Extracts from Lords
debate on Industrial Strategy
(CB):...What
is striking is how the opportunities and the needs will grow, needs
that will have to be addressed by the life sciences sector. The
global value of the life sciences industries is some $1.6 trillion;
by 2023, that will grow to over $2 trillion. With regard to
healthcare expenditure and revenue, in the period between 2014 and
2027 it is estimated that expenditure on healthcare globally will
grow by 5.8% per annum, but in certain markets, where we already
have a very strong relationship and affinity, it will grow at an
even greater rate—in India by some 15% per annum over that
period, in China by 12% and in the Middle East and the Gulf by 8%
per annum. So there are very big opportunities for the life
sciences industrial base to make important contributions to our own
economy. At the moment, some 300,000 people are employed in the
science and technology sectors, in highly skilled jobs. The
potential for that to grow over time to provide economic benefit
and employment is quite obvious...
(CB):...But
turning to the positives, any industrial strategy for Blackpool
would need to include tourism. The tourism sector always seems to
be the Cinderella of government business sectors, yet with a
burgeoning middle class in India and China it would seem an
obvious candidate for exploiting post Brexit. Indeed, Blackpool
hosts the world ballroom dancing festival, which attracts large
numbers of Chinese, alongside, of course, “Strictly Come
Dancing”...
(Con):...The first example is that of the automotive
industry. We saw the virtual collapse of the British automotive
industry and, after years of trying to protect it, the
disappearance of our indigenous, domestically owned automotive
industry. In the early 1980s we embarked on a strategy to recreate
an automotive industry in the UK. It involved a deliberate attempt
to attract overseas investment, beginning with Japan and shifting
to the US and then India. It involved exploiting the
advantages provided by that great Thatcherite project, the single
market, to promote manufacturing in the UK as part of Europe-wide
supply chains. It involved the systematic use of financial
incentives to attract overseas manufacturing facilities here. It
also involved integrated skills training. All those assertions that
we have no vocational or technical skills rest on another
misunderstanding. We have a large amount of technical and
vocational training, and a lot of it happens in universities. The
Universities of Sunderland and Teesside are dedicated to training
automotive engineers to work in the local Japanese car plants, just
as not only Warwick University but also the Universities of
Coventry and Hertfordshire are training automotive engineers to
work in the Midlands engineering industry. As a result of that
policy, sustained by successive Governments of different political
persuasions, we have seen in 20 to 30 years Britain develop a very
successful and large-scale automotive industry. This was the result
of a sustained industrial strategy...
To read the whole debate, CLICK
HERE
Extracts from second
reading debate (Commons) of the Taxation (Cross-border Trade)
Bill
(Wirral South)
(Lab): My constituents are today dealing with the news
of yet more job losses at Vauxhall in Ellesmere Port. We are a
place that manufactures, and we want to keep manufacturing, so
can the Minister tell me and my constituents exactly what these
opportunities are?
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mel
Stride): The opportunities will be very significant
indeed—[Interruption.] If the hon. Lady will allow me, I will
attempt to answer her question. Of course our trading
relationship with Europe is extremely important, which is why we
are having negotiations with our European partners. It is
important to us and to them to ensure that we maintain those
relationships to the highest degree. However, a growing
percentage of our trade is now taking place outside the European
Union—certainly more than was the case five or 10 years ago—and
the expanding markets of the future are not necessarily going to
be the countries that constitute the membership of the European
Union. To answer the hon. Lady’s question directly, the
opportunities lie out there in China, India, the United States
and other countries around the world with which we will be able
to forge a freer set of trade agreements than we have been able
to contemplate during our membership of the European Union...
(Gloucester)
(Con):...The point about the options that the Government
have set out and the new customs partnership is that this will
have huge practical benefits. Let me give a couple of examples.
We could apply our own tariffs to goods destined purely for the
UK. For example, for mangoes from India and the Philippines, which
are not really a competitive product with anything we grow in
this country, there is no reason why the EU should determine what
tariff we apply. However, if a basic bicycle was made in another
part of the Commonwealth and then exported to the UK for further
modifications for onward export to the EU, it would make absolute
sense for us to mirror the EU trade and customs
arrangements...
To read the whole debate, CLICK
HERE
