Budget Resolutions

Richard Drax Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to listen to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). I do not agree with 99.9% of what he said but there was an element there with which I may have agreed. Steady as she goes is what the Government and the Budget have portrayed to the country, and in the circumstances that is eminently sensible. Sadly, we simply do not have the money, for the reasons many Conservative Members have explained, to splash out, as the Leader of the Opposition claims that he does.

Nobody has said that leaving the EU is going to be easy, but the people of this country voted to do so and that is what we must do. I have been longing to hear some cohesion in the House, with the majority of MPs, who voted to initiate article 50, getting behind the Prime Minister and our country to do all we can to get the best deal we can. Divided, we are not going to get the best deal because they see a divided country. The future for us when we leave the EU, particularly in business and other opportunities, is enormous.

I shall tell the House a little story. Lord Digby Jones came down to my constituency to attend the apprenticeship fair, which is now in its fifth year. I set it up with the help of the local college, for which I give many thanks. He gave a speech. For those who do not know, let me say that he was a trade ambassador—I think he still is, actually—and he had been to India to meet up-and- coming businesses over there, as that country is going to be a huge powerhouse in the years ahead. He sat in the back of a taxi and he noticed the taxi driver’s eyes staring at him in the mirror. The taxi driver asked who he was and he said, “I’m Lord Jones. I’m a trade ambassador. Who are you?” The taxi driver gave his name and said that he had two sons, and Lord Jones said, “And what are your two sons doing?” He said, “They are at university. And I’m spending every waking minute in my car earning every penny I can to support them in their futures.” Lord Jones, with the eyes still fixed on him—of course, the car was still going straight down the road, we hope—said, “Where do you see your children in the years to come?” Without pausing, the taxi driver said, “Where you’re sitting.” The point of my story is that there are tens of thousands of young people in the rising Asian economies who are so hungry, lean and mean—in the business sense—and they want a share of what we have had and of what we need to engender in this country. We have to get hungry, mean and lean again. Government Ministers can help enormously with that by following Conservative philosophy.