key to releasing economic growth and securing the jobs and competitive international advantage that we should enjoy?
Mr Willetts
I agree with my hon. Friend. It is important that we act on the advice that we get about the big, general-purpose technologies of the future and do not randomly hand out grants to particular businesses, as happened all too often in the past.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
T5. Will the Minister for Universities and Science reassure the House that the introduction of any student premium to offset the impact of tuition fee increases, as proposed earlier this week by the Deputy Prime Minister, will not be at the expense of the funding that is provided for the widening participation premium and currently allocated to universities by the Higher Education Funding Council for England?
Mr Willetts
I have just written to the Office for Fair Access and HEFCE to ask them to assess the effectiveness of the very large amount of money that is now used for that purpose through the widening participation premium and universities’ access funding. We fully recognise that the different strands of money have different purposes, and that some of it is there to meet universities’ particular needs through WPP funding.
Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)
As someone who benefited from a similar scheme in the 1990s, may I ask the Minister to update the House on the progress of the new enterprise allowance scheme? Will he ensure that it is yet another flagship programme, like the new apprenticeship schemes?
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
The Million+ group of universities has concluded that the new fees regime to be imposed on mature students will deter many thousands of them from going to university. That will damage their life chances, and it could damage the universities, but it will also restrict the talent available in our economy. Will the Government think again about fees for mature students?
Mr Willetts
Many mature students are part-time students, to whom this Government have for the first time extended loans to cover the cost of fees. That is one of the many features of our higher education reforms of which we are very proud.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)
I am sure the House will join me in celebrating the fact that SMS Electronics in Beeston in Broxtowe has been a lucky recipient of a Queen’s award for enterprise. Many small businesses tell me and others that they need less regulation and oppressive red tape if they are to grow. Will a Minister please confirm something that I was told today: that under the previous Government, there were six new regulations every working day?
Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)
Sixty redundancies have been announced today at the open-cast mine at Kirkconnel. It is in the constituency of the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, but it will affect my constituency in east Ayrshire. What are the Government doing to support the coal industry?
Mr Willetts
Earlier this week we produced our energy strategy, which involves ensuring not just a fair deal for consumers, but sustaining investment in energy in Britain.
Mr Speaker
Order. I do not want the Minister to lose his handkerchief. It is about to fall out, but I am sure he can rescue it.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
From today’s answers about regulation, it appears that, in the Government’s eyes, progress has already been made. Why, then, has growth slowed so far that we are now back in recession? Does that not show that all this deregulation is not working and that we need measures to increase demand?
Mr Willetts
Growth has slowed because of the problems in the eurozone driven partly by levels of regulation much greater than those in Britain.