Points of Order

Mark Francois Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. In “Game of Thrones”, it was famously said that, “Winter is coming”, and no one is more conscious of that than the Ukrainians. As a member of the Defence Committee, and having recently returned from Ukraine, I know that after as a cry for more weapons, their second greatest cry was for generators to help power things such as hospitals through the winter if they lose more power stations to Russian missile strikes.

I raise this issue now, Sir, because on the previous urgent question I, like a number of Members from across the House, made a plea to the Government to look at some kind of scheme to sponsor the delivery of generators to Ukraine. As the Business Secretary is at the Dispatch Box, I wanted him to hear this. My ask, through you, is whether the Government could come up with some kind of “Power for Ukraine” scheme, where British companies could either sponsor the cost of a generator or provide one if they had one of their own, perhaps in their warehouse or truck park, that is not really doing anything but could save lives in a hospital or other facility in Ukraine. Will the Secretary of State undertake to look at how we might do that and see whether he can come back to the House with some idea of how we could save lives?

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I spoke to Mr Speaker about an hour ago about my intention to raise a point of order. While I have been in this Chamber for the past two hours, as the secretary of the all-party group on Ukraine I have been made aware of the fact that the Lawn Tennis Association has been sanctioned by the Association of Tennis Professionals, the governing body of tennis, for the LTA’s announcement of a ban on Russian and Belarusian players from its tournaments last year. The LTA has been fined $1 million as well. What would be the best way for this House to show its unity with the LTA and urge that any fines levied are given to the humanitarians efforts in Ukraine, perhaps to fund some more generators for the Ukrainian people, who are suffering from Putin’s barbaric invasion?

New Pylons: East Anglia

Mark Francois Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered new pylons in East Anglia.

It is my great pleasure to introduce this debate on the prospect of new pylons in the east of England, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting us time to discuss the new electricity transmission infrastructure in our constituencies, which will have a high impact if it goes ahead as proposed.

I am introducing the debate barely 24 hours after the death of my mother. She loved the countryside, she loved Essex and she lived in Suffolk; and she would have wanted me to carry on with the debate, I am absolutely certain.

East Anglia Green Energy Enablement, or GREEN, is the title of the project that proposes to build a new high-voltage network reinforcement between Norwich, Bramford near Ipswich in Suffolk, and Tilbury on the Essex coast. As an MP, I have never received as many emails from my constituents about a single topic.

Today, I speak as chair of the Off Shore Electricity Grid Task Force, or OffSET, which does what it says on the tin. We are calling on National Grid to publish a fully costed offshore alternative to East Anglia GREEN. Yesterday evening, we had a helpful meeting with National Grid and Electricity System Operator, or ESO, and National Grid informally made the commitment that it would produce those costings and plans so that they can be compared with the proposal it is making. We urge National Grid to make that commitment publicly.

In Scotland and Wales, new transmission infrastructure faces a similar backlash. Scottish and Welsh MPs kindly signed up for the debate to explain their frustration over the development of infrastructure in their constituencies, and if they are not here today, that is probably because of the heat, although their moral support is certainly with us.

The environmental and societal impacts of East Anglia GREEN will fall disproportionately on my constituents in North Essex, although they will see little benefit from the new infrastructure in their own lives. On the contrary, the impact is all negative. The new transmission infra- structure is primarily required to transport electricity from offshore wind farms off the east coast and from new nuclear builds on the coast to London.

The East Anglia GREEN background document states that the reinforcement will require

“underground cabling through the Dedham Vale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty”.

That is obviously a mitigation, but it will create another problem. The construction phrase “undergrounding” will impact local habitats and archaeology—Dedham Vale is an ancient archaeological site as important as Stonehenge, only the henge in Dedham Vale was wooden, so it is not standing today, although its imprint still exists—as well as destroying valuable agricultural and arable land. Local farmers are concerned that undergrounding will disrupt soil layering and impede drainage.

The national planning framework states that development within area of outstanding natural beauty settings should be

“sensitively located and designed to avoid or minimise adverse impacts on the designated areas.”

In my constituency, I am particularly concerned about the construction to the south of the area of outstanding natural beauty, which leads to and from the proposed site of the Tendring substation. It will require a double run of cables, to the substation and then back from the substation towards London. That double run of pylons will adversely impact local communities to the north of Colchester.

I do not understand the rationale whereby because a community—Ardleigh village, in this case—already hosts existing infrastructure, it is seen to be best placed to host new infrastructure. Ardleigh has a small substation, but the planned new Tendring substation is much larger than the existing one and will cover 20 hectares, spreading into three different parishes. Two further customer substations may also be located nearby.

The House of Commons engagement team has kindly spoken to many constituents in all our constituencies about their experience of the National Grid consultation, and I thank all those who contributed, including two of my constituents. Laura, who stands to have pylons on three sides of her property, was told by a local estate agent that the value of her house could decline by 30% to 40%. That is not costed into any proposal; it is a hit that she and her family take, not something that National Grid or anyone else has to pay for. Julia, who was recently widowed, is struggling to sell her family home of 28 years because of uncertainty surrounding the East Anglia GREEN. The proposals are already blighting people’s lives.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I am sure I speak for all of us here today when I offer my hon. Friend my most sincere condolences on his grievous loss.

The National Grid plan does not come through my constituency of Rayleigh and Wickford, but it runs relatively close. However, having checked with my office yesterday, I was given no notification at all about this consultation and, as far as I know, neither were my constituents. Does my hon. Friend agree with me—I say this to the Minister through him—that the consultation should be rerun, so that all Members of Parliament and the people they represent can have their say?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for his kind words. I agree with him completely. One of my arguments is that this consultation is completely inadequate. All the respondents to the House of Commons engagement team’s inquiries expressed a strong preference for an offshore transmission system, which would avoid the blighting of farmland, and people’s homes and communities. That barely figures in the consultation and it was only in yesterday’s discussion that National Grid started to explain why it had not really considered that, but it has not published the reasons, figures, assessment or analysis as to why that has been dismissed so quickly.

Leaving the EU: Airbus Risk Assessment

Mark Francois Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

Day in, day out, I meet businesses and persuade them of the advantages of this country. I have to report that one of their concerns is the policies of the hon. Lady’s Front Benchers, which are a very significant deterrent to investment in this country.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Some months ago, when I visited Airbus at Broughton, I was briefed in detail about its considerable investment in both capital and skills for specialised wing work. Is it not a fact that it would be extremely expensive for Airbus if it were ever to contemplate trying to relocate that work, be it to Hamburg or Toulouse?

[Greg Clark]

My right hon. Friend takes too pessimistic a view. We do not want Airbus to be located in this country because it is too difficult for the company to go elsewhere; we want it to be here with enthusiasm because this is a good and profitable place to invest. I am determined that the deal we secure and the investment we make through our industrial strategy will add to our strengths and make us even more attractive. We should have a counsel of optimism rather than defensive pessimism.

GKN

Mark Francois Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman talks about employees’ interests, and he has fulminated about the bid for a company that has an important plant in his constituency, but he has not made a single request or proposed a single safeguard to protect those interests. I do not know whether he has met the new management of GKN—I do not think he has—but my hon. Friends the Members for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) and for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) have made the effort and have discussed the important commitments that are being made, and the undertakings that I have secured will contribute to employment stability. The difference between my hon. Friends and the hon. Gentleman is that they have rolled up their sleeves and got involved, whereas he has contented himself with making slogans from the Back Benches.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

The aerospace division is the jewel in GKN’s crown and is a vital part of Britain’s defence industrial base, so as a former Ministry of Defence Minister, I particularly welcome the guarantees that have been provided about the future of that part of the company. Will the Secretary of State say a little more about how he has worked closely with the MOD on that? Will he also assure us that the MOD will be a part of the six-monthly reviews?

[Greg Clark]

I will indeed, and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who speaks with considerable authority not just as a former MOD Minister, but as an ex-serviceman. Defence considerations are important, and I work closely with the MOD, which has provided a comprehensive assessment. That is the proper basis on which those with expertise in such matters can say what is required to safeguard national security, and I promised this House that I would abide meticulously by the expert advice that I receive. I am glad that I have had access to that expertise and have made my decision based on it. Of course, when it comes to considering the future opportunities for this company, our engagement through the industrial strategy is as important in the defence sector as it in the automotive and civil aerospace sectors.

BAE Systems Military Air & Information Sites: Job Losses

Mark Francois Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

I am entirely in agreement with the hon. Lady about the need to engage closely to understand the reasons. To reassure her on a couple of points that she raised, this is not due to any stop-start change in the Government’s procurement; this is in fact due to gaps in bringing forward some of the export orders. As I mentioned, the Secretary of State has signed a statement of intent with Qatar, and indeed we are standing by to do everything possible to support further export opportunities.

The hon. Lady may not have heard, but I mentioned the talent retention system. She is absolutely right: for too long we have not thought about people and their skills and worked out whether there are other opportunities, especially in the region, to ensure that those skills are not lost. That is why we will be deploying the talent retention system that has been developed by my Department with this industry, and looking to see what more can be done.

To allay some of the hon. Lady’s questions about our commitment to shipbuilding, I can tell her that we have published the national shipbuilding strategy. I am told that we will be bringing forward the refresh of the defence industry policy document very shortly.

We need to focus on the people who may be concerned about this, meet them to gain an understanding of their concerns, and see what more can be done, particularly to ensure that those vital skills are not lost to this or other sectors.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

The tranche 3 variant of the Typhoon aircraft, especially when equipped with the new electronically scanned radar, will be one of the most capable and effective combat aircraft in the world. The Minister has already mentioned the letter of intent with Qatar for 24 Typhoons, and there are, as she has intimated, a number of other countries around the globe that are still interested in Typhoon, not least Saudi Arabia. Can she assure Members in all parts of the House that, just as the Government gave strong support to the Qatari deal, they will strain every sinew to try to support further Typhoon exports, not least in Saudi Arabia?

[Claire Perry]

I am nervously rising to answer a question from my right hon. Friend, who knows more about this than many of us will ever know. He is absolutely right: not only have we signed the statement of intent, but only last month the Secretary of State got on a plane to Saudi Arabia to press the case for using these aircraft, not just for the upfront sale but for the thousands of jobs that depend on the long-term upgrade and servicing.

All Members across the House should be supporting these export deals and the jobs that are reliant on them. It was a shame that hon. Members—[Interruption.] Well, they say, “Here we go.” Perhaps they were not listening at conference. It was a shame that the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) used her moment on the Labour party conference podium to attack the Government for strengthening co-operation and the deals that this brings with our key regional ally. Let us get behind this industry, so that we can protect and invest in this technology for the future.

Draft Trade Union Act 2016 (Political Funds) (Transition Period) Regulations 2017

Mark Francois Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 General Committees

[Ms Eagle]

This Government party politicised the entire issue, and they have a history of doing that over years. I will not go into that because you will rule me out of order, Mr Stringer, but it is in the history books that opting out was brought in during the aftermath of the general strike to punish trade unions for having the temerity to stand up for their members’ rights then. What we are seeing now is a similar process.

We all know that opting in reduces participation. We know the Government accept that: we in Parliament all agreed to change pensions so that there is auto-enrolment, because the Government want more people to enrol in workplace pensions. We legislated for auto-enrolment to maximise participation.

The sole point of the particular section of the Act with which this statutory instrument is connected is to reduce participation in political funds, so that there is less money available to trade unions to campaign on issues that are important to them in the workplace—health and safety, wages and the conditions that millions of people up and down this country rely on in their jobs—so that the casualisation, the move to zero-hours contracts and the deregulation of our labour market can carry on without effective barriers to that. That is part of the motivation behind this short statutory instrument. I have never seen a smaller and more innocuous-looking statutory instrument that has been designed to cause so much havoc.

If we were feeling generous about the Conservative party’s motivation in proposing the transition period, I suppose we might think that it is just totally ignorant of how trade unions work, but we know that it is not. The Conservatives consulted the unions, the certification officer and the TUC, although in a very unsatisfactory way, but they completely ignored every aspect of that consultation, which drew attention to the practicalities. The unions are being forced by law, like no other organisation in this country, to put themselves through hoops for arbitrary reasons of political expedience, I suppose, to change how they operate. That is because the Conservative party, which has always been opposed to trade unions having a political voice, happens to think that it can get away with being even more opposed to trade unions having that voice, so that there is less resistance to what the Conservatives want to do to working people in this country in the next few years.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I will try to keep this brief. I have to join my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire in challenging the constant attitude of Labour Members that only they speak for working-class people. My father was an engineer, my mother was a school dinner lady and I went to my local state comprehensive. I have all the working-class back-story that they want. I just caution the hon. Lady: from her attitude and, it has to be said, that of some of her colleagues, they often seek to give the impression that they have some kind of monopoly over the support of working-class people. As a matter of fact, they do not, and if they had, we would never have won the general election.

[Ms Eagle]

All I would say to the right hon. Gentleman is that if he wants to demonstrate that he supports working-class people, he should join us when we vote against this wrecking statutory instrument, which is designed to weaken the voice of trade unions and working people in the labour market in our country. It is designed to make it harder for them to achieve an appropriate remuneration for their work, and to make our labour market less fair than it is.

We have seen the explosion of zero-hours contracts and exploitative pay and conditions in that market, which is driving many people to have multiple jobs and still be in work poverty. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to demonstrate his working-class credentials, and if he wants to demonstrate that he really cares about what goes on in the modern labour market, he will join us in voting against the statutory instrument. I look forward to his doing that, because it is about time that the Government were defeated on this wholly irresponsible and unreasonable transition period that they are proposing in the statutory instrument.

I presume that the Minister has read the responses to the consultation, so she must know that all the organisations responded by telling her how difficult it was practically, within their existing rules, to do what she wants in the proposed period. An extension of only a few more months would enable far larger numbers of trade unions to do in an appropriate fashion what the Government are ordering them to do—requiring them to do—and in a way that would not cause chaos to their rule books or with their systems.

Why does the Minister not listen to those wholly reasonable suggestions about how the changes could be made in a way that would not compromise the internal workings, constitutions and rules of those organisations? Why not work with them, instead of imposing these arbitrary dates? I heard no explanation from her; perhaps she has one in front of her now. I will happily give way to her, if she can show a bit of flexibility.

I have had a look at the consultation response to which the Minister referred in the slight apology at the end of her speech, and it is the most unforthcoming document. It is three paragraphs, and nowhere does it say whether any of the trade unions mentioned objected to the transition period that she suggests. Why not put that information in the consultation response? Is it because all of them objected to the short time that the statutory instrument gives for the transition?

I did not think it possible to cause as much havoc, red tape, inconvenience and cost to any organisation as will be caused by the arbitrary changes—imposed from outside, to the way that trade unions must work with their members—made by this statutory instrument and the primary legislation to which it refers. We have not seen the certification officer check-off regulations yet; those are potentially even worse, because they involve having to renegotiate, with multiple employers, very long-standing arrangements.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion, given the Government’s cloth ears on the subject, that they are trying to cause as much administrative havoc as possible to reduce the number of people who participate in unions and pay into the political funds, so that there will be less money available in civic society for pointing out the inequities in the decisions that the Conservative Government are taking across the piece. They do not like opposition, well organised arguments against their approach or campaigning that is done in a way that is likely to elicit sympathy from voters, so they are using—in my view, misusing—their powers to stifle, and to silence, dissent.

There will be a backlash, because in a democracy people who are put upon in this way will always fight back. What the Conservative party does not understand or appreciate is that in a proper democracy we must have due respect for all shades of opinion, including the opinions of the trade union movement. This statutory instrument shows contempt for the trade union movement’s culture and history, its internal organisations and its rulebooks. It puts burdens on trade unions that would never have been put on any other civic society organisation in our country, in what is meant to be a free democracy.

That should be seen for what it is. I will be proud to vote against this statutory instrument at the end of the debate. The fight for proper, free trade unions and proper means of political expression for those who are at work and are protected by their trade unions, day in, day out, will go on beyond this pettiness from the Government—this attempt to misuse Parliament’s powers to ensure that opposition is stifled.