A&E Provision: Shropshire and Mid-Wales

Debate between Mark Williams and Daniel Kawczynski

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is absolutely right. In fact, my colleague from just across the border, my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), always joins us at our meetings with our hospital trust. We almost think of him as a Salopian. [Hon. Members: “Steady!”] Not quite, but he does so much to represent his constituents in Wales, who already have to travel long distances to get to the Royal Shrewsbury hospital. He might correct me if I am wrong, but I think that some of them, from the extreme west of his constituency, already have to travel for over an hour to access A&E services in Shrewsbury. So any movement even further away from Shrewsbury would be completely unacceptable to his constituents.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I come from a peripheral position, further to the west of Montgomeryshire. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and stress the importance of getting this right, because it has an impact further to the west. If this issue is not resolved, it will impact on the capacity of my district general hospital in Aberystwyth to serve the people of mid-Wales as well. It is crucial to address this issue.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I concur with the hon. Gentleman, and I am grateful for his intervention.

I shall start to end because I want to give the Minister as much time as possible to answer these questions. Let us not forget that if we get this right, it could result in an investment of £300 million into the NHS in Shropshire. I do not know about all my colleagues—I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire has been an MP for longer than me—but I certainly do not remember a time during my 11 years as an MP when we have had such an investment in the local NHS. As I say, if we get this right, we could see an investment of £300 million in Shropshire to implement these changes.

I know that there is more work to be done to secure this money. I know that more work will have to be done in innovative ways, both locally and nationally, to secure all the funding. If we do not sort ourselves out, however, we are going to get further and further behind, while other areas in the United Kingdom—this is not an issue peculiar to Shropshire—that are going through this process in a more cordial and mutually effective way are going to jump the queue, and Shropshire will be left right at the end. I am not prepared to see that happen.

Finally, Telford Council would obviously have us believe that as part of this programme, women and children’s services have to be moved from Telford to Shrewsbury, because the main A&E will need to have women’s and children’s services next to the main A&E provider at the Royal Shrewsbury hospital. The council says—this is an important point that I want the Minister to note—that because these services were moved from Shrewsbury to Telford a few years ago, such a move would lead to the waste of £28 million. It repeatedly talks about this through the local media. No, no, no. It is not a waste. The building will be used for other purposes, and all the equipment in it, which is easily moved, will be moved to Royal Shrewsbury hospital. So I refute any proposal that there has been a waste of the £28 million invested in women’s and children’s services because of the changes that will take place.

UK Dairy Sector

Debate between Mark Williams and Daniel Kawczynski

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Williams]

I completely concur with the hon. Lady, who has experience of the farming industry both in England and in Wales. I will address the Groceries Code Adjudicator later, but I agree with her sentiments.

In Wales, the dairy sector continues to suffer from months of continuing low prices and poor profitability, and many of the farming unions are not convinced that there is likely to be a recovery any time soon. According to AHDB Dairy, for the 12 months to December 2015 total full costs of production ranged from 25.7p to 34.4p a litre. In short, there is huge disparity between the costs of production and the price that producers receive, which is a huge concern. The figures over the past decade show the loss of 5,500 dairy producers in England and Wales, and that downward trajectory will continue if nothing is done to help support dairy farmers. That means a change in the ethos of some of our farmers, but it also means positive action from the different Governments, whether it is the Government here in Westminster or the devolved Administrations. If we do not do that, it will have a terrible impact on the rural communities that many of us represent.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Williams]

I give way to a neighbour of Wales.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

One thing that the hon. Gentleman has not mentioned is the fact that this debate is almost as repetitive as the changing seasons. I must have been to more than 12 such debates over the past decade, and we always get platitudes from Ministers, who say that everything is being done. I hope he agrees that, when the Minister stands up on this occasion, we will hearing about concrete steps that the Government are taking to support our dairy farmers.

[Mr Williams]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I refer him and the Minister to the report by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. The hon. Gentleman has a fine pedigree in championing such issues. He set up the all-party dairy group in the last Parliament, and he initiated many of the 12 debates that I mentioned. I thank him for his contribution.

I mentioned rural communities. I reflect on the words of the farmer whom I spoke to on the streets of Aberystwyth last weekend, who told me that price fluctuations over the past five years have cost his business something like £100,000. That is a huge loss to the local economy, local businesses and the wider agricultural economy.

SMEs (Middle East and North Africa)

Debate between Mark Williams and Daniel Kawczynski

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on his impressive work in this field. He mentioned agriculture and SMEs, but does he also think that important links need to be made between UKTI and the higher education sector, regarding the expertise in the sector and the work we are doing there? Wearing his hat as Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Wales Office, does he acknowledge that Welsh universities can offer a lot to UKTI in boosting our economy?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I agree with my hon. Friend on that point, and I very much hope that he will engage—as I do—with the Minister in bringing directly to him, and also to Mr Nick Baird, examples of how UKTI can get involved with his constituency in Wales.

We must always be evaluating the structure of UKTI, its reporting processes and its accountability to Parliament. We must never forget that the organisation receives more than £400 million of British taxpayers’ money every year. We must also, and I will not flinch from this, be assessing, as with any other organisation, the calibre of its staff, in the United Kingdom and overseas. We must consider whether UKTI should remain in its current form, become a stand-alone entity along the lines of the Technology Strategy Board, or be brought, rather than being between the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, into a new external relations department of the Foreign Office, UKTI and the Department for International Development, focusing on our foreign relations interactions.

What there must be, however, is greater scrutiny of UKTI in the House of Commons. Since the general election, this is only the third debate—two of them initiated by me—that Parliament has had on UKTI and British exports, and I certainly will not be able to say everything I wish to say in 15 minutes. I am pleased that there is a Labour Member—the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith)—here today. In the previous debate there were none, so I welcome the fact that a Labour MP is taking an interest. I do not know what mechanism could be used for that greater scrutiny. I do not know if an independent Select Committee just evaluating UKTI would be feasible, but we must always challenge UKTI and its Ministers and raise concerns when things do not go right.

I shall now turn to the subject of the debate—north Africa. I feel passionately about French-speaking north Africa because of its proximity to the United Kingdom and its importance strategically, for security reasons, and from an economic perspective. When I went to Mauritania two years ago, I was the first British MP to do so since 1960, when the current Father of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell), went there for its independence day celebrations. Regrettably, most MPs I talk to do not even know where Mauritania is, yet it is an important and rapidly growing country. It is close to Morocco, and is part of the Arab League and of north Africa. There are huge opportunities in its oil and gas sector, as well as in mining, education and construction, yet on the UKTI website no opportunities whatever are listed for the country.

I know that we have representation in Mauritania. Following my report about the country, the Foreign Secretary visited Mauritania, and we have now established a diplomatic presence on the ground in Nouakchott. As UKTI has a website for SMEs to look at and interact with, to find out what opportunities there are in a country, it is rather daunting to look up Mauritania and find nothing there. We must ensure that if we have a website it is properly populated.

Last week I took Nick Baird to have lunch with the Moroccan ambassador, Princess Lalla Joumala, and we talked about the importance of partnering with and working constructively with Morocco in joint venture operations. Morocco has tremendous relations from a banking, cultural and linguistic perspective with the other countries in the region—not just in north Africa—including Senegal, Mali and Niger. The Moroccans are keen to engage with us, so I was pleased that Mr Baird came with me to that lunch. I hope that there will be an increased focus on the Moroccans and on partnering with them to work constructively on penetrating the French-speaking north African market.

Luckily I speak French, because I studied it at university, but we are too guilty in this country of going only to places where English is spoken. If the first national language of a country is not English, we tend to gravitate away from it, and we cannot afford to do that any longer. All of the north African French-speaking countries are very keen to interact with the United Kingdom.

UK Trade and Investment

Debate between Mark Williams and Daniel Kawczynski

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

I am pleased to have secured this Adjournment debate on the performance of UK Trade & Investment. The last time we had a debate on UKTI on the Floor of the House was last March, when it was secured by my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys). I very much regret that there are not more opportunities for Members to scrutinise UKTI’s performance.

I very much welcome the work done by Lord Green and his colleagues at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, but it is regrettable that so few Members of Parliament seek opportunities to scrutinise UKTI’s performance. We debate a great deal in this Chamber about how to slice up and apportion the cake, but exports are about making the cake bigger. I spent most of my working life before entering this House in exports, and I feel passionately about their importance in bringing wealth and prosperity to our nation.

As the European Union continues to diminish in importance vis-à-vis British exports, so I turn to the middle east and north Africa. I pay tribute to my American intern, Mr Justin King—it is entirely plausible that one day he will become a congressman, and I very much hope so. He is helping me greatly to interview hundreds of small British companies. They are coming from all over the United Kingdom to my office in the House of Commons to show me their evidence and experience of UKTI, and of trying to interact with it.

Before I continue with my speech I want to give three examples of why the MENA area—middle east and north Africa—is so important. I am chairman of two all-party two groups: the Saudi Arabia all-party group, and the all-party group on Libya. When we went to Saudi Arabia, the Saudi King himself admonished me saying that the lack of British exports to that country was regrettable. He said that all our European Union competitors were motoring ahead, and that it was regrettable that the United Kingdom is falling behind our main competitors in exports to Saudi Arabia.

Sixty British companies operate in Tunisia, compared with 1,800 French companies. I will repeat that—60 compared with 1,800. I was the first British Member of Parliament ever to go to Mauritania since its independence in 1960, and almost no British companies export there. We are good at exporting to countries that speak English, but the French-speaking part of the world is almost a vortex for British interests, particularly commercial interests. If this week has shown anything, given the problems in Algeria and Mali, it is that it is essential that we engage with those strategically important countries of north Africa, primarily by assisting our own companies to interact with those countries, and help them with exports, and—vitally—technology transfer.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does he also agree that there is a role for promoting our higher education institutions in those countries? My hon. Friend does a great deal, and as Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Wales Office he does a lot for Wales. I am sure he will be aware of the significant and important businesses we could be exporting that originate in our universities in Wales.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I concur with my hon. Friend and he reminds me of an important point. Whenever I go to the middle east I see that the British brand is so strong. Because we are British we tend to hide our light under a bushel, but overseas the British brand is incredibly strong—it is sterling, A-plus, gold standard—and people are desperate to buy British.

My hon. Friend is correct. Shrewsbury school, one of the best private schools in the world, is so popular that we cannot accommodate all the foreigners who wish to study there. They have had to build a Shrewsbury school in Bangkok, and there are current negotiations to build another in the middle east. I completely concur with my hon. Friend.

Let me say how important advertising is. I understand there are constraints on Government budgets, and that the Cabinet Office is obviously not keen to loosen the purse strings. There should, however, be a significant increase in the budget for UKTI. I want a nationwide campaign in this country, through the television, media, newspapers, and even product placements in soap operas, by which we constantly inform small and medium-sized companies throughout the country that UKTI exists and that there are opportunities to engage with it and for them to receive support to export.

I still remember the “Tell Sid” campaign in the 1980s to try to get us to buy British Gas. I want such a campaign now—a campaign that people talk about and get excited about.

The best campaign I have experienced in my seven years as a Member of Parliament was Joanna Lumley’s Gurkha campaign. She revolutionised the campaign when she took it over. The media suddenly became extraordinarily interested. I want a national figure—somebody of renowned business intellect and experience, whether Richard Branson or Alan Sugar—to have a programme on television. It could be called “Export Apprentice” rather than just “The Apprentice”. They should also be a guru and a champion and spearhead a nationwide campaign to ensure that our small and medium-sized companies are passionate about exporting.

Wind Farms (Mid-Wales)

Debate between Mark Williams and Daniel Kawczynski

Tuesday 10th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mark Williams]

I know that my hon. Friend is a regular tourist to my constituency. He speaks about the general environmental damage done by turbines, but will he reflect also on the damage done in the immediate area of wind farms? Next time he visits Ceredigion, I shall take him to the summit of Cefn Croes, which at one point contained the largest wind farm in the country. There he will see the damage done to the peat bogs—there has been no attempt to restore the landscape—and the spectacle of vast concrete roads going to the summit of a beautiful landscape.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I holiday in my hon. Friend’s constituency, which is beautiful, and I can recommend Mwnt bay as a lovely holiday destination. I shall take up his offer.

Tourism is the No. 1 income generator in Shropshire, and we depend upon our beautiful landscape to attract tourists, who come not only from the United Kingdom but from around the world. I pay tribute to two local Conservative councillors, Tudor Bebb and David Roberts. They are working hard with various local bodies, including the local tourism association, to analyse the impact that the proposals would have on the local economy.

If the electricity produced were brought across Shropshire to the national grid, the cables could be put underground. However, we are told by those who propose these measures that that would cost 15 times as much as pylons, the monstrosities that would have to be built on the Shropshire countryside. I ask the Minister, is it true? What analysis has been undertaken by the Government on that point? Is it the reality that putting cables underground would cost 15 times as much? I ask because we hear from colleagues in the Danish Parliament that the costs are nothing like that. If so, my constituents are being deliberately misled by these companies at public meetings about the cost of putting the cables underground rather than on pylons.