High Street Retailers

Robin Swann Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mr Campbell]

I thank the hon. Member for raising that; I was just coming on to the business of independent shops.

In Northern Ireland, independent retailers have an effective representational body. They are manfully and womanfully struggling to present their case in the face of huge multinationals that exist, particularly on the edge of town and out of town, where there have been a number of out-of-town developments, which tend to swamp town centres. They take advantage of what is, by and large, free car parking, and town centres are choking in some respects because of commuters and people having to pay for charging.

We must be more innovative, particularly in the prime months—in the run-up to Christmas, for example—when we must try to convince various Government Ministers to introduce a charging structure that would benefit local independent retailers on the high street to ensure that some benefit is accrued to local people.

[Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this debate. Does he agree that we can also look at other initiatives to support independent retailers? For example, there is the “Living Over The Shops” scheme that Antrim and Newtownabbey borough council brought in, which just launched its second phase in Ballyclare and Randalstown close to the end of last month. There is also the work that the council was able to do with the levelling-up moneys; it was able to redevelop a space scheme in the middle of Antrim town, where it has opened office facilities just above my constituency office.

[Mr Campbell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. Those two or three options are starting to develop. Those that are in vogue at the moment are reasonably successful, and they need to be built on.

Career Breaks: Parents of Seriously Ill Children

Robin Swann Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I thank the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) for introducing the debate and pay tribute to Christina for starting the petition that allowed the issue to be brought to this Chamber. I also wish Skye continuing good health.

No parent should have to choose between work and supporting a sick child through a terminal illness, life-limiting illness or serious illness that leads to an extended stay within a hospital facility. As was mentioned by the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley, the charity It’s Never You, founded by Ceri and Frances Menai-Davis, has petitioned for Hugh’s law. From its research, it has estimated that this issue affects up to 4,000 children per year across the UK who are spending 60 days or more in hospital. That is a rough estimate, but although 4,000 sick children may seem small compared to what our health service supports, that is 4,000 families who experience the likes of the challenge faced by Christina and Skye’s family.

I will deviate slightly now, because it is personal experience that so often shapes debate around here and how we bring forward progress. Our youngest son, Evan, was diagnosed pre-birth with a congenital heart defect. He had a single kidney and atresia of the bowel. We were told before Evan’s birth that we could expect an extended stay in hospital to support him through his initial stages of life. He celebrated his first birthday in hospital; he spent the first 13 months of his life in the Barbour ward of the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children. I pay tribute, as I am sure many parents would, to the workers on children’s wards who take on additional caring responsibility given the additional strains put on family life.

Although today’s petition looks at the financial implications of having a child in hospital over an extended period, many families also face emotional challenges in how they try to find not just a work-life balance, but a family-life balance as well. Many have other children at home who need support. I value the strength of today’s petition, because it is what this place should be about. We need to support families and individuals on a very local, specific, individual basis. Surely, if we have been elected to this place, that is what we should be about. I thank the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) for encouraging this debate and the petition, because subsequent surveys have indicated just how crucial this issue is.

I look forward to the Minister’s response. There is an expectation on Government that surely we could do something for the families and children who find themselves in these circumstances. Unfortunately, as a Government, as politicians and as a health service, we leave the work to be carried out by charities and families. I speak from experience. When I was Health Minister in Northern Ireland dealing with these circumstances, we had the Northern Ireland Children’s Health Coalition, which was 13 local charities that came together to look for a young patients fund to support parents in this situation financially. If the best we can really do is to look to charities to carry that work forward, there is a failing in what we and this Government want to be about.

It was estimated that the financial cost to a family was £351 per day. There is a suggestion that even unpaid leave would be welcome, but we also have to look to what the call is from Hugh’s law in regard to supplying financial support. In response to the petition, we surely have to consider how we can support families and children so that we take part of the financial stress away. That would also alleviate the emotional stress put on the parents and families who support the children who have extended stays in hospital.

In closing, I thank the Petitions Committee for granting this debate. I thank the contributors and I especially thank Christina for starting this initiative and getting the debate to this place.

Draft Radio Equipment (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2024

Robin Swann Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 General Committees

[Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)]

In regard to the specifics of how the regulations affect Northern Ireland, I seek some clarity from the Minister about part two of the explanatory memorandum. He said that he had engaged with the Northern Ireland Department of Justice, but I note that there is an impact on the public sector because the enforcing authorities are Northern Ireland district councils. What engagement has there been those with councils on regulation that is due to be implemented on 28 December? To follow on from the point made by the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim, if this legislation had been adopted in this place or through the Northern Ireland Assembly, that engagement would already have happened.

I welcome the commonality that the law will introduce, and the inference that the Government are putting out a call for evidence to ensure that we have continuity of type of charger across the United Kingdom. Have the Government considered stalling the implementation of the regulation in Northern Ireland, so that it can be implemented at the same time across the entirety of the United Kingdom, rather than being delivered in two different parts?

Business Confidence

Robin Swann Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)]

Thank you for that direction, Mrs Harris; I will follow it directly. I want to focus solely on a small part of business confidence: the confidence of businesses across the United Kingdom in the UK’s internal market. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and the mover of the motion, the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies), said, small and medium businesses are the backbone of our communities, and nowhere more so in Northern Ireland than in my constituency of South Antrim. We have a real challenge at the minute with the outworkings of the Windsor framework and how our small businesses can sell to, and purchase parts and other things they want to sell on from, the rest of the UK. They are having difficulty getting parts to sell and selling across the Irish sea.

Prior to this debate being called a small business wrote to me, which is why I thought it would be useful to come here. To survive, that small business went to online selling through Amazon. It was looking for some advice on what will happen after 13 December, when the EU’s general product safety regulation, which will apply to those selling online from Northern Ireland, will kick off. It said:

“As an online business this is starting to do us a lot of harm already. Places like Amazon where we do most of our business are making us do compliance reports for every item and we probably have over 60k items that have to be done one at a time.”

The GPSR is adding additional bureaucracy and cost to those small businesses to such an extent that suppliers are saying that they will no longer post to Northern Ireland, completely destroying business confidence across what should be our United Kingdom. I am meeting an English company later this week that tells me it wants to supply Northern Ireland, but, because of the introduction of the EU’s GPSR, it will look to cease trading into Northern Ireland. The GPSR comes into effect on 13 December: that is three weeks prior to the Christmas and new year sales, a crucial time for small businesses that rely on online sales.

Two bodies were recently created and announced by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland: Intertrade UK and the Windsor framework independent monitoring panel. We thought that they could answer our questions and queries, but I have asked the Northern Ireland Office and we are still waiting for them to be appointed or established. All the while, the clock is ticking down on what our consumers, suppliers and sellers in Northern Ireland want to achieve. I hope the Minister can provide reassurance or guidance on that today, because I have asked the Department for Business and Trade and the Northern Ireland Office and still I can give no reassurance or guidance to the small and medium-sized companies in Northern Ireland who want it.

The hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield referred to the international investment summit and the announcement of £63 billion of investment. I appreciate that she talked about double funding and the double announcement. I would have been happy if it had been indicated that any of that was coming to Northern Ireland. From what I see in the announcement that was made, England gets a fair share, Wales gets some and Scotland gets some, but nothing is coming to Northern Ireland. We would welcome any of the £63 billion or 38,000 jobs that were announced.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)]

I too take the opportunity in the usual way to thank the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies) for securing this important debate. At the outset, let me echo her thanks to businesses across the country for the wealth they create, the better communities they help promote and, crucially, the good jobs they offer. I do not know where her “Taste of East Grinstead” event is taking place, but if it is in the House, I will happily come along if I can. If not, I would be happy to hear from her separately about the particular businesses that turn up to that event.

As a number of interventions from hon. Members have made clear, small businesses, in particular, are the backbone of our economy. I feel particularly privileged to be the Minister for Small Businesses and to hear some of the remarkable stories about how those small businesses came into being and the successes they have had in each of our communities. That is why I am pleased that we have been making progress in government on following through on the commitments we made in opposition in our nine-point plan to back small businesses. If time allows, I hope to touch on some of those points.

I welcome the support of all hon. Members who have spoken for their business communities, even if I did not quite agree with the tone of all their remarks. All of us need the businesses in our communities to succeed, and it is great to hear so many Opposition and Government Members wanting to back them to succeed.

The Prime Minister could not have been any clearer about this Government’s guiding mission: we will go for growth at every opportunity. Growth and backing business is the surest path to prosperity and to improving the living standards of working people. We have made it clear that our goal is to deliver the highest sustained growth in the G7, more secure jobs, better wages and, as a result, much greater funding for our public services, including our brilliant NHS. It surely goes without saying that investment is key to driving that growth.

I gently say to Conservative Members that the problem is that the Administrations of the past 14 years sadly starved our economy of the investment it needed. Whether it is the fall-out from the poor-quality deal the Conservatives negotiated with the European Union after the Brexit referendum, the revolving door of Prime Ministers— I think every Conservative Member here backed Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget—the seven separate growth strategies since 2010 or the 11 different Business Secretaries in as many years, I say to Opposition Members that all of that might help to explain why they lost the confidence of business at the last general election.

If Opposition Members are not convinced by that, I would underline that there was also no plan to help small businesses grow, export or get into new markets. Support in that area was cut back and, in some cases, axed completely. There was no delivery on repeated promises to comprehensively reform business rates and no serious plan to tackle the scourge of late payments, which many small businesses face at the moment. Vital infrastructure projects that were fundamental to growth in many communities were cancelled, sensible measures to open up opportunities for investment in green energy projects were blocked, there was no obvious plan to back the high street—a point made by the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (James McMurdock) —and, in particular, there was no serious plan to tackle retail crime going forward.

The result is that British firms have not felt that investing domestically was an attractive enough proposition. There has been much reluctance to adopt new technology, to upskill employees or to plough money into research and development. Sadly, that is why the UK has sat right at the bottom of global rankings for business investment for quite some time—27th out of 30 in the OECD last year, behind Mexico, Slovenia and the Slovak Republic.

[Robin Swann]

I thank the Minister for that point, which goes back to my contribution. This is about seeing what the Government can do in the next few weeks to give small businesses in my community in South Antrim the assurance they need to continue their online presence and sell into the UK.

[Gareth Thomas]

I thank the hon. Member for his earlier remarks and his intervention. Let me be clear that my Department will continue to work with local partners in Northern Ireland, including InterTradeIreland, to develop and deliver our trade and industrial strategies. If the hon. Member wants to speak to me, I would be happy to help the small businesses that have written to him to join up with the support available in Northern Ireland.

Members across the House will be pleased that there is good news on growth. I welcome the generous support of the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield for the work done yesterday at the international investment summit and in the run-up to it. A raft of measures were announced to help boost business confidence going forward and to spur growth, and I will recap on some of them. We are determined to make it simpler for companies to relocate to the UK through a new corporate re-domiciliation regime, which I am sure will strengthen our position as a global business hub. We have announced a business-boosting lift to the thresholds on company sizes, which means we will have new legislation by the end of the year reducing the burdens on start-ups and SMEs, saving them nearly a quarter of a billion pounds. We will be consulting next year on our ambitious modernisation programme for the UK’s entire non-financial reporting regime. We are seeking to make shareholder communication easier, and we are clarifying the law on virtual annual general meetings.

Those improvements, helping to reduce red tape, could be worth up to £16 billion a year to investment going forward. As a result of the pro-innovation, pro-business, pro-wealth creation policies we are pursuing, big-hitting global businesses are confidently investing in the UK. The total investment pledged by international and British firms, both in the run-up to and during the summit yesterday, now stands at an estimated £63 billion, which will help ensure that 38,000 jobs are created. I would gently suggest that that is a resounding vote of confidence in both the UK’s economy and the Government’s growth mission.

Post Office Horizon: Redress

Robin Swann Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I recognise very much what my hon. Friend says. As I said in my earlier answers, there is an absolute need to not just provide redress but learn lessons for the future of the Post Office and all institutions of the state. Crucially, we must ensure that a business model is in place that rewards postmasters with a decent return for providing an essential service, in an organisation that supports their frontline activities and gives them the income and the prosperity that they deserve for that.

[Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)]

The Secretary of State knows that 26 postmasters in Northern Ireland were wrongly convicted. I thank him for his work with the Northern Ireland Executive to bring forward the necessary legislative process. I seek his reassurance that the redress scheme will be equally open to Northern Ireland postmasters who were wrongly convicted because of a UK-wide issue. Will the redress scheme apply to them as well?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

People are aware that it is fairly challenging to have a situation in which justice is devolved across the United Kingdom. At times that has very much affected the debate in this House. I believe that what the hon. Gentleman says is the case, but I will write to him about the Northern Irish situation to give him the information that he needs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robin Swann Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for championing such a vital sector—our most recent data shows that UK life sciences employs over 300,000 people, generating a turnover of over £100 billion. With the NHS back on its feet under this new Government, working hand in hand with life sciences, research institutions and others, we can drive the development of new treatments and help grow our industries. Of course, I would love to meet with my hon. Friend.

[Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)]

The Minister has expressed the importance of life sciences. Can I seek her assurance that Northern Ireland is part of that trade mission as well, especially as it relates to my constituency? Also, regarding the Minister for Trade Policy and Economic Security’s statement about removing barriers to trade, can I ask this Government to ensure that there are no EU barriers to trade when it comes to promoting businesses in Northern Ireland? Those businesses want to thrive, flourish, and be part of this United Kingdom’s outreach in regards to business and investment across the United Kingdom and, indeed, the world.

[Sarah Jones]

Of course, Northern Ireland is incredibly important to our plans and to us. In opposition, many of us went to Northern Ireland and met with businesses. I certainly did: I met with the Chamber of Commerce and talked about the opportunities for the future in Northern Ireland. I will meet with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland next week to talk about some of these issues, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will be reassured that we will do what we can to grow jobs, skills and investment and make sure there are no barriers to trade.

Aerospace Industry: Northern Ireland

Robin Swann Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon]

Yes, I agree. I am glad to say that, in Northern Ireland, Spirit AeroSystems and the aerospace sector are already trying to achieve some of those goals by giving introductions to ladies in engineering. I am very encouraged by that, and the hon. Lady is right. We have heard a woman Chancellor speak in the House today, which is an example of what we all wish to see. It is wonderful to have ladies elevated to different positions, and we have that in engineering, at Spirit and across the aviation sector.

This has undoubtedly been a holistic effort, with Invest NI involvement and Government support. It is clear that this has paid dividends, with the Northern Ireland aerospace, defence, security and space sectors on track to achieve revenue of £2 billion a year by 2024. The sectors had a turnover of £1.9 billion and contributed almost £1 billion in value added to Northern Ireland’s economy in 2022.

[Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)]

The hon. Gentleman mentions the military side of aviation in Northern Ireland. Does he agree that we are underutilising the Royal Air Force base at Aldergrove? The Government could look at that, as well as enhancing Belfast International airport in my constituency.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Gentleman spoke in his maiden speech today about what could be done at Aldergrove and Belfast International airport. I see that, as we probably all do, as a way of advancing aerospace across Northern Ireland for everybody’s advantage.

Support for the sector has resulted in an employment dividend, with 7,000 people believed to be directly employed. There are also the skills and the varied subsidiary companies whose bread and butter is supplying this industry. Strangford has hundreds of people employed in this sector, so I have much to be proud of.

However, it is clear why I have called this debate. One of the major employers under Spirit has a factory in my constituency and employs hundreds at its east Belfast site, and it has taken the decision to sell its operations here. I am privileged to have secured the debate for that reason. I told the press in the run-up to the election that I would make this an issue, and I am glad to have been able to speak to the Minister to highlight it last week.