Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Nic Dakin and Alison McGovern

Committee Debate: 10th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 5th March 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Alison McGovern]

The hon. Lady is obviously a top feminist, because she identifies probably the single biggest reason why the care sector is low paid. The work done by women has traditionally, for reasons of structural power, been paid much worse than similar jobs that have traditionally been done by men, and that helps to make my point. If we want to increase the pay of women in the social care sector, a good way to go about it would be to encourage those women to join a trade union, so that they can enforce their rights, bargain for better pay and increase their dignity and their control over their workplace. I argue that a restriction on free movement is, at best, not the most effective way to support those women. None the less, it would be interesting to learn, and the Government ought to take responsibility for finding out.

In support of my new clause, I would like the Government to consider not just the impact on our labour market of the policy of ending freedom of movement, but the huge impact that the policy will have on UK nationals—we barely discuss the restriction of fundamental rights, freedoms and abilities that ending free movement will entail—and on some large and, in many cases, fast-growing sectors in our economy.

In the tourism industry, for example, many British workers spend time working in a different country to develop their skills, perhaps before they run their own tourism business or come back to work in the UK. Many such opportunities could be curtailed, and it would be a dereliction of duty for the Government to ignore the fact that that will be a consequence of the policy.

Arts, culture, film, music and sport are all areas in which the UK has traditionally excelled, and I hope it will do in future. They are multibillion-pound industries, and the impact on them of ending free movement will be huge. If we think about the orchestra in the city region that I represent in Merseyside—or the fine Hallé orchestra in the city of Manchester, which you represent, Mr Stringer—the impact of the ending of free movement on those orchestral musicians will be absolutely profound.

We are offering those industries a future immigration policy that is unclear at this point, and yet their ability to move around and work on the continent of Europe is mission critical to them in their great work of producing fantastic music—the best in the world, some would say, in the case of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. I simply cannot countenance the idea of the Government taking that step without thinking that they ought to report on it.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

What my hon. Friend has said applies equally to dance and theatre.

Immigration and Social Security Coordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Nic Dakin and Alison McGovern

Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th February 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Alison McGovern]

I can think of a reason: because they want to take decisions on these rights based on negotiating interests and the potential gain they might get for their agenda. It seems clear that that has always been the manner in which the rights of EU nationals would be treated. I am afraid warm words are not enough. It is perfectly reasonable—and something I would expect every member of the Committee to be able to do—to say that we personally feel no animus towards EU nationals and that people are welcome in this country. However, it is one thing to say those words and another to do what is necessary to guarantee that they are true. I can think of no reason why the Government would not do as my hon. Friend has suggested.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the fact that this is not dealt with in the Bill as clearly as it could be is unsettling for not only EU nationals but businesses? It interrupts business continuity in a way that is not helpful to the UK economy.

[Alison McGovern]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who makes a good point. I never thought I would be in Committee lecturing the Conservative party on the needs of British business, but we are where we are. My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston made the point very well that we are creating not simplicity but an extraordinarily high level of uncertainty, and uncertainty is costly to the British economy. I am sure we will discuss the costs of the Brexit process during the Bill, but the Government could be handling the Bill better. They could have come up with the immigration White Paper long before they did, and we could have spent time in the past two and a bit years since the referendum discussing that very thing, but they have held off and postponed—and here we are now. People have no real idea what situation EU nationals will be in after the end of March. That is utterly intolerable.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Nic Dakin and Alison McGovern

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Alison McGovern]

I can think of a reason: because they want to take decisions on these rights based on negotiating interests and the potential gain they might get for their agenda. It seems clear that that has always been the manner in which the rights of EU nationals would be treated. I am afraid warm words are not enough. It is perfectly reasonable—and something I would expect every member of the Committee to be able to do—to say that we personally feel no animus towards EU nationals and that people are welcome in this country. However, it is one thing to say those words and another to do what is necessary to guarantee that they are true. I can think of no reason why the Government would not do as my hon. Friend has suggested.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the fact that this is not dealt with in the Bill as clearly as it could be is unsettling for not only EU nationals but businesses? It interrupts business continuity in a way that is not helpful to the UK economy.

[Alison McGovern]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who makes a good point. I never thought I would be in Committee lecturing the Conservative party on the needs of British business, but we are where we are. My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston made the point very well that we are creating not simplicity but an extraordinarily high level of uncertainty, and uncertainty is costly to the British economy. I am sure we will discuss the costs of the Brexit process during the Bill, but the Government could be handling the Bill better. They could have come up with the immigration White Paper long before they did, and we could have spent time in the past two and a bit years since the referendum discussing that very thing, but they have held off and postponed—and here we are now. People have no real idea what situation EU nationals will be in after the end of March. That is utterly intolerable.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Nic Dakin and Alison McGovern

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th February 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Alison McGovern]

Q The clock is ticking.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Q You are being very clear, Professor Ryan, that something should be written into the Bill that protects the rights of people who are here at the moment.

Professor Ryan: This is not the only opportunity to do it, but if there is no deal, this may be the best opportunity to do it. That is really what I am saying.

Manufacturing Sector

Debate between Nic Dakin and Alison McGovern

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is a difficult story to tell. When a journalist or somebody from the media is taken to Vauxhall Motors or any number of big, exciting manufacturing locations, they can see what is happening. However, in the future, there will increasingly be smaller, more specialist suppliers. In addition to fuel costs, the quality of the product is another driving factor behind the business case for moving the supply chain closer to sites of production.

As we move towards higher-tech production and try to meet some of the challenges of the greener economy, we need a better quality of product. In terms of quality control, we might be looking at smaller, more specialist producers. It is difficult to tell that story, but it has to be done. As the BBC moves northwards, I hope that there will be lots of opportunities for those of us from the north-west to get these stories out there. It is a difficult challenge, but it is about telling a story of high quality.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this timely debate and I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. On the supply chain issue, I represent a manufacturing area so I know that it is important to consider the green economy, particularly renewables. Much of the investment in renewables will come from the Government and electricity bill payers. We need to have the imagination to ensure that those jobs come to the UK and to invest in the supply chain, which my hon. Friend has mentioned adroitly in her presentation.

[Alison McGovern]

My hon. Friend’s intervention is important. I will come to some of my specific questions for UKTI, about how it recognises not just the sectors that are already successful at a high level, but the sectors that are strategically placed for the future, even though they might be small at the moment. Green energy is certainly one of those. How are we going to ensure that Britain is selling green energy technology to Brazil, Russia, India and China in the future? We do not do much of it at the moment, but do we want to do it in the future? That is an important question to ask in terms of strategy.

I shall shift away from the supply chain specifically and on to UKTI’s strategy, which is contained in an interesting document that is important for all of us. I want to ask the Minister the following questions. The strategy identifies five groups with subsectors relating to five parts of the economy, one of which is manufacturing. Of those five groups, what will the resource balance be across UKTI?

It is easy to say that what we want is success and to drive resources towards the bits of the economy where we already have success in exporting parts abroad. We might also say that if we are really going to rebalance the economy, we need to take somewhat more of a risk with our resources and invest in those things with which we might not have had a history of high-level success over the past 10 or 15 years but in which we know we need to invest for the future. I would be interested in understanding a bit more about resource balance.

On monitoring, when we develop the strategy, how will we watch what happens and who will feed back to Parliament and to businesses on the ground? There has sometimes been a bit of a disconnect in terms of understanding to whom UKTI is responsible, who its customers are and how it feeds back successes. When will that happen? We do not want to spend all our time bearing the costs of monitoring, with a thousand tick boxes and charts.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Nic Dakin and Alison McGovern

Monday 11th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin]

I think that there was a large feeling at the Conservative party conference last week that the Conservatives should have done better in the general election, given that they faced a Labour Government who were clearly struggling in the face of many challenges. I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s spin on the outcome of the last election, but the reality is that nobody won it. What has happened since is that the Government parties have shown skill in developing a narrative that runs along the lines of what the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) outlined—it was also added to by the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams)—which is essentially that everything comes down to Labour spending profligately and a massive deficit that needs to be tackled fast and furiously. That is the narrative, but it is not the truth. The truth is far closer to what we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw, who demonstrated that what has really happened is that our deficit lies alongside that of Germany. The problem is serious, but it does not require us to go as far as is being suggested.

[Alison McGovern]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not merely we on the Labour Benches who disagree with the fake narrative that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are putting forward, but the recent report by the International Monetary Fund and the International Labour Organisation? Those bodies have tried to persuade countries such as ours not to disinvest from the economy, because they are worried about jobs and employment.