Business and the Economy

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Sheerman]

I believe that my hon. Friend and I voted in different Lobbies on that occasion, so I will not develop the point any further.

What are small and medium-sized enterprises in this country looking for? They are looking to the Government to promote innovation. All the research shows that we must invest in small companies, which are often in the high-tech sector. They will be the new employers; they will be the organisations carrying out the innovation. After all, our country was built on innovation and on entrepreneurs, and my town of Huddersfield was built on people who understood that. It is true that they had free energy, which, as was pointed out by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), is extremely important in a world of automation. Although we can substantially increase the number of people working in manufacturing, it will not return to the 20% or 30% level. The fact remains that it is to the small companies that we must look for the future.

There was not enough about banks in the Queen’s Speech. Here they are, with all this taxpayers’ money, and we still cannot persuade them to lend to new businesses. What on earth is going on? The banks have all that money, but they are still reluctant to invest in new ventures. The Government should have done something about that. Let us see better finance for the productive sector from the banks, and let us also expand our manufacturing exports. We hear time and again that we are not taking advantage of the markets in China, Brazil, Russia and India.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I was interested to hear the hon. Gentleman mention countries such as Brazil, China and Japan, and also banking. Given that the debate is about the Queen’s Speech, what piece of legislation would he seek to introduce to achieve his very sensible goals?

[Mr Sheerman]

Everyone knows that we could have had legislation that strengthened the Government’s power to force banks to lend to small businesses.

It was me, in an intervention, and not the shadow Secretary of State, who drew attention to what had been said by Lord Jones this morning. He said that the trade and industry outreach of the Foreign Office had been decimated in recent months. We need to expand our manufacturing exports, and the small and medium-sized enterprises will do that as well.

If we are to rebalance the economy, we must recognise what the Queen’s Speech does not recognise: London and the south have become totally out of proportion in terms of infrastructure investment, resources and everything else that we can think of. To those who come down here from Yorkshire, the north-west or even the midlands, this part of the world is a foreign country. There is no recession here, but there has been a recession for three years in the regions of our country. The fact that the Queen’s Speech makes no reference to that is a disgrace.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this Queen’s Speech debate, although I fear that I might have stumbled into a constitutional innovation: a state of the nation debate. Of course, we do not have a state of the nation speech in this country; we have a Queen’s Speech in which Her Majesty lays out legislation for the coming year. Yet having listened to Opposition Members, I think that the debate has really been a discussion not of what was in the Queen’s Speech, but of what was left out.

I am a proud believer in limited government. I remember Queen’s Speeches under the previous Government groaning under the weight of unnecessary legislation. Barely a year went by without a criminal justice Act being added to the statute book. Did they ever look at whether those Acts had the desired impact? Of course not. They just kept on legislating because, in the end, that is what politicians on the left need to do; they need to pass laws, because otherwise, heaven forfend, people might not think they needed to exist, and we cannot have that, can we?

When I speak with local businesses in my constituency, they do not beg me for legislation. Actually, I tell a lie. It would remiss of me as a Blackpool MP not to mention one measure that was missing from the Queen’s Speech. I am sorry that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is no longer in his place, as otherwise I would congratulate him on the massive benefits he has brought to the ski lifts of Aviemore. Having accepted the principle that there should be a level playing field between different European nations, he lowered the VAT rate for ski lifts and did well by the people of Aviemore, but the hoteliers of Blackpool would like him to make a similar contribution by lowering the VAT rate on the provision of goods and services related to tourism. Many other European countries have a lower rate of VAT on such services, which means that the UK is suffering through competition. Having accepted that principle, I hope that the Government will now look at how it can be expanded to other sectors of the economy.

[Lorely Burt]

Many laws were passed under the previous Government—more than one for every single day they were in government—but what did that achieve? Unless we enact them and then ensure that people adhere to them, they are not worth the paper they are written on.

[Paul Maynard]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. My only surprise is that so far no Labour Member has proposed a law stating that two plus two should equal five, because that is the only way they could get their sums to add up for the policies they would introduce. What local firms in my constituency are asking for is better implementation of existing legislation. The Economist stated only last week that we are the most radical Government in the west. We have introduced fundamental reforms in welfare and education, and they need time to bed in. Good governance is different from good legislation. Public administration is about implementing what is passed, not moving on to the next big item just for the sake of giving oneself something to do. That is not how to run a country properly.

One local firm I visited only the other week is AGC Chemicals in Thornton, which makes a wonderful product called Fluon, which I had never heard of before. It is apparently very similar to Teflon. Those Members who are familiar with the Allianz arena in Munich or the Water Cube where the swimming events took place at the Beijing Olympics will be interested to know that the fancy cladding surrounding the stadiums is made of Fluon, which I am very proud is manufactured in my constituency. The company told me that what it needs is our existing legislation to bear fruit. It is delighted by the education reforms we are putting in place, because it needs better skilled employees and cannot find them in the local area, which is a tragedy for not only the firm, but for the local people on the Fylde coast who need jobs and need to acquire those skills. That is why it is vital that we welcome what the Government are doing on apprenticeships, for example. Also, the firm should not have to look two or three hours away to get the highly skilled specialists it needs, because those people will have lengthy commutes, which puts stresses and strains on our infrastructure. That cannot be the right way to go. There must be a more local approach to skills, and that is what the Government are seeking to ensure, but that does not need a Bill or legislation; it just needs us to allow the Government to get on with the business of good governance. It is that simple.

Let me give another example. We already have local enterprise partnerships and enterprise zones. I welcome the enterprise zone that the Government have introduced near my constituency in Warton, where BAE Systems is based, but once again that is an evolving situation. The local enterprise partnerships are barely a year old, and certainly the one in Lancashire had something of a traumatic birth—something to which other Lancashire Members in the Chamber can no doubt bear testament. Once again, local firms in my constituency are saying that they want to be certain that the local enterprise partnership is not being hobbled or constrained and that the periphery—the Fylde coast is, after all, always a periphery because it is the coast—is not neglected when decisions are made.

In my view it is fundamentally important that as we move forward we remember the first line of the Queen’s Speech, which is that deficit reduction is at the heart of what the Government are doing. I can accept that Opposition Members might not agree with every element of the Queen’s Speech or like the general approach that the Government are taking, but I ask them to bear witness to what is happening in Athens and in France. I ask them to bear in mind the fact that we cannot make two plus two equal five, as much as they might wish us to, because two plus two will always equal four, and that has to be the basis of any sound, intellectual economic policy. We cannot keep channelling our inner Venezuelans and hoping that if we nationalise everything somehow all will be well. I realise that it is a seductive message for politicians to offer, that somehow they can offer all the gain with none of the pain, particularly when they are desperate to win elections, but the more the Labour Members go on in that manner, the more they will show that they are yet to understand fully why they lost the last election. I am quite happy for them to continue in their ignorance, for they need to look within themselves that little bit more to understand fully why they were thrown out in 2010. I was there; I remember.