Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Simon Fell Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Okay. But if the fee is too much, I still suggest that the Minister looks at subsections (5), (6) and (7) of new clause 20. We hope that he will set up an economic crime fund. Any surplus that results from raising the fee to 100 quid could then be well used by the NCA, the Serious Fraud Office or another agency with access to the fund. Our new clause would ensure that the money is ringfenced for use against economic crime, rather than being taken away by the Treasury and used for other purposes.

We also suggest that the Minister comes back to us on the issue of penalties to fund the fight against economic crime. Since 1984, all forfeiture proceeds in the USA have gone to an assets forfeiture fund. Just think what it will do with the $2 billion it has got out of the Danske Bank criminal settlement! We do not have that system in the UK: at the moment, something like 40% of the current fines and penalties go towards fighting economic crime. That is too little: it should be 100%.

There are precedents. The Information Commissioner has announced a new arrangement with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport whereby it can retain the money that it accesses through penalties to support its arguments and its work against the big tech companies. The Gambling Commission accepts contributions to compensate victims or payments to charity, rather than imposing a fine: that is another ringfencing hypothecation. Ofwat’s penalties levied against Southern Water were used to reimburse customers.

I have spoken for too long, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I have focused on two of the issues that I consider most critical among today’s group of amendments. That is not to say that the others do not matter—they do—but these are practical, common-sense proposals that are supported by the all-party group, and I know from conversations with Members that they command wide support across the Chamber. There is no badge of honour for Ministers in the Government if they fail to listen to their Back Benchers.

More importantly, we have to make this reform work. If we ignore these proposals, we will risk consigning much of the reform to the dustbin. The fight against economic crime is utterly vital. We all know that this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. We know what the problems are, and we know that the solutions are multifaceted and complex. For heaven’s sake, let us work together and do what we can to make these reforms effective, efficient and fit for purpose. In that spirit, I will wait for the Minister to cheer me up by saying that he will accept these amendments from by Back Benchers of all political parties.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

I rise to speak to new clauses 17, 18, 19, 101, 102 and 103 in my name, and to support new clause 20 in the name of my friend the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge). I am grateful to her and to members of the all-party groups on anti-corruption and responsible tax and on fair business banking for their support. I should say that I do not plan to press any of those new clauses to a vote today.

The Bill is the second part of a package designed to prevent the abuse of the UK’s corporate structures and to tackle economic crime. It is a good Bill which will go a long way towards achieving its aims, and I certainly welcome the Government new clauses and amendments, but we have to go beyond “good”. Those who seek to exploit our open economy and our corporate structures to enrich themselves—whether organised criminal gangs, fraudsters, kleptocrats or even terrorists—are better than “good”. They are singularly motivated to find opportunities to enrich themselves and their clients, and to abuse our systems in doing so. They are good at it because it is a profitable endeavour for them, and because it is unfortunately too easy for them to exploit the systems in which we operate.

Economic Crime: Planned Government Bill

Simon Fell Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I know the hon. Gentleman has used that example on a number of occasions. It is a particularly pertinent example but, as I say, Companies House reform is foremost among our priorities and it will come as soon as parliamentary time allows.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on securing the urgent question.

From migrant boats to county lines, the golden thread that runs between them is illicit money flows. Although the national cyber-security strategy and the economic crime plan, and the measures in them, are welcome, what we really need is a Bill to bring this forward. May I urge my hon. Friend to use his good offices to make that case, in order to deal with not only some of the big issues but the low-level frauds that are affecting so many of our constituents? Let us not forget that it is the No. 1 crime in this country at the moment.

[Paul Scully]

I thank my hon. Friend for his work in this area and those comments. He is absolutely right: the theme in this is economic crime—county lines and those kinds of things. That is why the Business Department, the Treasury and the Home Office are working together to get this right and to tackle all of that in the round.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Fell Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I think that is a complete misrepresentation of all the work that the Government have done to help customers. There are the winter fuel payments, as the hon Gentleman well knows, and £300 for 8 million pensioners is worth £2 billion. We have the warm home discount, we have cold weather payments. We have a full range of measures that will help off-grid customers in a difficult time.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

8. What support his Department is providing to life sciences clusters across the UK.

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

12. What steps he is taking to develop the UK’s life sciences sector.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (George Freeman)]

As a result of this Government’s long-term life science strategy, now a 10-year strategy, I am delighted to be able to share with the House that the life science sector has grown, in terms of private investment, by 1,000% in the last 10 years and is creating jobs all around the UK—in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales. At the heart of our strategy for the innovation nation, in our life science vision last summer we set out a plan, with £5 billion in the comprehensive spending review of funding for life science research, and we intend to support those clusters all around the UK.

[Simon Fell]

I welcome the effort that my hon. Friend has given to developing this important policy and his characteristic kindness in engaging with me on it. Clusters will be crucial to improving UK resilience and building our manufacturing capacity. In Ulverston we have an established base with GSK, but I want to see that grow, with new entrants like Lakes BioScience coming in, building high-skilled jobs and the supply chain. With that in mind, may I ask how the strategy will apply to south Cumbria? May I also invite him to the sunlit uplands of Ulverston to visit and see for himself?

[George Freeman]

I thank my hon. Friend and pay tribute to his tireless campaigning for Barrow and Furness and on this issue. I understand well the concerns following GSK’s movement from the Ulverston site. I would just make this point: quite often such moves of pharma from one site to another create an opportunity. As the Minister for Life Sciences, I launched the life science opportunity zones and we created thriving clusters at Alderley Park and Sandwich; it would be my ambition to do the same up at Ulverston. I very much look forward to coming up and visiting, and my officials are working closely on that as we speak.

Economic Crime

Simon Fell Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

I shall try to hobble on one leg, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for securing this important and timely debate. Frankly, it is time that we addressed some of these issues for once and for all.

Before I begin, I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. For 10 years before I was elected, I worked in fraud and financial crime with some of the largest institutions—banks, insurers, telecoms companies, charities and, in fact, the Government—trying to bear down on fraud and financial crime. I seconded members of my team to the national economic crime command and the joint money laundering and intelligence taskforce, and the organisation that I worked for chaired the joint fraud taskforce.

During that period working in fraud and financial crime, I learned that there is huge willing on the part of the industry, the Government and law enforcement to work together to tackle some of the issues at the heart of this debate. I think those in the industry are willing to go a lot further in putting time, resource, money and energy into tackling some of these issues, but in return they want their investment to be backed by action from the Government and law enforcement. They want to feel heat and to see people’s collars being felt.

Let us be absolutely clear: without peril, this is just a game of whack-a-mole in which one rogue actor—one criminal—can simply shut down their activity and start again. They collect their money, move on and make liquid their funds until that route closes, and then they just open another. That is the game they are currently playing—and it is a game to them. We should be dismayed that it is happening and being allowed to happen. As Members have already said, funds are being raised through serious and organised crime. They are the result of scams and low-level frauds, of insider information leaks, of hacks, of the exploitation of breach data, of corporate espionage, and of people deliberately exploiting the state. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton pointed out, stopping the money flows is essential to stopping this activity full stop.

I recall a meeting about three years ago with the NCA, which had mapped an organised crime group and how it enabled and then laundered the proceeds of economic crime and of very human crimes. The OCG was linked to people traffickers. As my hon. Friend mentioned, those same groups are now exploiting vulnerable people and transporting them across the channel in dinghies. It was linked to low-level scams in which a vulnerable grandmother might get a phone call and suddenly have her life savings emptied out of her bank account. It was tied to complex financial marketing activity on the dark web, where credit card breach data is sold for criminals to exploit. It was also linked to drug imports and county lines drug running. The chain ran from grandmothers’ houses, across the channel, across the dark web, into the property market and all the way to the poppy fields of Afghanistan.

I make it clear that this is one group, and there are many of them. It is not a ragtag bunch of criminals trying their hand but a deeply successful, multimillion-pound business—a tax-avoiding business, too—and there are many of them out there. These people sought and exploited every single opportunity to enrich themselves, with no care for the misery or economic cost they left behind.

These criminal gangs result in real challenges for people. Insurance premiums are higher, delivery costs are inflated, public funds do not reach those who need them the most, small businesses are cratering and life savings are stolen. They also overinflate the property market, which is important. I recall sitting in the office of the NCA’s director of economic crime in Vauxhall. He pointed out of the window to the shiny new skyscrapers opposite and said, “Not a single one of them has curtains or a kettle in the kitchen, yet they change hands on an almost weekly basis for millions of pounds.” This is forcing people out of the property market. If we hope to ensure that some of our cities are ever again affordable for families to live in, we need to bear down on this activity.

These organised crime businesses are hugely complex. They run as cells, and they are intelligent. If part of the business is shut down, they know how to get up and run again. As reprehensible as they may be, I am slightly in awe of how clever they are and how they operate. But the reality of these businesses is wrought in the ruined and damaged lives they leave behind. I come back to my first point: without peril, we will simply not be able to act against them. The current whack-a-mole approach means that, for every snake’s head we chop off, another one appears.

As the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) said, fraud is the No. 1 volume crime in the UK. It is epidemic and completely out of control. We simply do not have a grip on it. It is all well and good for the City of London police to run a day of action and pick up the 10 most-wanted fraudsters in the UK, but there are 4.6 million cases of fraud each year. Where is the peril that will stop the behaviour? When the industry, the biggest banks, insurers, charities and the Government pull together to share information to bear down on those fraudsters, why are collars not being felt more regularly?

The Department for Work and Pensions ran 11 raids this morning to shut down an OCG’s £4 million benefit scam. I am glad to see there is some work happening in this area, but there is plenty more to do. We should be considering the economic equivalent of antisocial behaviour orders—economic crime prevention orders—to put those who commit fraud on notice by putting a mark against their name and saying there will be serious consequences if they do it again.

We should be looking again at how we can better empower information sharing and action against those responsible for these crimes. Taking away the ability to launder their funds would remove a good part of the incentive of people who run small boats, and taking away a county lines drug operator’s ability to trade out their earnings will do exactly the same. We need to look more closely at enablers. Thankfully, Companies House now restricts the amount of personal data available to the public on its website, which was a key enabler of fraud, but I join other colleagues in saying that we have to tread a fine line between encouraging entrepreneurship by making it easy to set up a business and making the UK a dynamic place in which to operate, and creating an easy entryway for criminality and allowing criminality to disguise itself with a veneer of acceptability.

The other key point on enablers relates to online safety and education, which will be key. Young people are sharing information right, left and centre on social media without a care for how it is going to be picked up and used against them. The point about advertising that was mentioned earlier was also spot on. The online harms Bill is absolutely where we need to be addressing this issue; to add to the layer cake of voices calling for the change that colleagues have mentioned, the director of the national economic crime command has also suggested that fraud should be included in that Bill.

In drawing to a close, I wish to thank the right hon. Member for Barking and my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton for calling this incredibly important debate. The measures they are calling for in an economic crime Bill are proportionate and fair. We need to inject not only as much transparency as we possibly can into the system, but peril, too; we need to be making sure that criminals feel that heat. I believe the reforms they have suggested will get us there, and I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s views.

Storm Arwen

Simon Fell Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s characterisation of where we are. He will appreciate that, over many years, we have had local resilience fora, which have acted incredibly speedily and with incredible dedication. They are precisely the organisations that know what the situation is on the ground, and I and my Department have been engaging with the people involved. They are responding extremely effectively to this difficult situation.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

Storm Arwen hit my constituency, like many others, very hard. Thousands of homes were left without electricity. Thankfully, that is now down to the hundreds, but those people are facing their fifth night without power. I reiterate requests for the Minister to listen to any calls from the local resilience forums to step up Government support.

On lessons learned, so many of my constituents have come to me feeling really dismayed by the fact that they are being pushed online to get information about what is happening and where support is coming from. However, if people do not have power or broadband, they simply cannot access those services. When the Government look at this, can we make sure that we look at how best to communicate with people who have no access to regular communications channels?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The communication point is fundamental. I have spoken to the CEOs of the DNOs and I am speaking to the local resilience fora; we are absolutely committed to having much, much easier and more fluent channels of communication in future. My hon. Friend will appreciate that this issue will not go away. There will be other incidents, and he is right to stress that we need a more resilient system.

Enabling Community Energy

Simon Fell Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I thank the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for securing this important debate on an issue that could fundamentally change not just the electricity market, but people’s ability to access cheap, sustainable and locally produced energy across the whole of the UK.

I was really pleased to be able to support my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) in his efforts to enact the Local Electricity Bill in the last Session. To my very inexperienced eye, the Bill appeared to be a win-win. It drove the creation of new local electricity markets, lowered prices for consumers and created a path for households and businesses to access renewable and sustainable energy in a new way. A 2014 Department of Energy and Climate Change report on community renewable energy suggested that by last year—2020—3,000 MW of generating capacity could have been in place. Instead, we generate around 278 MW from community renewable energy.

The scale of the opportunity here is absolutely vast, and we need only look across to our neighbours in Europe to see the prize on offer. In Germany, there are over 1,000 community-based supply companies producing renewable energy. In that country, the four large utilities control only 40% of the market, which drives real consumer choice and consumer benefit. Unleashing community energy would enable local economic resilience in communities across the UK. Bypassing the large utilities would allow them to keep significant value and economic returns within their own economies. It would create skilled local jobs, more viable local businesses and stronger local bonds. I would argue that the necessary reforms are not just about cheaper electricity bills; they are about helping us get to net zero too. To be honest, I see them as a form of levelling up in action.

Last year, I was pleased to visit Hobkin Ground Farm in the Lickle valley in my constituency. Megan and Mark want to run a low-impact, sustainable farm, leaving as little mark on the environment as possible in their farming. In pursuit of that, they have installed a hydro generator. They power their own farm and a couple of cottages, largely removing themselves from the electricity grid. They would like to go further, but the cost of connection is prohibitive for them. Across the valley from them in Broughton-in-Furness is another project, which aims to bring together local residents in a co-operative to buy renewable electricity from a hydro plant at Logan Gill, allowing them to benefit from cleaner air and cheaper energy. Potentially 400 customers could benefit, saving about 20% off their electricity bills.

The model is great, and I praise local residents Jennifer Sanderson, Rob Dunphy and others, Cumbria Action for Sustainability, and Ellergreen Hydro for working together to deliver it. However, for the project to succeed, it is reliant on the benevolence of Octopus Energy, a nationally licensed and huge utility company, to turn the taps and get them going. If we enable the right to local supply, that ceases to be a problem.

Reforming market rules so that local and regional-sized renewable energy generators could sell their electricity direct to local customers would mean that my constituents in Broughton would no longer be reliant on having to choose from a few large national suppliers. They could go local and go sustainable. If we can achieve that, the effect will be to take community energy schemes, such as that one, from being a smattering of projects across the country to thousands. They currently generate only around 0.5% of the UK’s electricity, but let us think of the scale we could generate. With a few small changes, a thousand flowers could bloom. That will happen only if local community-owned interests are given a route to market.

I very much hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will see the opportunity in community energy to be a tool in levelling up our local communities. I look forward to hearing her response.

10-point Plan: Six Months On

Simon Fell Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I do not think it is. The hon. Lady will remember that the third of the Prime Minister’s 10 points was expressly committed to nuclear power. I was very pleased, as Energy Minister, to visit the nuclear college at Hinkley Point. I am sorry that I did not manage to go to Sellafield. We are completely committed to this, and we will bring forward in this Parliament legislation that will further commit us to creating more nuclear power in this country.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

The 10-point plan recognises the immense value of local jobs in offshore wind production—something that my constituents are anticipating as Barrow and Furness is the home of the second-largest wind farm in the world. However, wind is not the only crucial renewable energy source in Cumbria: nuclear is hugely important and, as the hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) said, we are reliant on it. With that in mind, will my right hon. Friend update the House on the financing policy that sits behind this to enable these jobs to be created?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend will realise that sensitive discussions are being held all the time, but I refer him back to my answer to the previous question. The third point of the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan was all about nuclear power. It said explicitly that we are committed to having a decision on a plant before the end of the Parliament. We are in conversations with operators and developers—very fruitful conversations, I might add—to bring that about, and we have an ongoing commitment to increasing, not decreasing, capacity in nuclear power.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Simon Fell Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con) [V]]

I am delighted to have been called to speak in this debate and I will attempt to be brief to avoid the virtual grimace that Madam Deputy Speaker threatened.

There is so much to like and be excited about in this Bill and the creation of ARIA. The Secretary of State was spot on when he raised the covid pandemic and the breakthrough vaccine that has been developed in the UK. This is one of those moments that shows what UK innovation can achieve: saving lives, catalysing interest and effort, and instilling pride. However, ARIA could put those amazing developments in the shade, or, at the very least, normalise them. This year has shown the absolute importance of scientific innovation and ARIA could allow the UK to play to its strengths, tackling some of the biggest challenges facing our country, such as net zero. This is a statement of intent about the future direction of the UK and of our economy.

Going back to covid, interest in UK science and innovation has never been higher, but by focusing ARIA on ambitious and cutting-edge work, we will strengthen the sector that is driving that interest. Indeed, I am delighted that the Bill gives particular focus to projects that carry a high risk of failure. Those projects will be at the very cutting edge of science and technology and need support to determine whether we can gain a high reward or learn from their failure. We have seen too few of the genuinely exciting technologies of the last few decades being taken to market overseas. Providing a route to finance for the most cutting-edge science in the UK will be a huge benefit to us as a nation, driving the creation of new industries, jobs, skills and growth.

I am fortunate to represent Barrow and Furness, where roughly 10,000 people are employed in the national endeavour of producing the nuclear deterrent. On my last visit to the shipyard, I was struck when it was mentioned, almost in passing, that only one thing is made by man that is more complex than a nuclear submarine, and that is the international space station. The research, innovation and technology that underpin these incredible ships have been created over generations to produce vessels that travel in near silence, under tremendous pressures, and which keep their crew alive and our nation and NATO secure. That immense achievement is the end point of generations of research and development, some from the UK and some from further afield. That is what is exciting about ARIA and what it could deliver. With £800 million of funding behind it and genuine strategic and cultural autonomy, let us think what could be achieved in strides to keep us safe and secure, and to enable innovations in technology that genuinely shift the paradigm and which can brought to market.

The ability to be nimble and agile is key to ARIA’s success, and I believe that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has taken the right approach in exempting it from public-contract regulations relating to its research goals. That will allow it to procure at speed and act more like the private sector organisation that it needs to be. Balancing oversight for this new beast will be difficult, and hon. Members have expressed genuine concern about that, but I believe that my right hon. Friend has got it right. In directing ARIA to consider the benefits of its activities for the UK as a whole the agency will, by its nature, foster a positive environment for developing the technologies of tomorrow, helping to make the UK a global scientific superpower. Indeed, alongside UK Research and Innovation, ARIA gives the UK a full-spectrum approach to funding scientific research. As the Jack Sprat and his wife of UK research and innovation, ARIA and UKRI will generate greater pull for UK science and research as a whole.

Finally, we must continue the tradition of pushing the boundaries of human knowledge with cutting-edge research and science. Without taking risks we will miss groundbreaking discoveries that will have far-reaching benefits for our nation, including the development of the jobs and industries of the future, based here in the UK. By launching the UK equivalent of DARPA, we have the opportunity to seize the future right here and today. Surely there can be no more exciting prospect than that.

Employment Rights: Government Plans

Simon Fell Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con) [V]]

I am very glad to have been called in this Opposition day debate, but I admit some curiosity as to why we are actually having it. The United Kingdom has one of the best records on workers’ rights not just in Europe but in the world, and since we have left the EU the Government could not have been clearer: those rights that we have are not going to be downgraded.

In fact, we start from a stronger position on workers’ rights than much of Europe already. We have one of the highest minimum wage rates in Europe. We do not just have parity with the EU on sick pay, paternity pay or annual leave; on these issues we exceed the EU by quite some way.

Our policy must be to diverge, but not to downgrade. If we want to attract the best people, businesses and teams, we need to show that we are the best place to live, to do business and to trade. We do not achieve that by slashing workers’ rights and making the UK a hostile environment for employees.

It is absolutely right now that we have full control of our laws that the power should rest with Parliament to determine what rules should apply to the UK and how they should be enforced. These next crucial years should be a time when we enhance workers’ rights, giving people stability and certainty in the workplace and enabling a high-employment economy where it pays to work. Recovering from coronavirus will mean we need to demonstrate a fresh sense of dynamism and evolve our economy, so that we are able to build back and so that people have the certainty and dignity of a job and the protection afforded within it.

Therefore, it is crucially important, especially now, that we protect those in low-paid work in the gig economy, and I am delighted that we are bringing forward measures to crack down on employers who abuse employment law, whether by refusing sick pay or even just taking their employees’ tips. We are scrapping the loophole that allowed some firms to pay agency workers less than permanent staff, and perhaps most profoundly, in a simple change that will make a huge difference to so many, we have extended the right to a day-one written statement of rights to all workers. That simple change details their rights and benefits, meaning over 1.5 million people in the current workforce will have their leave and pay entitlements set out clearly for the first time.

The road to recovery from coronavirus will be very bumpy indeed, but we will not recover at all if we do not look after the workers who turn up every day and who are the engine of our economy. I believe that the Government see just how crucial they are, and I am disappointed, but not surprised, that once again the Opposition would much rather champion headlines than support policies that they know they should be following.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Fell Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Solloway]

We are giving a whole range of support to everybody, as the hon. Member will know, through a lot of schemes. In fact, 9.4 million jobs have been supported through the coronavirus job retention scheme. As the scheme winds down, we will be making it more flexible so that people can return to work part time. We are also offering £1,000 to employers for each furloughed employee who is kept on until the end of January 2021.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to support (a) vaccine manufacturing and (b) UK life sciences.

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to support (a) vaccine manufacturing and (b) UK life sciences.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Alok Sharma)]

The Government are investing £93 million to set up the UK’s first dedicated Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre in Harwell. We are also investing £38 million in a rapid deployment facility, which will allow vaccine manufacturing at scale to commence from later this year.

[Simon Fell]

The Government have stated that they are interested in creating a sovereign manufacturing capability in the north. An opportunity exists in Ulverston in my constituency to build a bioscience cluster, with deep collaboration with local universities. Using this site for therapeutic vaccine manufacturing would enable partnership with GlaxoSmithKline, which is already based in Furness, and it would preserve and create local jobs and skills, and be a great result for the north and the UK as a whole. Would my right hon. Friend meet the key partners to this project to see whether we might be able to take it forward?

[Alok Sharma]

I want to confirm that the Government of course continue to consider the options to ensure that we have sufficient vaccine manufacturing capacity in the UK. I will ask the vaccine taskforce to follow up on that issue with my hon. Friend.