Nomination of Members to Committees
Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Peter Bone(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), although I do not agree with her interpretation of the motion before us tonight. I would be the first one in the No Lobby tonight if the arguments made by the Opposition held water. It was weird that the shadow Leader of the House would not take any interventions. I think that that was because the Labour Opposition do not actually know what they are talking about on this matter: it is a lot of hot air—
Mr Bone
Certainly. Of course.
As I understand it, the Opposition are saying that when a Bill goes into Committee, the Members on the Committee always vote in the way the party Whips tell them to. That is just not the case. I have seen Government Members in Bill Committees who are absolutely opposed to something the Government are proposing because it is not right. That is what the Committee system is about. It is about improving Bills. I am reluctant to say that I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) on this issue, but he is quite correct. The check and balance is the Report stage. If, as the Opposition claim, they have the majority in this House, they will be able to reverse anything that is passed in Committee.
Steel Industry
Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Peter Bone(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), whose speech was very good—for at least the first two thirds. It was a very good speech and she made a strong case for the special steel produced in her constituency. I also liked the plug at PMQs for the Prime Minister to do her best when she goes to India. Years ago, I was on the Select Committee on Trade and Industry and I remember a huge business tycoon from India. I asked him, “What is the one thing we could do to boost trade between our two countries?” He said, “Pull out of the EU.” At that time, of course, nobody ever thought that would happen, but now he will get his wish. Absolutely, too, on shale gas, that makes obvious sense.
I also congratulate the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop). I always think that Westminster Hall is where we have the best debates. We do not get the party-politics nonsense that we sometimes have in the main Chamber. The way in which he made his speech will allow the Minister to deal with it in a very grown-up fashion. It was also particularly courageous to make the points he did against his party’s current policy in some regard. I will return that, I hope, and say some of the things that I think have gone slightly wrong in the debate on steel.
My interest is also connected with that of my right hon. Friend—sorry, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove); he should be right honourable. My constituency abuts his, and a lot of my constituents work in and supply goods and services to the Corby area. I suppose I should also declare that I spent 13 years in south Wales and regularly played cricket close to the steelworks—off my bowling, the ball quite often landed in the steelworks.
As all hon. Members here will probably say, British steel has a future. Not only that; it has to have a future. It is a strategic industry. There have been two Governments recently—the one under David Cameron, and the new Government, under the new Prime Minister—and there has clearly been a shift in emphasis. What I would criticise about the previous Government is the slowness with which they did things. Very early on, when there was clearly a lot of working together and establishing things that needed to be done, such as reforming business rates and dealing with energy costs, the previous Government said, “Let’s deal with Chinese dumping.” But we did not seem to be getting there as quickly as we should have. With the new Government, things have moved on a lot.
Let me deal with the thing about free trade, the Chinese and dumping. Yes, a lot of us believe in free trade because we think it benefits everyone, but free trade does not mean that one country can dump its products in another country. Countries cannot sell their products below cost or with huge subsidies. The reason it is done, of course, is that with things such as steel, there are large fixed assets. The marginal cost of producing the steel and selling it at a loss allows those fixed assets to be kept. That is exactly what the Chinese are doing, which is why we should impose severe tariffs—not for protectionism, but because they are dumping. As any free trader will say, dumping is absolutely not allowed. I listened to the arguments about how dumping would work or did not work in the EU. I think my views on the EU are pretty clear, but we are where we are now and we must look at the advantages.
Let us look at the single market argument. I have only been in Parliament for 11 years. Before that, I was in the manufacturing business. Of course, exporters want to have something that other people want, and they want to be able to sell it. If a tariff exists, and the exporter pays the tariff and sells the product, that is fine, but it is better not to have the tariff in the first place. The exporter wants free trade access to their customers, which is not the same as a single market. If we did not have that, and there were world trade rules, exporters would pay a tariff. But let us look at what has happened since we have come out—since the referendum.
Mr Bone
No, unfortunately we have not.
Since the referendum, sterling has fallen by, say, 17%. That makes exports to the EU 17% cheaper and exports into the UK from around the world 17% more expensive. Therefore, a small tariff is irrelevant because we have already had a huge dividend from Brexit. There has been a lot of confused talk around the subject. I absolutely agree with putting tariffs on China—and other countries, if they are dumping—but I do not agree with the idea that somehow there will be a huge problem if we have world trade rules because 50% of exports go to the EU. Clearly we have benefited enormously from the devaluation of sterling. I know that a lot of people want to speak today, but we must look at two issues: the benefit of sterling and the fact that we can absolutely believe in free trade while absolutely having tariffs on dumped goods. That is rather important.
Finally—I really do appreciate that there is a time pressure—I agree entirely with having British steel for British goods. Rushden Lakes is a large development in my constituency, and all the steel there is British. Today, the Government announced a new prison for Wellingborough—I apologise that I must leave the debate temporarily to deal with a matter to do with that prison —which is an opportunity to use British steel. There is a great opportunity for us in the future. The work of the all-party parliamentary group and other hon. Members here today has kept British steel on the agenda. I think the new Government have listened, and I am really very positive about the future of steel.