UK Trade Performance

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am very happy to do so. My hon. Friend is right that our accession to CPTPP is carrying on: as he knows, we have ratified the Bill in Parliament, and three of the CPTPP countries have completed their own processes—there are only a handful to go—so I do think this is something that will be possible. I will arrange for officials to meet representatives of the business in my hon. Friend’s constituency to have that conversation.

[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

We are in the Chamber to talk about the progress of British business, so it is telling that Labour MPs have not bothered to show up. If today’s Financial Times is to be believed, that is because they are desperately trying to find businesses to talk about the latest reversal of Labour party policy, which is on Labour’s very damaging approach to the labour market. Its approach would place additional laws on business that would stifle enterprise and hand out more bungs to its paymasters in the trade unions, so does my right hon. Friend agree that the right way to back British business is to get the right regulation, not the stifling legislation that the Labour party would put in place?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We are doing so much to get our regulatory environment right, and I thank my hon. Friend for all the work he has done in this area. I know it is something that he cares about, and I thank him for many of the suggestions and much of the advice that he has provided to me.

The right regulatory environment can and will deliver growth. I am terrified by some of the things that I see the Labour party putting forward, and businesses do not like them either. Those flexible rights from day one would mean that if a business employs someone and they do not turn up to work on their first day, that business could not sack them, which would be a disaster. We have done so much on labour rights, but it is not the area that is going to deliver growth, certainly not with the policies that Labour is putting forward.