United Kingdom: Exports

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Yes, indeed. Design is very much embedded in many of the manufacturing companies, and much work is being done on that. My noble friend mentioned the creative sector, and she will be aware that the sector employed nearly 1.7 million people in 2012, which represented 5.6% of the UK total. So it is a most important sector, and we continue to promote it. Part of that involves the Government setting up the Creative Industries Council.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, has the Minister had time to reflect on the impact of the Government’s immigration policies on services? This was brought to mind by a letter that I received today from one of his colleagues, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, who tells me that,

“we do recognise that these necessary visa reforms have had an impact on perceptions overseas and that we need to get better at communicating that all genuine students are welcome here and that there are opportunities for them to both study here and work after graduation”.

We certainly need to get better, because the number of overseas students taking up places in England’s universities decreased by 4,500 in one year, the first fall in 29 years.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My focus and the Government’s focus is on promoting the UK. The professional and business services sector is the UK’s largest economic sector, contributing 12% to UK employment and 11% of gross value added. To take up the noble Lord’s point about jobs, the PBS sector employs 3.8 million people, accounting for £147 billion to the UK economy. I do not at this stage want to get into the visa aspect, but I wanted to point out the importance of the sector.