DWP: Performance

Debate between Paul Maynard and Baroness Primarolo

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was extremely disturbed to hear over the monitors the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) describe cerebral palsy as an infectious disease, which implies that it can be caught by other people. That is not the case; it is a neurological condition. I wish to place that on the record.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Mr Maynard, I think that you know that that is not a point of order for the Chair, but a continuation of debate in the Chamber. You have got your point on the record and it is now part of the debate. I am sure that others will want to clarify the position.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Maynard]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In my zeal to correct the record, I inadvertently attributed the phrase “infectious disease” to the hon. Member for Hyndburn. I apologise to him; in fact, he said “incurable disease”. I place that on the record.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Good. I am glad that has been cleared up.

Military Aviation Industry

Debate between Paul Maynard and Baroness Primarolo

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend think that the absence of the Opposition Front-Bench team is a further sign of the importance they place on this matter?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. This is an Adjournment debate, so the hon. Gentleman’s point is not relevant. I hope that Members will return to the aviation industry.

[Paul Maynard]

Export industry is crucial, and improved Government support for it—

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Jones]

Put simply, if the RAF or the British Government will not buy Typhoons, why should any other country? It is a really poor advert. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the strength of our exports will come from our confidence in our own products and UK manufacturing base? He seems to be arguing the opposite, which I do not fully understand. That is an important point that he needs to focus on—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. This is an Adjournment debate, which is going a little longer tonight because of the time. The debate is in the name of the hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies). [Interruption.] Will the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) please resume his seat while I am on my feet? Thank you. Interventions are to be brief. It is a Back-Bench debate and should refer to the title and subject of the debate. If Members want to speak, they should stand and hope they get in.

[Paul Maynard]

I appreciate your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I want to talk about the importance of sovereign capability in terms of our military aviation industry. Many people might regard the notion of sovereign capability as something nostalgic. At the moment, we are celebrating the 70th anniversary of the battle of Britain, and many people are saying how fortunate we were in those days to be able to generate our own aircraft, make them within our own shores and defend our shores against our enemies, and that we should continue that in the future. I would be cautious, however, about basing any arguments for sovereign capability on nostalgia, tempting as that might be, but sovereign capability matters. It is an important concept that the Government have to buy into, because we do not know what is around the corner or what the future holds. We do not know whether we can rely on those on whom we have relied in the past. The world is full of unknowns, and sovereign capability is our sole protection from them.

I therefore ask the Government to consider carefully the ways in which they can support sovereign capability, and to look beyond defining it simply in terms of whether shipyard X or aircraft factory Y remains open. With regard to military aviation, I ask the Minister to consider how the Government can use some of the things that they are already doing to protect sovereign capability, in particular through the important changes being made with the introduction of local enterprise partnerships. It is important that the Ministry of Defence speak to other Departments to consider how the newly emerging LEPs can best be allocated to strategic areas, which can then underpin particular subsections of the defence industry. A good example would be the application by Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre to have a local enterprise partnership focusing on the aeronautical supply chain, which I discussed earlier. That is one way in which Government innovation can help to support sovereign capability without having to invest just to keep things open.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

One thing that must also be considered when talking about the area of north-west England for which my hon. Friend is a Member—quite a few Members are from there—is that places such as Samlesbury and Warton form an area of excellence that is the silicon valley, as it were, of the defence aviation industry. We have only to look back at what happened in the 1960s when the Wilson Government cut the TSR2. We had a world-beating product, but it was shredded because of what was happening at the time in the political framework. My hon. Friend is correct about the allocation of funding. We have to preserve not just the jobs, but the scientific—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I said just a moment ago that interventions needed to be brief. That is a general rule of the House. The hon. Gentleman should not use the opportunity of an intervention to make a speech. I am sure that his hon. Friend has got the gist of his point now.

[Paul Maynard]

I agree with it fully, so I thank my hon. Friend for his comments.

The other Department that I would like the Minister to talk to is the Department for Education. It is a common complaint across Government as a whole that science education is somehow in decline. When I was fortunate enough to tour BAE Systems in Warton, I saw many highly skilled people who had engaged in scientific educational training. They had their physics and their chemistry: they knew what they were doing when it came to science. That is one important reason for ensuring that we emphasise why more students should get science-based qualifications that lead to careers in important defence-based industries—in particular military aviation—and underpin the protection of our sovereign capability.

I hope that the Minister will take both those ideas away and do something with them. Sovereign capability matters. It needs to be more than just a phrase that gets deployed in debates such as this, and we need to do more than depend on nostalgia to underpin it. I hope that he will consider that. We have something that we can be enormously proud of in the UK military aviation industry but, like anything, it must be constantly burnished and kept up to scratch. I hope that the Minister will tell us how he intends to do that when he responds to this debate.