Oral Answers to Questions

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the desperate need for more engineers, but we have been making good progress. Since 2010, the number of people starting an engineering-related apprenticeship has gone up by 52%, and since 2013 the number of people starting an engineering degree has risen by 6.5 %. If we can get a better supply coming through the pipe, companies will be less inclined to poach from each other and will actually invest in developing the talent themselves through an apprenticeship.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

4. What steps he plans to take to safeguard the universal service obligation for the delivery of mail.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)]

The universal service obligation is not an optional extra—it is a fundamental duty enshrined in law and only Parliament could change that. In addition, it is the responsibility of the postal regulator, Ofcom, to ensure services are available throughout the UK at an affordable and uniform price, six days a week.

[Michael Connarty]

I thank the Minister for that reply, but is it not time that we looked at how Ofcom carries out its remit, possibly through a judicial review of that remit? Ofcom has been dragged reluctantly to review the actions of the cherry-pickers such as Whistl, which wants to pick mail up in the 8% of the UK’s geographical area that covers 42% of the mail thereby undermining the ability of Royal Mail to deliver, yet Ofcom attacked the standard of wages and conditions of the Royal Mail workers rather than deal with the problem of cherry-picking of the universal service obligation, which could be irrecoverably damaged.

[Jo Swinson]

There is agreement on both sides about the importance of the universal service obligation, and I do not think there is any evidence that the regulator is failing to fulfil its duty. It looked in detail at the case the Royal Mail put forward last summer and concluded that the market is operating as it should at the moment. It is committed to a further review later this year, and is also looking at the issue of access pricing. These issues are continually under consideration because the USO is so important.

Oral Answers to Questions

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I happily join the hon. Gentleman in that tribute. I have been to Alstom and seen its advanced electrical equipment manufacturing—it is one of the best in the world—and it is a tribute to the policies we have pursued that it wishes to expand its investment here.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

Given that Brent crude has dropped to $50 a barrel—40% of what it was—I am surprised there was not one question on the Order Paper about the effect of that on the supply chain, which is the responsibility of the Secretary of State; I know he knows this. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy), the new leader of the Labour party in Scotland, is calling for a summit to cover not just offshore but the supply chain factors affected by this collapse in the oil price. Will the Secretary of State join that summit and help not just the offshore industry but the supply chain, which is also affected?

[Vince Cable]

We understand the importance of that question. One of the sectoral groups in our industrial strategy is specifically concerned with the oil and gas supply chain. The companies around Aberdeen in particular are among the world leaders and could be seriously hit by the contraction of investment. Certainly, we will be getting that group together quickly and making an assessment of what it means. It is important to think long term, of course, as much of the industry does; temporary fluctuations in price are not necessarily as damaging as the hon. Gentleman might believe.

EU-US Trade and Investment Agreement

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

My right hon. Friend makes a strong and vivid point. It will be interesting to see the degree of unified purpose and support on the Opposition Benches, and the divergent, not to say conflicting, views on the Government Benches.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

I intervene not necessarily to score a political point, but to make the point that between the World Trade Organisation, the International Labour Organisation and UN conventions, the EU and the US are already signed up—and are trying to sign up other countries, such as China—to raising important standards. Is that not what we want the treaty to advance?

[John Healey]

Indeed. In this post-global financial crisis period, and the global downturn in trade that followed, there is a crisis in citizen and consumer confidence in business. Reasserting that confidence will require standards and agreements that people believe will benefit them, their families and their areas, and are not just deals done by politicians and big business in the backrooms of Brussels.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

I always come to debates about the EU with a copy of the consolidated texts of the EU treaties, as amended by the treaty of Lisbon in January 2008. That usually stops people talking a lot of hot air because they have not taken the trouble to read the treaties.

The question of competence is settled. The treaty on the functioning of the European Union states in article 3(2):

“The Union shall also have exclusive competence for the conclusion of an international agreement when its conclusion is provided for in a legislative act of the Union”.

It is clear from that where competence lies. We should therefore get behind the EU because, whether we like it or not, since Lisbon the EU has been given this responsibility. If it did not carry out its responsibility or if it did not seek those agreements, we would be right to criticise the EU for not using the strength that it has to benefit members of the Union.

There are remarkable opportunities available and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) for securing the debate and setting up the all-party group. A trade agreement will run on for a number of years and must be studied in detail as it does. There are important opportunities for jobs and growth, and I can give examples from my constituency. Syngenta is a Swiss company that does its research in England and develops products that are made in factories in my constituency. It sells $1.5 billion worth of one product to the world, mostly used in the US to prevent soya rust, which is very important. We also have Ineos, made up of former parts of BP, which is seeking to buy ethane from the US, where it is now one tenth of the price of ethane from the North sea, to produce the chemicals required for industry.

Those firms would be helped massively by a tariff agreement, but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne said, a trade agreement is not just about tariffs; it is about standards. The standards of the EU are set out in the treaty on the European Union in article 3(5):

“In its relations with the wider world, the Union shall uphold and promote its values and interests and contribute to the protection of its citizens. It shall contribute to peace, security, the sustainable development of the Earth, solidarity and mutual respect among peoples, free and fair trade, eradication of poverty and the protection of human rights, in particular the rights of the child, as well as to the strict observance and the development of international law, including respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter.”

What could be opposed in setting out to establish a free trade agreement with another massive nation that has similar values? If we think that is not the way to go, perhaps we are talking about having the type of agreement used by companies in Bangladesh, where the Rana plaza collapse revealed the use of buildings that were utterly unacceptable. That is the reality. If companies are not bound by trade agreements that contain priorities and strictures, then, as has been said, the result is a race to the bottom—the lowest standards, the greatest abuse of labour, and the least protection for the people who produce the goods that we use in our country.

Combining the EU article with the standards of the International Labour Organisation and the World Trade Organisation and with the conventions of the UN would result in an ethical trading alliance, and what a massively strong ethical trading alliance the EU and the US would be if we could bring that about. President Obama has declared that he intends to eradicate modern-day slavery, and already California has a transparency of supply chains Bill that makes firms audit for supply chain abuses and ILO labour abuses. Apple recently admitted that it had found child labour in part of the manufacturing process of the iPad in China, which it must now eradicate because of US law. It would be wonderful if we could spread that across the rest of the trading nations that we deal with.

There are many things to be gained from a trade agreement, apart from jobs and prosperity. However, concerns were expressed by the Labour Government during the negotiations on the Lisbon treaty, when we got a derogation on the provision of services of special interest. The health service was specifically named in the Lisbon treaty as something that would be controlled by the Government. Sadly, it is the Government here who are abusing the health service by bringing in not just free trade, but a Hayekian free-for-all in the provision of services in the health services.

[Julian Smith]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that Labour allowed the private sector into the health service in Britain, which had positive effects in many cases?

[Michael Connarty]

I do not think the hon. Gentleman was in the House at the time. The Labour Government said that we would use private services when they were available for people who needed public health services. It was not a case of giving provision over to the private sector. Now there is an open door for the private sector. It is a Hayekian model. Hayek was the driver for Mrs Thatcher’s advisers—the idea that there was no need for a state and that any service that was required could be brought in from the free market. If one reads Hayek—I am an economist—he even went as far as saying that armies should be hired, instead of a state having an army of its own. He also advocated private prisons, and sadly we moved down that road under a Labour Government.

The free trade agreement is regulated. Under the EU treaty, the EU will have to provide for the protection of services of special interest. Every Government in the EU will then be allowed to decide whether to have private sector involvement in their health service. It is interesting to note that in the EU-Canadian trade agreement which has just been accepted, the health service is not part of the agreement. That is a decision of the Canadian Government rather than of the EU, but it may have been influenced by the fact that the EU has that provision for protecting services of special interest.

For me there must be conditions, and I liked the four conditions set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne—putting our weight behind the EU team, not being a drag on the process, and so on. I have three conditions. One is transparency. The hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash), in his role as Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee, is quite correct to say that the Committee should be able to see the process stage by stage, but that alone is not adequate. Parliament must hear about it. There should be special reports from the Minister for Europe, the Foreign Secretary and even the Business Secretary to tell Parliament what is happening, what has been negotiated at any stage and what the potential decisions are. We do not want a secret process.

There must be accountability. Instead of one proposal at the end of the process, perhaps there should be staged proposals coming back to Parliament, where certain sections of the trade agreement are taken before the House and debated by a Select Committee or on the Floor of the House. For me, there should be conditionality. Everything that happens in the European Union should be conditional, the condition being that we do not end up with an agreement that subverts what we signed up to in our last treaty. It cannot be an attempt to rewrite the treaties by the back door, so we must always ascertain whether the conditionality of any trade agreement or any other agreement will undermine the rights contained in the documents to which I referred.

We want a more prosperous world, but one that is based on fairness and on the improvement of the conditions of the people who supply us with our goods and services and those who work in industries and enterprises in the EU and in this country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

It certainly is. The purpose of the regional growth fund is to help better balance our economy by encouraging manufacturing, especially in those regions that have been over-dependent either on public sector employment or single types of employment.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

4. If he will bring forward proposals to require companies to include supply chain issues in their annual narrative reporting.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)]

The Department has no plans to require companies to report specifically on supply chains. However, responsible supply chain management is an important issue, which good businesses should understand and take seriously. From October, listed companies will be required to report on community, employee and human rights issues. Later this year, we will publish a framework for action on corporate responsibility, which will consider supply chain management.

[Michael Connarty]

I thank the Minister for that reply. We found out yesterday in a press release that businesses are being urged to sign a human trafficking charter. That came not from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills but from the Home Office. It appears that the Minister for Immigration is taking over the responsibilities of Business, Innovation and Skills Ministers. He is proposing that businesses should sign up to a charter that seems very similar to the contents of my private Member’s Bill, the Transparency in UK Company Supply Chains (Eradication of Slavery) Bill. Surely it is up to BIS to include human trafficking in the narrative reporting of companies in its proposed statutory instrument. If the Minister for Immigration wants that requirement on human trafficking, surely BIS Ministers do too.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We are grateful. We have got the point.

Autism

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point, and I absolutely agree with him. It reminds me of the previous point about how, because the system does not work adequately, so many young people—and older people too—have ended up in inappropriate areas, whether it be in the justice system or in behavioural therapies, when what they need is the right support: it may be available, but they have been unable to access it.

As I have highlighted a number of concerns about parents’ rights, I would like to say how incredibly heartened I am—the hon. Member for South Swindon mentioned this, too—by the Government’s proposal to increase the age at which we support young people with autism up to 25. Let us not stop that support for a young person when they leave school or further education; let us keep it there so a young person can still get support if they return to education after taking on an apprenticeship or employment.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend and, indeed, the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) for conveying their personal experience. I spent 14 years of my life as a teacher in special education and, as we have heard, many children have difficulties because they are on the spectrum. Is my hon. Friend aware that when people leave education formally—whether it be at 16 or 18—they immediately lose their disability living allowance and have to reapply for it as adults? Many people then become slightly alienated from parental help and other services. One service that my hon. Friend has not mentioned is social services. There should be not just health and education services, but social services and a statutory duty on the employment services to take on these people, with a duty of care, which does not exist at the moment in any department or any jurisdiction in the UK.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

Again, that is an excellent point. Outcomes and employment transitions are hard for all young people, but they are particularly hard for young people with autism. Any extra support or assistance we can give to make that easier is definitely worth looking at.

On teacher training, I am always conscious that we ask that teachers be given training on so many issues, particularly those that interest us as parliamentarians. Ideally, we would get them to cover a huge amount of things, but that is not possible. However, there are a significant number of children with autism in the education system, and any additional training or guidance that could be given to teachers to increase their awareness not just of the condition itself but of its complexity, and the fact that it is different for every child on the spectrum, would be extremely advantageous. The work of the Autism Education Trust has already had a very successful impact, and I think we all hope that it will be possible for that work to continue.

We know that for too many of the families of people with autism the process of obtaining support is too hard, that we need to make it better, and that there are many organisations and bodies that could help us to do that. I welcome the Government’s initial steps in that regard, but I hope that they will also take on board some of the points that I have raised, which I am sure will also be raised by other Members. If we can make access to support for young people with autism just a little bit easier, we will have done the right thing by those young people and done a great service to their families. We will also have done the right thing by the education system, and gone some way towards ensuring that every child has a chance to fulfil his or her potential.

Oral Answers to Questions

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Prisk]

I am pleased to say that not only will I be able to attend the Stroud manufacturing festival, which is an excellent example of the initiatives taken by those on this side of the House, but the Government have put in place a £125 million supply chain initiative. It builds on the work we have done in the automotive sector, it is a great opportunity and I hope it will be one of those areas where the Labour party will set aside the posturing and work with us positively.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

I have been raising the issue of small businesses’ failure to be paid by large contractors. The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk) was good enough to write to me, but he said that more than 50% of the problem occurred because there continued to be a problem with effective customer management on the part of the supplier. In other words, the large companies were to be managed by the small company. Is it not time that we actually did what the Electrical Contractors Association has called for and make it compulsory for 30 days’ payment to be in every single contract for a small supplier?

[Mr Prisk]

In fact, the Labour party tried to do that at the very beginning—in 1998, I believe—and failed. What we are doing is using our procurement powers to make sure that government sets the standard. I think that that is the best way, but I am always happy to look at unreasonable behaviour by large corporations and I would be happy to look at any further details that the hon. Gentleman can provide.

Oral Answers to Questions

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

1. What recent progress he has made on securing private sector investment in Royal Mail.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)]

As I made clear during the passage of the Postal Services Act 2011, we are taking a staged approach to its implementation. Before decisions can be taken on private sector investment, the regulatory regime must be reformed and the Government must secure approval to take on Royal Mail’s historical pension deficit and restructure its balance sheet. Progress is being made in these areas, alongside Royal Mail’s progress with its modernisation plan.

[Michael Connarty]

I thank the Minister for his reply. Will he therefore tell the House exactly how much the Government value the assets in the Post Office pension fund at this moment, how much will be transferred to the Treasury and what will be left in the assets of the pension fund thereafter?

[Mr Davey]

The hon. Gentleman will know, having been in the House a long time, that we would not make a valuation while working with the European Commission to secure state aid clearance. Until we get that, those sorts of calculations would be completely inappropriate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davey]

May I reassure my hon. Friend that once the system is embedded with respect to domestic regulation affecting businesses and the third sector, the Government plan to extend it to other areas, including EU law?

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

I note that the Minister did not address the question asked by the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone). Is he not willing to tell Parliament the truth that in fact business regulations are part of the common market, which means that they cannot be vetoed by the Government? What is required is for the Government to stop the gold-plating that is done by the civil service when regulations come from Europe.

[Mr Davey]

The hon. Gentleman did not listen to either my first answer or my second answer. The Government are committed to ending gold-plating and I have said from this Dispatch Box that, once the one-in, one-out system is embedded, we will apply it to EU legislation.