Treaty of Rome: 60th Anniversary

Debate between Robin Walker and Nadine Dorries

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Walker]

In one moment. We want to control immigration but recognise that that means meeting the needs of our economy, as well as the desire of the British people to see greater control. We also want to secure the rights of EU nationals in the UK and UK nationals in the EU, to ensure free trade and to co-operate in the fight against organised crime and terrorism. As we have discussed, we see significant opportunities for continued co-operation on education, science and research. Would the hon. Gentleman like to intervene?

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Absolutely not. Mr MacNeil, if you wish to intervene in a debate, you should arrive at the beginning, not halfway through in order to do nothing other than make an intervention on behalf of the gallery. I am not allowing it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

No, absolutely not.

[Mr Walker]

We seek a mutually beneficial relationship of friendship and co-operation. Our future as the United Kingdom is one where this Government will continue to protect and strengthen our precious Union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That will continue to be true as our whole Union and its constituent parts withdraw from the EU.

There has been significant intergovernmental engagement between the four Governments since the referendum result. The Prime Minister’s first visit following the referendum result was to Edinburgh, followed quickly by Cardiff and Belfast. She recently spoke in Glasgow and was in Swansea with my Secretary of State only on Monday. We are committed to continuing to engage fully with the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive as we move forward into the negotiations and prepare for a smooth and orderly exit from the EU for all of us.

We will absolutely continue with our commitment to workers’ rights, which the hon. Member for North East Fife referred to. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has often pointed out that many aspects of UK law go well beyond EU law in terms of those commitments. We also want to continue working with our friends and neighbours to meet our environmental commitments well into the future.

At this momentous time, it is more important than ever that we face the future together, taking forward our shared interest in the UK being an open, successful, global nation in future. As member states of the European Union meet this week to discuss the history and future of the European project, we wish our EU partners well. At the end of the negotiations, the UK will no longer be an EU member state, but it will be a close ally and friend. A strong partnership between the UK and the EU is in the interests of both, and we congratulate all the EU’s members on this important anniversary.

Question put and agreed to.

Engineering Careers

Debate between Robin Walker and Nadine Dorries

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Bayley. It is a pleasure to have this debate under your chairmanship.

Last year, I visited a small business in my constituency known as Autotech. I was incredibly impressed by that business, so much so that I wanted to call this debate today. That was because I was not only impressed by the business, but incredibly concerned about the problems that that growing business faces. We had hoped that its CEO, Andy Robinson, would be able to get here today, but I think that unfortunately his journey has been blighted by the problems on First Capital Connect this afternoon. He will probably arrive during the debate.

Autotech represents what many companies should be striving towards in the UK. It is a small business, specialising in supplying control systems for automated manufacturing and distribution operations. I hope that no hon. Member intervenes to ask me to explain that further, because I left after my visit to the business that afternoon none the wiser about what it actually did. I saw lots of robots, graphics, wires, computers and machines. I know that it has something to do with cars. It is incredibly high tech and very impressive.

What also impressed me was the ethos of the company and the staff. When I say to a member of staff, “How long have you been here?”, and they say, “I’ve been here since the day the company started,” I know that it is a good company. When I said, “What do you think of the boss?”—he was coming around with me—they were all glowing, and not just because he was stood behind my shoulder. It was obviously a company that has very good employment practices, so I was incredibly shocked to discover that it has had to turn down millions of pounds’ worth of business in the past few years. It has had to turn that business down because it relies, obviously, on well trained, highly professional, skilled engineers—that is what its business is about—but its inability to attract people to fill those jobs is preventing the company from growing. It cannot grow any more, even though it wants to. It has the capacity, the location and the orders coming in, but it cannot grow because it cannot get the people it needs to do the jobs. The company not only cannot get the people to do the jobs that are available today, but it has problems getting people to come and train from school, as apprentices, who would enable it to project growth for the future.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this very important and timely debate. Is she aware of the ten-minute rule Bill put forward by our hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff) in the House today? It addresses very much the issue of getting expertise into schools. Will she comment on the aspect of it that requires the governing bodies of schools to include local employers and particularly engineering employers? We are already seeing that in Worcestershire, with Yamazaki Mazak and Worcester Bosch supporting local schools, and I think that it could be encouraged much more widely.

[Nadine Dorries]

Yes. I will cover that issue later, but I shall just mention it now. One thing that I did when I was at Autotech was put it in touch with Wootton school in my constituency. Wootton has an application at the moment for a STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—academy. It seemed to me that it would be a perfect match if the school and the business worked together. The business could get involved in the school and take its business opportunities there. A bit like businesses used to do with “milk rounds” at universities years ago, Autotech could do a milk round in the school and try to nab them young and get them more interested in a different form of career. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it would be an ideal solution to get engineers as members of the governing bodies of schools, if only to influence how teachers think about the career prospects for their pupils in the future.