Carillion

Mike Kane Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

Certainly, the Government’s wish and intention is that we can get on with construction work in the west midlands without material disruption. I will certainly pass the message very clearly to fellow Ministers in the two Departments my hon. Friend referred to.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Carillion is a partner in an international joint venture to deliver Manchester airport city enterprise zone in my constituency. Does the Minister agree that what has happened gives a terrible signal to international investors about the state of UK plc?

Grenfell Tower Fire Inquiry

Mike Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

The expert panel, which I have mentioned on a number of occasions, includes precisely the people to provide advice and it continues to do so. Its advice has been consistently followed by the Department because it has that expertise. It may well discover more and decide that its advice needs to change, but it is all done on the basis of fire safety experts who are independent of Government.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I grew up in a two-bed flat in a council block and the traditional advice was always to stay put and await rescue. I wonder how many souls perished following that traditional advice. Will the advice change?

[Damian Green]

That issue may well be addressed by Sir Martin in the public inquiry, which is clearly the appropriate forum for that sort of investigation.

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[Mr Betts]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely powerful point. Not merely should the Government fund the remedial work on tower blocks but, in the Grenfell case, they should fund the replacement of social housing to make sure people do not lose out.

There has been a call for an immediate review of the fire regulations, and the Minister could announce today that the Government will get on with that. I hope that whoever is elected as Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee today will take a lead, with its new elected members, by getting the Select Committee involved, just as we were in relation to regulations for gas and electrical safety in the home.

Getting Ministers to agree to new regulations has, at times, been a bit like drawing teeth. I draw attention to the Select Committee hearing in 2013 at which Peter Holland, the new chief fire and rescue adviser, and the then Minister were questioned very strongly about the mandatory retrofitting of sprinklers. The then Minister said no to that, and one of the reasons given—it was also given in a Westminster Hall debate—was that we could not have a new regulation unless two old ones were taken off the statute book. What a nonsensical position! Regulations are either necessary or they are not. If regulations are necessary to keep people safe, they should be implemented without having to wait for two others to be cancelled. I hope Ministers will act rapidly, and I am pleased that my local authority in Sheffield has decided to retrofit sprinklers to all its tower blocks in advance of any Government statement.

Colleagues have made the point that cladding should not be fire-tested in isolation. The insulation, the firestops, the fire doors and all other aspects of tower blocks’ fire safety systems must be tested. Sheffield, working with the fire service, has so far found only one block where the cladding has failed—the Hanover tower block in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). However, the fire service has said that because of everything else that is in place in that block, it still believes its fire systems make it safe for people to live there.

Sheffield City Council has done very well. It has written to the fire authority and all the tenants. It has held meetings with them and said that if anyone wants to move temporarily because they feel unsafe, they can do so. It has also put a 24-hour fire watch in the block. But in the end, the fire authority believes that the block is safe because of how the cladding works with the insulation, the firestops and everything else. I hope that Ministers will now look at extending the tests beyond cladding to whole fire prevention systems in blocks, and encouraging local authorities to do the same.

Finally, will the Minister explain why there is to be a taskforce in Kensington and Chelsea and not commissioners? As I said the other day, I believe, as a localist, that commissioners should be used only in extremis, but this is an extreme example of a failure of governance.

[Mike Kane]

This point has not been raised so far in the debate. I am a Greater Manchester MP, and there was a first-class contingencies response after the Ariana Grande incident in Manchester. What does my hon. Friend think of the council’s civil contingencies response after the Grenfell Tower incident?

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

The hon. Gentleman makes some very important points and I am more than happy to meet him to discuss them, including any allegations that the unions are not being fully engaged with. As he knows, I do not have a difficulty with trade unions, having been a shop steward. I am more than happy to have a meeting to discuss this important matter.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

5. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and Ministers of the Scottish Government on the potential effect on Scotland of measures in the Trade Union Bill.

[The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)]

The Trade Union Bill is now waiting Royal Assent. It is about employment and industrial relations law, which are reserved matters, and it will apply consistently across the United Kingdom. We have engaged with the Scottish Government through the passage of the Bill, and we will carry on with that work.

[Mike Kane]

Despite the Trade Union Bill’s worst elements being removed or watered down, it is still a bad Bill. Does the Minister agree that a bad Bill will not make for good industrial relations in Scotland?

[Anna Soubry]

I do not share the hon. Gentleman’s views on the Bill. It is an excellent Bill and I fully support it and its aims.

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The Prime Minister was asked—

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 11 May.

[The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)]

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others and, in addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Mike Kane]

Even “fantastically corrupt” Nigeria is asking Britain to clean up its act and introduce beneficial ownership registers in the overseas territories. Will the Prime Minister achieve that tomorrow at the anti-corruption summit?

[The Prime Minister]

First, I had better check that the microphone is on before speaking. It is probably a good idea.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. The answer is yes. We have asked three things of the overseas territories and Crown dependencies: automatic exchange of tax information; a common reporting standard for multinational companies; and central beneficial ownership registries so that UK enforcement can know who really owns the companies that are based there. They have delivered on the first two, and they will be following and delivering on the third. That is what he asked for, and that is exactly what he is getting.

European Council

Mike Kane Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend puts it in absolutely the right way. It is not an either/or. We are expanding our trade in south-east Asia—we have doubled our trade with China since I became Prime Minister—but I am struck, as he is, by the fact that countries are not saying, “Get out of the EU and sign a trade deal with us”. They are saying, “Stick in the EU and make sure it signs a trade deal, because it will be bigger and it will be better.”

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister articulates the case in the national interest well. However, I have heard unconfirmed rumours that he has been exploiting the situation among Conservative Members for his own self-interest by opening a private book on his successor. Will the Prime Minister confirm that? Will he give us an inkling of where the money is flowing, and will he guarantee to extend the syndicate to the rest of us?

[The Prime Minister]

My father, whom I miss every day, was an inveterate gambler. I remember nothing so much as sitting with him on a Saturday and watching him bet on race after race. While I enjoyed all that, I have tried to stick away from it myself, so I am not running a book. All I know is that I will do the right thing for this country, and the right thing for this country is to remain in a reformed EU.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We are looking very carefully at the scheme, particularly on the issue of businesses. What we have heard so far is a number of anecdotal stories, with small businesses saying that it will be difficult to get insurance. Meanwhile, the insurance companies are telling us that they will not turn down any small businesses, so we need to get to the bottom of this. That is absolutely key before we get to the final introduction of Flood Re in April this year.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Q11. It was good to welcome the Prime Minister and his excellency the President of China to Manchester airport in my constituency recently to talk about investment. What is in the north’s interest and the nation’s interest is extra runway capacity in the south-east. Why does the Prime Minister continue to procrastinate?

[The Prime Minister]

Let me first thank the hon. Gentleman and everyone in Greater Manchester who helped to welcome President Xi at the excellent lunch held in Manchester and then at the very good visit to Manchester airport. Let me respond to the hon. Gentleman’s question. The Environmental Audit Committee and the author of the original report, Sir Howard Davies, have both said that the problems of air quality raise new questions that the Government have to answer, and I am in favour of answering those questions and then making a decision.

Syria

Mike Kane Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We believe that taking this action will help to bolster the ground troops that are there. The fact is that, although they have had the support of Britain, America, the Arab states and others, they have had a miserable time, and because of the activities of the regime and of ISIL, they have faced a very difficult situation. The question for us is: does the action that I am proposing help them? Yes, it does. Does it help to bring about a political solution? Yes, it does. Crucially, does it help to keep us safe here at home? Yes, I very much believe that it does.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Military intervention requires a just cause, and the Prime Minister has argued for that just cause superbly today; and intervention has to be done with good intention, and he has shown today that it would be. For those in the House who are still uncertain, the weakness of the analysis is around the winnability strategy on the ground, and the need not to create a vacuum that will be filled by something worse.

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. As I have said, there is no 100% certainty; there is no perfection here. When we talk about winnability, I think about the dangers to us right now. I am talking about losability to our people, our country and our safety. We have to think about the danger of inaction, as well as all the uncertainties of action.

Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Mike Kane Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

This is not the first time that I have disagreed with the hon. Member for Bradford West (George Galloway). In fact, I can remember the last Speaker, before the hon. Gentleman was the Member for Bradford West, asking him to leave the Chamber because he had misbehaved. The microphones here are quite good, and Members do not need to shout to make themselves heard if others are listening. I say to the hon. Gentleman that he is wrong now as he was then. Al-Qaeda was in Iraq before 2003; it operated under the name Ansar al-Islam. It was the Kurds who told me about Ansar al-Islam at that time. They showed me the heads of those who had been beheaded by that very same group. It is not true that al-Qaeda was not in Iraq before 2003.

I remind the House that the hon. Member for Bradford West was the man who greeted Saddam Hussein as a great friend and leader of his people and shook his hand in Iraq. I do not think the Kurds or the Shi’a would have been very pleased with that, given that Saddam Hussein exterminated hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shi’a. If anyone doubts that, I suggest that they go to the mass graves in al-Hillah and all over Iraq.

I fully support the resolution, but I do not think it goes far enough. I have listened with interest to what the Americans have been saying in the past few days. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, and other senior US military figures have said that air power alone cannot defeat ISIS.

Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, is a case in point. Yes, the Iraqi military fled, but I believe that there is an alternative story to that—they fled only because they were ordered to by those who were then in control of the military in Iraq.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Last week, I met 120 representatives of the Mancunian Iraqi diaspora from Mosul, whose families live in tents in exile in foreign lands. They just want their families to be able to go back, build civil society and live in peace. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is in our self-interest to help them do that?

[Ann Clwyd]

Absolutely. Air strikes have obviously not been able to recapture Mosul. Four months on, Mosul is still in the hands of ISIS. Some 2 million people live in Mosul, although many, as my hon. Friend said, have fled. Another problem, of course, is the number of refugees who have gone across borders—into Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Kane Excerpts

Thursday 11th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s kind words. He has been a great champion of higher education in Reading and across the country. One of my tasks over the next few weeks is to work on the science and innovation strategy, including the science capital consultation, which will be published alongside the autumn statement. That will make clear and reinforce for a 10-year horizon the continuing importance that we attach to science.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Manchester is the home of the revolutionary material graphene. This week, we heard the tremendous announcement of a £60 million second hub for graphene in the city. Will the Minister join me and everyone involved in securing that funding, particularly Manchester university and Masdar, the Abu Dhabi clean energy and renewables technology group?

[Greg Clark]

I will indeed. Along with my hon. Friend the Life Sciences Minister I was with the chancellor of the university of Manchester yesterday. I congratulate the vice-chancellor, Nancy Rothwell, and all responsible on securing a huge coup for this country. Having a Nobel prize-winning piece of research located for the future in the UK and in the north-west is a cause for great celebration.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

6. What steps he is taking to maintain the level of youth services provision.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

9. What steps he is taking to maintain the level of youth services provision.

[The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Nick Hurd)]

We are supporting the voluntary sector in offering new opportunities for young people through programmes such as the National Citizen Service. In addition, we will be offering practical support to local authorities who want to deliver high-quality new services in an innovative way, for example by access to our £10 million support programme for mutuals.

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[Mike Kane]

The BBC has revealed that in real terms the amount spent on youth services has fallen by 36% in the past two years. Does the Minister agree with Fiona Blacke, the chief executive of the National Youth Agency, that in the areas with the greatest cuts, the opportunities for young people are being significantly diminished?

[Mr Hurd]

The Labour party continues to be in denial about why there were cuts in the first place. I have said very publicly that we are concerned that youth services have been too easy to cut, in part because there is insufficient evidence about the value of the work that they do in terms of outcomes. We want to work with commissioners to change that, but at the same time we are actively investing from the centre to create new opportunities for young people, not just through the NCS but by backing the scouts and other uniformed organisations and the organisations that have formed part of the Step Up to Serve campaign.

Debate on the Address

Mike Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Richard Ottaway]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. I was, of course, comparing men in uniform with men in uniform, but he makes an important point about the loss of life in Syria. I was a signatory of the letter to The Daily Telegraph yesterday inviting the Government to revisit their policy on that. Given that the United States is now arming the rebels in Syria through the provision of anti-tank weapons, there is a case for our going down the same road.

The other great change since 1914 is globalisation and the unbelievable impact it is having on the way that we all live. Foreign investment and global supply chains are interconnecting Governments, nations and markets. The world’s growth in the 1990s was 3.3%. It comes as quite a surprise to colleagues when I tell them that in the 2000s world GDP increased by 3.7%, which illustrates that globalisation works and the effect that it has. It is enabling the rise of new players. We see the emergence on the world scene of the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China. Globalisation is connecting us in a way that we have never seen before. UK corporations are now investing globally and we have to think globally. We have to stay interconnected and build alliances around the globe.

The commercial challenge that we all face comes from China. China is not a threat to us. The United States looks at China strategically; we see it as an economic competitor. However, we have to accept the fact that we face a painful readjustment in our position on the world stage. In 2000 the US, Japan and the European Union accounted for 71% of world GDP. China, Latin America and the Caribbean accounted for 11%. It is forecast that by 2018 those figures will be 48% and 27% respectively, a marked shift and a trend that will continue. The winners are those who compete in open markets—countries such as China and Brazil with big single markets. In the European Union, Poland quadrupled its GDP in 20 years, whereas Ukraine, outside the single market, had static growth.

We must continue the reform of the single markets, continue the negotiations with the United States and get the benefit of the agreements that we have with Japan, Thailand and India. Now is not the time to isolate ourselves on the fringes of world markets. It is not the time to leave the European Union. We should ignore the siren calls of isolationist parties. The European Union is 7% of the world’s population and 22% of its economy. The UK is less than 1% of the world’s population and 2.7% of its economy. Trying to survive in those marketplaces through a network of bilateral treaties would lead to disaster.

I understand those who call for our withdrawal from the European Union, but they are engaging in an emotional argument. It is a policy of the heart, not of the head. We have to work through international treaties and organisations and build alliances based on common interests. Of course, the European Union must reform. It was designed to fight war, hunger and communism and it has been a success. There is no need for it to be a federation, but we must have the benefit of the single market. Although for more than 50 years we have been a member of the European Union, we are still independent. We retain our parliamentary democracy, we raise our own taxes, we drink pints, we drive on the left, we choose to drop bombs on Libya but not on Syria, and we do what we want in our education, health and social security systems. We just need the EU member states to co-operate more closely together. In her famous Bruges speech Margaret Thatcher said:

“My first guiding principle is this: willing and active cooperation between independent sovereign states is the best way to build a successful European Community.”

So let us follow the Dutch principle: Europe if necessary, national when possible.

The elections last week make the case for the Conservatives’ pledge to reform the European Union. This Government have already proved that they can deliver, with our campaign to cut the EU budget. We can make alliances, too. Other countries are pressing for change—Germany, Austria and Netherlands are all backing our initiative to reduce EU spending. They are all on board with our efforts to limit benefit tourism and illegal immigration. Even the President of France has called for change. I would like to say at that point, “I rest my case, m’lord.” If France is beginning to recognise the force of our arguments, there is plenty to benefit from.

In conclusion, I shall pick up on a point raised by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, when he spoke about the origins of mass migration from the Mediterranean. That is the basis of a report recently published by the Foreign Affairs Committee. In the Sahel, the strip to the south of the Sahara desert, the high population growth in sub-Saharan Africa is seeing hundreds of millions of young men and women born into an economic desert. They have no prospects, no opportunities and no quality of life. It has become a fertile ground for conflict, as was recognised in the United States by the 9/11 report. For a couple of dollars a day, young men are picking up a rifle and going in on behalf of whoever will pay them.

We saw that when the Government of Mali were very nearly brought down, but for a quick reaction by the French. We saw it in the attack on the In Amenas gas facility in Algeria. We see it now in the rise of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, a part of the Sahel that bears no relation to the prosperous south of Nigeria. We need to get alongside these countries, because such attacks are having a profound impact.

Apart from young men and women going into conflict, we are now seeing mass migration. People are beginning to walk across the Sahara desert to the ports of north Africa, and they are not stopping. They are getting into boats, as we saw with the tragedy when a boat sank off the coast of Lampedusa and everyone on board drowned. We see it in Melilla, the Spanish enclave in Morocco, where people have been killed trying to get over the fence, because if they get into Melilla they are in the European Union. That is why it is such an attractive target.

We need to get alongside the countries affected, such as Mali, Chad, Nigeria, Mauritania and Burkina Faso, and try to stabilise them. All those countries need our support. We need to give them confidence to strengthen their security, and we need to provide assistance on good governance and bring in economic aid packages. In that way, we can stabilise them and take away the migratory pressures.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I could not agree more with the right hon. Gentleman. In the past few months, 40,000 people have made the journey from those north African countries, many in perilous situations in boats that have sunk, with lives lost. Does he agree that it is imperative that we crack down on those who bring them here with the false hope of getting into the European Union for a better life? We should concentrate not particularly on the migrants but on the criminal gangmasters.

[Sir Richard Ottaway]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is absolutely right. People trafficking is now a serious business in north Africa, along with smuggling, prostitution and drugs. Organised crime has moved into all those fields, and getting to the root cause of it will solve the problem.

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[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am grateful to you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker, on the first of our six days of debate on the Loyal Address. Some very good speeches have been made, covering a wide range of matters. I am particularly pleased to follow the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley): I agreed entirely with a great deal of what he said. However, I think it a great pity that his party did not include a day’s debate on foreign affairs and defence matters in its programme for these six days of debate. I think that we shall have to rectify that. I shall ask those on my party’s Front Bench whether we can have a general debate on foreign affairs. We seem recently to have got into the habit of hearing statements on specific matters, but it has been some time since we had a general debate.

The hon. Member for York Central rightly reminded us that we are approaching two important anniversaries, of the first world war and of D-day. We should bear in mind the state of flux that world affairs were in after the two world wars. As was pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway), probably not since those days has the world situation been so fluid.

The hon. Member for York Central also referred to our problems with the attitude of the Soviet Union—or the Russian Federation, as it is now called—to increasing its hegemony around the world after seizing Ukraine. I shall make only one point about his critique of the Russian Federation. He said that the Russians were more economically independent than they used to be. Let me remind him that, as I have said before in the House, they are more internationally dependent on the world’s economic situation today than they have ever been. The rouble is more internationally tradable, the Russians now have a stock exchange, and they require more international development to develop their huge oil resources. They need big firms such as BP to be able to develop those resources in some very difficult exploration areas. There are levers that we can use in relation to the Russian Federation, and I think that we need to use them.

However, the hon. Gentleman was right to observe that the world is in a state of flux. As I said in my intervention during the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South, the situation in Russia is fluid, and the situation in Syria is very fluid. I think that the House, and my party, will need to revisit the subject of what assistance we can give the Syrian opposition. Like my right hon. Friend, I was one of the signatories of the letter that was published in The Daily Telegraph today, calling for the whole matter to be re-examined. We know that 100,000 people have been killed in Syria, that probably well over a quarter of a million have been displaced, and that there is a huge volume of misery in the country. People are being starved, maimed and killed. That situation cannot continue indefinitely: we cannot allow the evil Assad regime to go on behaving as it is.

Our troops are pulling out of Afghanistan. It will be interesting to see whether a democratic Government succeed there, and whether the gains that we have made in terms of women’s education and a whole range of infrastructural changes proceed or whether the country returns to its previous state. One of the things that the Queen’s Speech lacked was any reference to conflict countries, their abilities, and how we deal with them in the aftermath of conflict. My right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South raised the interesting issue of what is happening in the aftermath of the Libyan problem in which we intervened. A huge range of weapons are now going into Maghreb and Sahel, and that has given rise to a large number of problems in Africa and elsewhere.

I did not want to concentrate on foreign affairs today, although it is my wont to speak about them in the House. I really wanted to focus on economic matters. I think that the coalition Government’s economic policy has been successful. We have reduced the deficit by a third, we have created 1.6 million jobs in the private sector, and, even more pleasingly, we have created a record number of apprenticeships. I am especially pleased to note that 570 apprenticeships have been created in The Cotswolds in the last year. That is excellent news for my constituents.

I am particularly keen on the subject of exports and foreign direct investment in this country. After all, there are only so many goods and services that we can sell to ourselves, and if we want to continue on our current path of excellent economic growth, we must increase exports. I was pleased to see that in 2013 the UK’s goods exports amounted to £304 billion, which was a record high. The jump in exports reduced the trade deficit from £9.8 billion in November to £7.7 billion. However, that is only a drop in the ocean. We must continue to work to increase our exports. I am pleased that the Prime Minister has led trade delegations to China and to other countries all over the world. That is very good news, and it demonstrates the Prime Minister’s dedication to increasing our exports.

We need to look closely at the job that is done by UK Trade & Investment. UKTI has been transformed under Lord Green, and I am sure that Lord Livingston will build on those achievements, but there is still much to be done. The Chancellor has set this country the challenging target of increasing the value of exports to £1 trillion by 2020, and ensuring that an extra 100,000 businesses are exporting by that date. We shall have to motor fairly well to achieve that. We shall need to do what the British Exporters Association has done and is doing, and help small and medium-sized companies to export.

UK Export Finance should be able to provide a boost for British exports. It has challenged its former excessively rigid structure, and its new flexibility has enabled it to invest £5 billion in its export refinancing facility. That will provide a huge boost for exports. I am particularly pleased that there is a small business, enterprise and employment Bill in the Queen’s Speech. It will deal with one or two long-standing problems that we need to address. We need to help small businesses and this Bill will do precisely that. It will help small business get into the business of public procurement. For too long public procurement has been difficult—indeed, often impossible —for small businesses because the Government contracts are so complicated and so weighted against small businesses. I hope my hon. Friends on the Front Bench will be able to cure that through this Bill.

Also in that Bill is a very welcome step to deal with zero-hours contracts. The real mischief I hope that the Bill will address is not the zero hours themselves, but the ability for an employer to prevent an employee from taking another job on a day on which the employer says there is no work. If there is no work for somebody on a zero-hours contract, they should be able to go off to another employer and seek work. I hope the Bill will address that.

Returning to exports, it seems that many SMEs do not know about the work of UK Trade & Investment. I was appalled to see in an article in The Daily Telegraph on 10 November 2013 by Alan Tovey that 69% of SME exporters were unaware of UKTI’s work and two thirds did not know about UK Export Finance. If so few exporters know about that, how can we expect to meet the exacting targets that the Chancellor has set?

We need to promote the British brand across the world. As I have said, the Prime Minister has led delegations to China, India, Africa, South America, the middle east and elsewhere, and that is an excellent start, but the only way we are going to secure truly sustainable growth is by increasing exports and foreign direct investment.

I was fortunate enough to go to China recently with a number of colleagues, where I learned about President Xi Jinping’s new economic plan up to 2020. It is worth setting out the facts because they are truly staggering, and in recent years the Chinese have never failed to implement an economic plan. This new economic plan aims to increase GDP per capita from its current $6,000 to $10,000 over the entire population of 1.25 billion people. In order to achieve that, they will need an annual growth rate of 6.7%, but, even more staggeringly, they will need to bring 10 million new people into the work force each year. That gives the UK huge opportunities, because the Chinese are buying up brands such as House of Fraser and they are moving up the value chain in respect of those brands so that they can both manufacture and market products under those brands. That gives our exporters a real opportunity.

We have another opportunity in China and elsewhere in the world. During my visit to China, I was delighted to be able to continue my help for the Royal Agricultural university in my constituency, which has formalised links with three Chinese universities. During a visit to Zhejiang university in Hangzhou city I was delighted to discover that it has just signed a memorandum of understanding with the London School of Economics. Britain has always been one of the leading innovator nations in the world. If we are to continue to compete in the global race, we have to rely on our best and brightest students. Equally, to keep our universities in that race, we need them to collaborate with the best universities around the world and to participate in cutting-edge research.

Britain invented the telephone, the computer, the internet, railways and in 2004 we invented the new wonder-material graphene at Manchester university. I hope that does not become yet another example of a great British invention which is commercialised by other countries. When intellectual property is developed in this country, we need to work to ensure that the law is strong enough to protect it around the world so that we may benefit from it. To this end, I was particularly pleased to visit the top executives in China Telecom to discuss their new music-streaming down the telephone, for which the growth numbers are exponential. To protect their own intellectual property rights in China, they have a team of lawyers. That is potentially good for British investors. We should be encouraging all developing countries to strengthen their intellectual property rights laws and enforcement, so when we invent things we can develop them and export them to those countries with confidence.

[Mike Kane]

Graphene was, indeed, invented in Manchester, along with the computer and the screw and a thousand other inventions, and I am sure the hon. Gentleman will join me in welcoming Manchester university’s development of the graphene centre at the campus on Oxford road.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

The hon. Gentleman rightly gives a plug to his university. That was a fantastic invention and I do not think the world has yet truly seen the transformative effects it will bring, but what is slightly worrying is that the Chancellor announced that we were going to put £50 million into developing the product, yet the South Koreans put £190 million in and the Europeans are putting in £1 billion. This invention will transform most electrical products and most people have never even heard of it. We must concentrate on where we are going in the future and I hope we will make the best of that transformative product.

Not just China is expanding at a huge rate in south-east Asia. Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and others are all experiencing very high levels of growth. Brazil, too, offers us a particular opportunity to help British exporters as a result of its hosting the World cup and the Olympics—we benefited, too, from our own Olympics.

However, to be able to expand into the world’s growing markets, we need to be able physically to get to them first. Businesses are calling out for increased airport capacity. I recently hosted a delegation from Hubei province in China. The only way to get to that province from this country is via a stop-over in Paris. We need to encourage our airlines to fly to more secondary destinations in China and elsewhere. The Germans, the French and the Dutch are all doing that, and we must do so too if we want to get our business men there—and, even more importantly, if we want to get their business men here. By pure chance I happened to sit next to a Chinese banker who wants to invest between £100 million and £1 billion in the banking sector in the City of London, yet he does not have a direct flight connection to London to get his people here to discuss that investment. If we do not pull our socks up in tackling these sorts of things, we will lose out in the world race. I say to the House that when the Sir Howard Davies commission makes a decision after the next election, whichever party is elected—I hope it will be mine—let us implement that decision quickly, whatever it is and however controversial, and let us hope that the Opposition support that decision.

The UK needs to tap into high-growth markets and diversify away from stagnant EU economies. In the last decade the UK has exported more to Ireland than Brazil, Russia, India and China combined. There are already signs that that situation is improving, however. Since 2010 exports to China have increased by 91% and to Russia by 118%, admittedly from a very low base, whereas in the three months to December 2013 the UK export of goods to the EU fell by 6.1%. Although it is easier to export to the EU market, we need to encourage our British companies to look out and go to the rest of the world.

I cannot finish my speech without a word on Europe and the recent elections. At least one quarter of the peoples around Europe voted for reform of the EU. Even the French President is now saying we should have a reform of the EU, and that should signal to the Eurocrats in the Commission that we need reform. I thought that it was breathtaking hypocrisy on the part of the Eurocrats in the Commission to start telling us that we should increase our taxes. They have clearly learned nothing from those elections, and we have to persuade them that we must reform the EU.

The British people will take note of what is happening in Europe and if there is no reform and we do not get a renegotiation on some of the key matters, it is possible that the British people, in a referendum, will vote to leave. Regardless of whether we get an in/out referendum in 2017—I hope we do and I hope we get a Conservative Government to achieve that, as only a Conservative Government will achieve it—we will have a referendum on Europe sooner or later, because in the previous Parliament we all enshrined in law an Act that gives a referendum when we transfer major powers in a treaty. You can bet your bottom dollar that the Eurocrats in the Commission will come up with a major treaty within the next five to 10 years and so there will be a referendum on Europe. Unless Europe amends its ways and unless we see that renegotiation, the British people will vote in a way that may well be anti-Europe in that referendum.

Like others, I knocked on a lot of doors in the European election campaign and I found that one major issue was migration into this country. Somebody made a powerful intervention on the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) suggesting to him that it is not about who comes to this country, whatever race or creed they are, but about the pace of change—it is not racist to say that. A lot of constituents fear too many people coming at once, which puts pressure on our services—our schools, health service and social services. That is why we need a renegotiation, so that we can repatriate some of the migration powers to this Parliament and start to control the pace of change.