Inward Investment (Wales)

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Westminster Hall

On resuming

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this rather intimate and select gathering, Mr Rosindell. There are important issues to be raised, but I will resist the temptation to talk about future inquiries and previous inquiries. I do not seek to emulate the lengthy contribution that we heard earlier in any way.

I am pleased that the Select Committee undertook its inquiry, and I congratulate its Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), on the way in which he introduced this topic, as well as, of course, his chairing of our Select Committee. He has a knack for choosing the issues of the moment.

Inward investment is critical because the circumstances in which Wales finds itself are different from those of the glory days of inward investment that we saw in the 1980s and early 1990s. On the global stage, the background of the Select Committee’s inquiry is that, since the 1980s, world trade in goods and services has increased more than sevenfold, while the emerging economies have seen their share of trade quadruple and there has been a fourfold increase in the effective supply of global labour. That is a continuing trend for China and India, which are expected to add more than 30 million workers to the world’s labour pool by 2030.

As the Committee’s inquiry identified, Wales can no longer assume that overseas companies will be tempted to invest by the traditional inducements of grants and low labour costs. We have to adapt continually to challenging and consistently changing domestic and global conditions to attract new inward investment, which means working smarter and more flexibly to find more innovative ways to encourage inward investment into our country.

I will focus specifically on two issues that we investigated in the inquiry: the importance of higher education; and infrastructure. First, let me address the importance of the knowledge economy. As emerging economies move up the value chain to compete with Western companies in the manufacture of high-tech products and attracting research and development investment, the OECD has stated:

“If developed countries are to remain competitive in the global economy, they will have to rely more on knowledge, technology and intangible assets.”

In practice, that means that today’s students and graduates will have to provide cutting-edge research—not just research for research’s sake, but research that has a commercial edge—that will ensure our nation’s prosperity.

Our inquiry shows that there needs to be far greater partnership working between the higher and further education sectors, and industry, as well as closer engagement with business. In that spirit, I welcome one of the things that the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) said in his long speech: the developments in Swansea bay and Swansea university’s second campus. The university’s vice chancellor has met many Members of Parliament to celebrate the work he hopes to achieve at the second campus. I hesitate to say this, but in the new budget agreement between the Labour party and Plaid Cymru in the Assembly, there was a commitment of some £10 million for a science park. That will largely be in Bangor, but I hope there will be significant rub-off on Aberystwyth university, too, because that is also important.

At Aberystwyth university in my constituency, there has been meaningful partnership for a long time with the commercial sector and developing economies in other parts of the world. For a medium-sized university, it punches well above its weight. There is investment in research that seeks solutions to many global issues, and over the next five years, the university’s world-leading research will address the major challenges faced across the world. I have repeatedly talked about the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences over the past seven years, for which I make no apology, because excellent, world-leading research is being undertaken in fights against famine, climate change, loss of biodiversity and disease. Collaboration between researchers in Aberystwyth, Africa and India is already leading to breakthroughs in the fight against famine with the development of climate-resistant crops. Such excellent research, which is often talked about, is happening, so the challenge is to market it overseas more effectively and rigorously.

Recently, to commercialise its intellectual property, Aberystwyth university has been developing cutting-edge smartphone technology—that is not unique to Swansea; it is happening in mid-Wales, too—and it is leading the way in developing mobile apps. In recognition of the university’s innovative approach to exploiting its intellectual property and expertise through smartphone platforms, it was awarded funding for those developments by the UK Intellectual Property Office.

The good work that is happening across higher education not only benefits my local economy in Ceredigion and those places where partnerships have been formed, but encourages students to identify and develop commercial ideas, which is a key role. In other words, that is exactly the sort of creative entrepreneurial activity that needs to be encouraged and supported in the HE sector.

Our report highlighted research funding. We also noted that in a report on inward investment during the previous Parliament, but Wales has not been successful at securing its fair share of research funding, which remains a problem, so that battle needs to be waged.

One idea we heard in evidence was for business angels to come in and help to develop products more quickly and get them to market. That is the sort of idea that could be picked up by a local firm, academics or students, and spun out into a company. For a company to develop in those early stages, it needs the right facilities, and that might be a role for the emerging science park that the Administration in Cardiff are pursuing.

We are some way off facilitating such ideas at any great size. We need more joined-up thinking from the Welsh Assembly Government to offer support to such facilitators of enterprise. Support needs to be tailored to skills and the innovation that is happening at any one time, rather than divided into prescriptive sectoral targets, as the Assembly Government have done. There was a debate about whether those sectoral targets are right and what additional targets should be added. For example, the absence of tourism is a key issue affecting my area, and it was subsequently added. That was welcome, but it took some time for the Assembly Government to reach that conclusion.

We have heard about reinforcing the Welsh brand, and it makes sense that Welsh Government overseas offices should be co-located with UK Trade and Investment offices so that the Welsh Government can efficiently utilise the strength and capabilities of UKTI. Wales does not have sufficient resources to work alone in attracting inward investment to Wales, and we must make every penny count. I concur with the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), whom I welcome back from Cape Verde, on the welcome addition of a UKTI official in Wales. The partnership between those two groups, which was not always evident in the discussions and inquiries we had, both in Germany and here, needs to mean something practical if things are to be achieved.

Finally, on connectivity, we asked UKTI about its checklist of motivators to attract people to invest in Wales. The hon. Member for Swansea West was constant in pushing for the recognition of the quality of life in Wales, and we can all empathise with the life experience of living in Wales. The list of motivators also included the transport network and broadband. I welcome the announcement on electrification for south Wales, and I applaud what the Wales Office and my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) have been doing to highlight electrification for north Wales. I am not yet going to launch a campaign for electrification for mid-Wales, but I will reiterate—despite the lack of an audience, because of events elsewhere in the Palace—the case for an hourly service on the Cambrian line between Aberystwyth and Shrewsbury. The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), who is no longer in the Chamber, might not appreciate that, and this is technically a devolved matter, but it impinges on my area’s capacity to develop economically.

Aberystwyth might well be perceived by many to be at the end of the line—and not only in the physical sense—but we have the highest proportion of small businesses per head anywhere in the United Kingdom. Aberystwyth is also a strategically important university town with a large skills base in a county whose huge tourist opportunities have been recognised by the Wales Tourism Alliance. That is one reason why we will be looking to mid-Wales, rather than taking up the captivating invitation to join the city region in Swansea bay—it is pushing it a bit for us in Aberystwyth to join the hon. Member for Swansea West down there. Aberystwyth is a strategic town of significance—that is our focus, and it has been recognised by the National Assembly—and we want that recognised in our transport infrastructure as well.

In his evidence to us, Professor Stuart Cole said this is not about the headcount on the train between Aberystwyth and London, but much more about interconnectivity. There are few peripheral areas of the United Kingdom where people cannot get a direct service to London. As a student, 27 years ago, I could get the seven o’clock inter-city train from Aberystwyth to London, and freight came into Aberystwyth as well, but that has long since gone and we do not even have an hourly service. Having such a service is important, because it could re-energise parts of mid-Wales, from Welshpool, through Newtown, Machynlleth and Caersws, and along the infamous route to Aberystwyth.

[Geraint Davies]

Having been on holiday every year of my life to Aberystwyth, I would concur that there is a great opportunity for cultural, environmental and all sorts of other tourism.

[Mr Williams]

I am grateful for that endorsement. Of course, there are Dylan Thomas connections, as well, if we go a bit further down the coast to New Quay—Cei Newydd—in my constituency. I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention.

I was disappointed when the Select Committee went by train to Aberystwyth a couple of weeks ago. I was grateful that the Chair encouraged the Committee to go, but when the Welsh Government Transport Minister, Carl Sargeant, came to see us, he confirmed that we would not see the hourly service until 2015, despite the fact that we had been promised it for 2014, and despite the fact that all the infrastructure has been done.

On broadband, I very much welcome the £425 million agreement between the Welsh Government and BT to deliver next-generation broadband to 96% of Welsh homes and businesses by 2015. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth mentioned that rurality is important. This is not just about the M4 corridor or the A55. There is a bigger picture, which some of us will not stop talking about. There is real potential across Wales to attract businesses, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We need hard, imaginative, bold targets, but we also need to see the reality.

Finally, the inquiry clearly identified that the Welsh Government need a dedicated trade promotion agency. The evidence shows that, since 2004, investment opportunities have been missed because of this omission, and Wales branding has taken a knock since the days of the Welsh Development Agency and the loss of the Wales Tourist Board. Branding Wales is hugely important; it is tough out there, but we have a strong product that makes Wales stand out from the crowd. I am thinking particularly of culture, outdoor pursuits, tourism, the creative industries, and the potential jobs and wealth created by holding events such as the Ryder cup. There are huge opportunities for us and, in that context, the Select Committee report was highly valuable. In particular, the sections on infrastructure and higher education resonate strongly in terms of the future development of my area.

[Andrew Rosindell (in the Chair)]

I invite Jonathan Edwards to resume his speech, which was interrupted by the Division.