River Severn Flooding

Debate between Richard Graham and Daniel Kawczynski

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Kawczynski]

That is an awfully generous offer. I take my hon. Friend back 10 or 11 years to my Westminster Hall debate on this issue, in this room. If he looks through the records, he will find that I started to talk about the need to look at the whole of the River Severn as a single unit 11 years ago. Let us not forget that the problem has not just come upon us recently. Shrewsbury has been appallingly flooded many times. The opportunity for the Government is enormous. If they can protect our constituencies from repeated flooding, think about the extra economic productivity they will achieve, how property prices will go up and how businesses will continue to operate and pay their VAT and other taxes.

I agree with my hon. Friend wholeheartedly that all the Members of Parliament through whose constituency the River Severn flows have to work together cross-party. We are predominantly Tories along the River Severn, which is a great thing, but whichever party an MP is from, if they represent a constituency through which the River Severn flows, I would like them to take part in that campaign group. If we join forces as Members of Parliament, go to see the Minister repeatedly and keep raising the issue collectively, something can be done.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend share my hope that some of the additional flood defence funding announced today will be used not only for additional storage capacity in the Welsh hills, as proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), but to ensure that there is a piping system, probably provided by Severn Trent Water, to get excess water in the summer through the Severn to the Thames for the parts of south-east England that have a water shortage?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

My hon. Friend raises a pivotal issue. The irony is that many parts of our country are badly economically hit because of a lack of water. In this day and age, we ought to be able to devise a system whereby we can properly manage water and ensure that it can be better utilised for areas lacking it while protecting our constituencies.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Richard Graham and Daniel Kawczynski

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

11. What assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of providing remuneration at a fair market rate for self-generators of solar power putting surplus energy on the networks.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

24. What progress he has made on his proposals on the solar export tariff.

UK Trade & Investment

Debate between Richard Graham and Daniel Kawczynski

Thursday 12th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I congratulate that towering presence among export-supporting MPs, my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), on securing the debate. He is absolutely right to act as a champion for business, both in his constituency and around the country. There are a number of us here who like to be part of the ranks of export salesmen in the country, although sadly there are not so many in the Labour party as in the Conservative party.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

My hon. Friend refers to the lack of interest in this debate from the Labour Benches. I must say that we have double the number of Labour MPs for this debate that we had for my previous debate, because at least there is one.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Well, there is only one apart from the shadow Minister. Last time, there were zero.

[Richard Graham]

I thank my hon. Friend for his mathematical assessment of the situation. He makes an absolutely valid point—everyone in the House should champion business and exports for UK plc.

At the heart of my hon. Friend’s argument was whether it is effective for UK Trade & Investment to straddle two Departments. That is an interesting conundrum for the Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Skills—who, of course, straddles two Departments himself, although they are not the same two Departments that UKTI straddles. Personally, I am all in favour of activities that straddle different Departments. Cross-departmental activity is a good thing, because silos do not exist in the real world. The key to it all is having autonomy for UKTI rather than independence, which I think is what my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), who is the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to “the -stans”, was effectively advocating and supporting earlier. However, I will leave the Minister to comment on that.

What my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham was really advocating was the crucial importance of small and medium-sized enterprises, and the importance of exports to the future growth of SMEs. He knows as I do—as we all do—how vital that is to the growth of jobs, in Shrewsbury or in my constituency of Gloucester, where we have a long tradition of manufacturing and exporting. However, as I have said before in the main Chamber, in Gloucester we lost 6,000 jobs in business during the 13 years of my two Labour predecessors as Gloucester MP, although we have created 1,600 new jobs in business since 2010.

There is a great deal more to be done, which is precisely where SMEs come in, including the 500 members of the Gloucester branch of the Federation of Small Businesses and the members of many other branches all around the country. So how do we help SMEs to export? That question has been around for a long time. In fact, I wrote a paper on it as British trade commissioner for China, which, alarmingly, was 23 years ago. What has changed since then is the speed of communication and access to information through technology. We also have the new sectors and centres of UK expertise and, above all and most interestingly, the much higher standing of the brand “made in Britain”.

To bring alive that fact most immediately, at breakfast this morning I was with the CEO of the west Kowloon cultural district authority, which covers 40 acres of reclaimed land from Hong Kong’s harbour that will be transmogrified into a fantastic centrepiece for architectural design and creative arts from around the world, under a masterplan made by Foster and Partners. It will feature a huge number of UK stars from different sectors. The CEO of the cultural authority went yesterday to see some of the things achieved by Britain in time for the Olympics. He was staggered by the fact that the BBC sports hub was created in 21 weeks.

It is worth remembering that the west Kowloon cultural district authority has been in place for 16 years and has only just put a spade in the ground. The assumption that many of us had—I spent a large chunk of my life in that part of the world—that everything is done at great speed in Hong Kong and that nothing happens very fast in Britain has been turned around over the last few years by some of the achievements in this country. They help to reinforce the concept of “made in Britain” or “created in Britain” being a powerful brand, and they give our SMEs the chance to export to markets they previously might not have even thought of.