Business of the House

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I was going to call Mr Spellar. Where is the right hon. Gentleman? Oh dear. The fellow has beetled out of the Chamber. It is a great pity.

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

The board of Seqirus, a major vaccine-producing company, is to make a decision this month on whether to invest millions of pounds in the Liverpool site in my constituency or in another site in mainland Europe. I have been seeking a meeting with the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, but I do not yet have a date. The matter is now urgent, so may we have a debate in Government time on what the Government are doing to support the manufacturing industry given the uncertainty that our leaving the European Union is causing around such decisions?

[Mr Lidington]

The hon. Lady will acknowledge that if she looks at the list of significant inward investments into this country since 23 June, she will see that international businesses from both the manufacturing and the services sectors see the United Kingdom as a great place in which to invest for future growth. I am sure that that would be a most powerful argument to raise with the company in her constituency, but I will draw the particular case and its urgency to the attention of the Secretary of State to ensure that a Minister gets back to her.