Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

The apprenticeship programme is demand-led, because we require employers to create jobs. That is what apprenticeships are under this Government, unlike under the Government the hon. Lady supported, when they took place at college full time. We have seen a dramatic expansion in the apprenticeship programme, and we will see a further expansion. I would have thought that she welcomed that. I am absolutely sure that one reason she is sitting on the Opposition Benches rather than on the Government Benches is the success of our apprenticeship programme.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

Schools such as Tuxford Academy near Newark, which were built under poorly worded private finance initiative contracts, are finding it expensive to maintain their buildings because the maintenance costs set out in the PFI agreements are higher than school funding. Will the Minister look into that and come back to me?

[Nicky Morgan]

We are aware of the costs involved in the PFI agreements. In some schools, we are having to put walls back into schools so that there are individual classrooms. We are keeping that whole matter under careful review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

That is a very interesting point. I shall need to look into exactly how the teacher supply model is calculated each year, but I can tell the hon. Lady that, during the current Parliament, the Government have invested £5 billion to create new school places, and that, because we continue to recognise that there is pressure on the system, we have announced further funding up to 2021.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

We were delighted to see the Orchard special school in Newark added to a list of 16 schools in Nottinghamshire to which funding was provided last month for classrooms. Those of us who know the Orchard school believe it may be beyond repair; this school really is in bad condition. Will the Secretary of State agree to review this case and get back to us?

[Nicky Morgan]

I was delighted last month to be able to announce £6 billion of investment in school buildings for school blocks in the worst condition, but of course, sadly, demand always outstrips supply. If my hon. Friend would like to send me further details, I shall ensure that I or one of the Ministers respond, and perhaps meet him to have a chat about it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

Our tourism strategy has led to record visitor numbers and record spends and brought £127 billion to the UK economy, so I am not going to take any finger wagging from the hon. Gentleman.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

The great opportunity in the tourism market in the years ahead will be in attracting Chinese tourists. Britain has been improving in its ability to do that, and I know that the Minister and the Secretary of State have taken a personal interest in that area, particularly in relation to visas. We know that Chinese tourists are surprisingly adventurous and want to get out of London and into the regions, and we are seeing more of that in the midlands and Scotland. What more can the Government do to market the regions—particularly the east midlands—to get those wealthy Chinese tourists out of London and the south-east?

[Mrs Grant]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. VisitEngland and VisitBritain promote the nations and the regions, and they do a very good job. VB does it through its GREAT and tactical campaigns, and VE does it through its very successful holidays at home campaigns. The local growth fund, the regional growth fund, the coastal community fund and the recently established £10 million fund for the north are all helpful in growing local tourism outside London.

Living Wage

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Thursday 6th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

This is a great opportunity for me to support the Living Wage Foundation. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) for securing the debate, in which I want to make a few brief observations. I support the living wage, and I am thankful that one of my councils, Newark and Sherwood district council, has just become a living wage employer, which is a very good and progressive step.

I want to talk briefly about wages more generally and to make a few observations about conversations I have had with employers in my constituency since becoming an MP, drawing on my previous experience as a business man, growing up in a small business family. I have believed in the minimum wage for a long time—indeed, I believed in it before my party adopted it. In recent years, I have come to believe that the minimum wage is too low and that there is room in many sectors and many regions for it to grow to somewhere between the current minimum wage and the current living wage. Sadly, I do not believe that the living wage of £7.85 is doable for many businesses, particularly those in the midlands and the north—in areas such as the Nottinghamshire constituency that I represent—but there is room to bridge the gap. I hope that our Government and future Governments will work on that and become more ambitious than they have been before.

Secondly, it may not be a matter entirely for today, but I think this country has not only a low-wage issue; the primary issue is one of tax poverty. We have taxed the working poor too heavily for far too long, and reducing the taxation on current wage levels will provide a better standard of living. It may not be a standard of living to which many will aspire, but it is certainly a priority. This is not lost on the present Government, and I do not believe it is lost on the Opposition either. We have further to go along that route. If we can increase the tax allowances and improve the thresholds, we might be able to get all workers close to, if not quite at, the living wage. That should be a priority, as was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman).

There is clearly a problem—I am not immune to it in my own constituency, although much of Newark is relatively affluent—with wages. Wages have been very slack for a long time, particularly in certain sectors and in the midlands and the north. Only yesterday, I met a group of manufacturers in the heating industry in my constituency, and they reported that there has been very little pressure on wages in recent years. Many businesses were offering a small rise in wages purely to keep their work force happy and motivated—not because of significant market forces.

It has to be said that the No. 1 reason mentioned by the employers I have met to explain why wages have been kept low is immigration, mostly from continental Europe. With that, of course, come benefits such as keeping our economy competitive and keeping businesses going during the recession, but it is the primary explanation of why wages are unacceptably low for so many in this country. It is a problem, and I am concerned about the long-term prospects of low-skilled or lower-skilled workers. It is difficult to come up with easy answers to how to increase the wages of the sort of workers I meet at some of the larger manufacturing businesses in my constituency.

That said, there is scope for many businesses, even in the midlands and the north, to increase wages. I have met manufacturing businesses and SMEs that want to offer the living wage, but find it slightly too high. However, they could accommodate, as I suggested, somewhere between the national minimum wage and the living wage.

I am delighted that Newark and Sherwood district council is supporting the introduction of the living wage for its employees. There is clearly a role for public sector contracts, and I met a number of businesses that want to see local authorities making decisions—where there is some discretion on price—to promote employers who pay better wages, be it the living wage or somewhere slightly below it. They want businesses that pay more than the national minimum wage to be respected. I have encountered a number of examples of companies in direct competition with each other, with one paying just the minimum wage without trying to go any further, and the other at least trying to go further, along the lines I suggested.

Finally, I want to make a broader cultural point. On the basis of my experience in a small manufacturing business, I certainly found that one of the biggest impediments to raising wages was the cultural difference between the shop floor and the office. I have met a number of employers in whose businesses it is accepted that manual labour or shop-floor work, even if it is skilled or semi-skilled, is somehow inferior to jobs in the office next door. For many companies, that is the biggest impediment to their raising the wages of their lowest-paid workers just a little bit, to the living wage or something close to it.

We all overstate the difference between office workers and managers and those on the shop floor. I suspect that that has become worse over the last 20 years as more of us who become managers in businesses have been to a university and have no experience of life on the shop floor. Many see it as being slightly inferior. We underestimate the value of the skills involved in manual and shop-floor work. As time goes by, those workers build up very valuable skills. There is room for many ambitious companies with some imagination to raise the pay of their workers who receive the lowest wages, without necessitating increases for everyone else in the business. The biggest fear of many employers is that raising the lowest wages will mean that everyone else’s wages will have to rise proportionately. Good, imaginative managers will be capable of carrying the work force with them, and convincing office-based and higher-income workers that it is right to recognise the skills and commitment of their lower-paid colleagues. Unions will have a role in promoting that, working closely with employers.

All of us, in politics and in wider society, should try to change the attitude that has grown up and end the division between people who are on the shop floor, doing important manual labour, and people in offices. That is a message we should all convey to businesses in our constituencies.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

It is important to emphasise again—I made the same point in answer to the question about mobile phones—that we have one of the most competitive broadband markets in the world and very low prices. We pay on average about half the price that would be paid in America. I cannot comment on the specific example, but if the hon. Gentleman would care to write to me about it, I will certainly look into it.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

13. Rural broadband in Nottinghamshire suffers from the reality that the target of either 95% or 98% of the population is calculated by residence rather than by population. Of course, in a predominantly urban county such as Nottinghamshire, the vast majority of homes that broadband will not reach lie in my constituency and that of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). Is there any chance with future broadband schemes of changing the formula in order to cover residents rather than residences?

[Mr Vaizey]

Some £10 million is going into the Nottinghamshire rural broadband roll-out, and we are planning to cover almost 50,000 premises, but it is hard to see how we could change the criterion to the number of people who lived in those houses. If we are to obtain value for money, we need to get to as many premises as possible with the money that is available.