Early Parliamentary General Election Bill
Debate between Anne Main and Richard GrahamTuesday 29th October 2019
(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs Main
I have, and the worst impact is the absolute uncertainty surrounding investment in our jobs and businesses. People do not know whether they can trade, whether they have to stockpile goods or what the arrangements will be because the dates keep moving. That is the worst thing.
All this flummery about Brexit is hiding the fact that we are not getting the business of this House done. Almost no one was here to talk about the Environment Bill, yet people are marching against plastic.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
To return to the Second Reading of this Bill, my hon. Friend faces a challenge from the Liberal Democrats in St Albans. Does she agree that, during the referendum, every household in the country received a letter saying
“The Government will implement what you decide”?
Does she remember the previous leader of the Liberal Democrats saying that, even if it were by one vote, the result should still stand? And did she hear the other day—
Britain's Place in the World
Debate between Anne Main and Richard Graham(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the many speakers who have not followed the early trend of continuing the long-running saga of “Carry On Brexit” but have really contributed to this debate on Britain’s role in the world. I am grateful to them for having shone light on so many aspects of it.
I want to touch on our place in a wider and changing world, to which there are several ingredients we need to be aware of. The first is that America is different from what it was. Its unremitted focus on making America great has reduced its previous role as a liberalising influence in the world, spreading democracy. Instead we see it leaving difficult, long-term situations and often leaving a vacuum for wildly unsuccessful regimes— but it remains our essential partner for so much in the world.
Then there is China, using its size, muscle, foreign exchange reserves and buying clout to shape its growing power around the world, with ambitions to lead and dominate. We will need continued engagement and principled disagreement in equal measure in our relationship with China. While these two giants wrestle like York and Lancaster or Rome and Carthage in times past, the rest of the world does not want to take sides. As Apple has found, being neutral is not always easy, and our role is surely to be close to both, even when we wish to criticise.
Then there is the EU, still the world’s largest trading bloc. It will remain our single largest trading partner for a long time to come and a key partner for security and much more besides. As we divorce, we must never forget this. Then there is Asia, more secure, more democratic and with a much larger middle class than ever before: consumers for our goods, services, education, health, innovation and technology. We should surely be focusing more of our resource, students and thinking on how we can work with Asia.
The Commonwealth, often the underappreciated “C” in FCO, is a powerful network for good, interconnectivity and mobilising for great causes, whether tackling malaria, eye treatment or girls’ education. I worry, however, about Her Majesty’s Opposition’s attitude to the Commonwealth. This is not something modern. When William Hague took over as Foreign Secretary in 2010, he was the first Foreign Secretary to visit Australia for 13 years and the first to visit New Zealand for 30. We must never take either the Five Eyes intelligence arrangements or the Commonwealth relationships for granted.
Overall, we face a world that is richer, more aware and more fractious. There are more economic migrants than ever before, which is raising issues not even seen after the displacements of two world wars. For the first time since 1989, when the Berlin wall came down, the world has seen the democracy index go to negative. We must work to change that.
Richard Graham
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In the case of a direct act of democracy like a referendum, it is incredibly important to accept the result.
That brings me to a handful of suggestions for the Government. We need, first, an umbrella or co-ordinating role for the Foreign Office, with independent International Trade and International Development Departments, but with a Foreign Secretary who is above them all, with £14 billion-worth of development in one pocket and free trade agreements and market access relations in the other. We need a new democracy fund—no doubt financed largely by the International Development Department—to help us to work with partners across the world. Those with our democratic values are much less likely to be in conflict with each other.
We need, as the Prime Minister said, to step up our environmental leadership. The 2020 UN climate change conference in Glasgow—I do not like using the term “COP26”, which sounds like a futuristic police state drama—will give us an opportunity to demonstrate how we can work with the rest of the world on those incredibly important issues.
We need to ensure that our prosperity fund is not just about making partner nations prosperous, but about using our innovation to find creative solutions to problems such as plastic on beaches across Asia, which is not only bad for the environment but bad for the tourism industries and economies of those countries.
We must recognise the value of our armed forces. Whether they are peacekeeping or fighting disease, they are always ready for conflict and always available to help to train personnel. That is one of the things that make us stand out in the world. We also have 25 trade envoys, an innovation brought in by the former Prime Minister David Cameron. I think I am the longest-serving trade envoy in the House of Commons: next month it will be eight years since I was appointed. What this shows more than anything else is that in the business of business, relationships do matter. Ministers come and Ministers go, but trade envoys can be there for a long time, and that can be valuable.
Then there is the issue of our relationship with Europe. It seems to me, quite simply, that we must resolve what that is going to be, and then focus on how we can do more across the world. I should particularly like the Government to think more about the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and what more we can do with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The same applies to other continents with which I am less involved, such as Latin America and Africa.
The Prime Minister’s Queen’s Speech called for the UK to play a major role in global affairs, with multilateral diplomacy, trade engagement, and sustainable policies that are right for our planet in this age. We must recognise that the world needs and wants our experience and skills, and our reputation for quality. That is why, for example, Cambridge Assessments examines more than 1 million people every year in China. It is why Prudential has more than 270,000 agents offering health insurance to people in Indonesia. It is why there is British design in nearly every major airport in the world, and it is why half the businesses that accompanied the previous Prime Minister on a trip to China—I was with her—had not existed five years earlier. They were innovative, they were about tech, and the world wants them. The opportunity is there, and we must seize it.
Infrastructure Bill [Lords]
Debate between Anne Main and Richard Graham(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Mrs Main
My plea to the Minister is to consider issuing new guidance that will put an obligation on commercial buildings to have zero-carbon or low-carbon emissions. In my constituency, it is possible to have 3.5 million square feet of rail freight interchange, and not one single green initiative is necessary. We are considering such an obligation for homes, and we should be considering it for commercial premises too. Will the Minister please issue some guidance to be used during the planning process?