Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Harper and Peter Grant

Thursday 24th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

14. What assessment he has made of his Department’s spending priorities in the context of the autumn statement 2022.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Mark Harper)]

The Chancellor announced a plan in last week’s autumn statement to tackle the cost of living crisis and rebuild our economy. As I said earlier, the Government will invest more than £600 billion in infrastructure over the next five years to connect our country and grow the economy. Transport investment will play a huge part in delivering that, and I will work to deliver a stable, long-term plan to run, maintain and expand our transport network across the United Kingdom.

[Peter Grant]

The Republic of Ireland is facing exactly the same global economic impacts as the United Kingdom, but the recent Irish Budget was able to increase support for transport across the southern part of that island. In contrast, the real-terms cuts we will see in the coming years will have a direct impact on transport spending in England and, significantly, in the devolved nations through the Barnett formula. Will the Secretary of State undertake to ensure that the transport needs of other parts of the United Kingdom are not sacrificed for those in London? Does he agree that all public transport infrastructure spending in Scotland should be according to the priorities of the Scottish Government, who were elected for that purpose?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman is right that we will have to deal with the pressures of inflation, and the Government’s No. 1 economic priority is to reduce inflation as quickly as possible. Inflation is a global phenomenon, driven by the recovery from the covid pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine, but it is important that we deal with it.

The hon. Gentleman will know that I represent a constituency quite some distance from London. I am well aware that we need to spread transport investment across the United Kingdom, and I will make sure that I work closely with the Scottish Government on shared priorities, as set out in Peter Hendy’s Union connectivity review.

Migration and Scotland

Debate between Mark Harper and Peter Grant

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

No, I do not. The Migration Advisory Committee—the clue is in the name—provides advice to the Government. I am very pleased that we live in a country where decisions are taken by Ministers who are accountable to this House. I look forward to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary setting out the Government’s plans once they have been approved by the Cabinet.

I have never quite understood one point. It was touched on by the hon. Member for Streatham, who speaks for the Opposition. It is the issue about pay and skills shortages. I suppose it is because people on the left broadly do not believe in a market economy, but my view is that, if there are sectors of the economy where employers are having trouble recruiting people, that rather suggests that they should increase the pay in those sectors, or improve the training that they provide for people—the economic value to those constituents. We should not simply acquiesce in allowing businesses to import an unlimited number of people to keep down the wages of the people working in the sector. Sometimes, as a Conservative, that is an uncomfortable message to deliver, because we are the party of business and economic growth: that is certainly the view of business. Sometimes we should say to business, “You should not be able to employ an unlimited number of people from overseas and keep wages down; you should actually increase the salaries you pay to your staff or increase the training opportunities to improve their productivity.” The Government having that level of creative tension with business would be more healthy than simply allowing it to import cheap labour.

[Peter Grant]

If the response to staffing shortages and skills shortages is to pay people more, can the right hon. Gentleman explain why it is that when the health service was experiencing desperate shortages of staff right across the board, his Government imposed year after year of public sector pay cuts in real terms?

[Mr Harper]

Opposition Members always find this tiresome—although it tends to be ones from the official Opposition—but the hon. Gentleman will know that when the Conservative Government came into office in 2010, we faced a significant deficit in the public finances—[Interruption.] SNP Members immediately start jeering, but it is true. That needed dealing with, and Government Members had to take some very difficult decisions to get the public finances in order; I commend Liberal Democrat Members, who took part in the coalition Government. I am surprised that Scottish nationalist Members of Parliament do not understand big deficits in the public finances, because Scotland has in its public finances a significant deficit of around 7%, which is significantly higher than the rest of the United Kingdom.

UK-Israel Trade

Debate between Mark Harper and Peter Grant

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Peter Grant]

No, I am afraid I do not have a great deal of time.

Although trade in general between the UK and Israel is to be welcomed and promoted, we should not get things out of context. Israel accounts for less than 0.5% of UK exports—it will not fix the huge absence of trade that we will have if discussions with the European Union go wrong. We could increase exports to Israel by a factor of 10 and it would still be only a relatively minor trading partner compared with the European Union and a number of others.

We must try to negotiate an equivalent of 40 trade deals in just a couple of years, if we are lucky—possibly not even that long. I must take to task the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), who said that the Trade Bill will replicate all the current trade deals in British legislation. No, it will not. The Trade Bill will convert EU legislation into UK law, but the only way that the UK can replicate its trade deals with the 40 countries in question is if those 40 countries agree to that. This Parliament cannot unilaterally agree to extend a trade deal after we have left the European Union, and the European Union cannot do that on our behalf.

Although we can speak positively about trade with Israel in general, there are two aspects of that trade about which I cannot speak positively. As the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) mentioned—I was very disappointed by the response he received—trade with the Occupied Palestinian Territories should not be treated as if it were trade with Israel. Indeed, at the moment, under the EU agreement with Israel that cannot happen, and when Gordon Brown was in office, he said that it would be an offence to take goods from the occupied territories and sell them marked as produce of Israel. I want the Minister to give an absolute assurance that after we leave the European Union, nothing will be done to land a deal with Israel that will make it easier for goods that have been produced illegally in the illegally occupied territories to be exported here. We should regard those goods as the proceeds of crime.

[Mr Harper]

On that specific point, the hon. Gentleman seems to be mushing two things together. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) was talking about settlements, which is one issue, but the hon. Gentleman seems to be saying that we should not trade with any businesses based anywhere in the occupied territories. That sounds like a recipe for putting out of business every Palestinian-owned business, and subjecting them all to economic devastation. Is that really what he is saying?

[Peter Grant]

To clarify, I am talking about trade with areas that are under illegal occupation by Israel, and where Israel has illegally occupied parts of Palestine. I do not think that “settlements” is the correct term; this is an illegal occupation, and we should not be looking to trade with any business carried out under the illegal Israeli settlement or occupation—call it what you will. Plenty of other Palestinian businesses in Gaza and the rest of Palestine would welcome our trade, if only the Israelis would let that trade get through to Gaza.

Another area that has not yet been touched on but must be mentioned is the UK’s massively increasing weapons sales to Israel. UK arms sales licences to Israel have increased by 1,100% in two years, and in 2017 the value of licences awarded was £220 million. Israel is about our 45th biggest export customer, but it is our eighth biggest arms export customer. Consider what the Israel defence forces have been using some of those small arms to do over the past two or three months—it is time for those arms sales to stop.

I do not deny, and I would never argue about, the right of Israel to exist or defend itself against aggressors, and I would never argue about the fact that Israel faces an aggressor in some of the more militant elements within Palestine. However, children being shot with high velocity sniper rifles; medics whose only weapon is a first-aid box being shot from a distance with high-velocity precision rifles by highly trained and skilled snipers—those are not acts of self-defence, those are acts of unlawful killing and should be called out as that. The United Kingdom should not be selling weapons to anybody who is still under investigation for such crimes.