GKN

Debate between Greg Clark and Gavin Shuker

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I greatly enjoyed the Secretary of State’s answer to the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), and I hope he will not take offence if I say that the hon. Member for Luton North was not himself in government—he looked rather shocked, nay affronted, by any suggestion that at any time in his career he might have been. The hon. Member for Luton North is a career Back Bencher and is immensely proud of the fact.

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Workers at GKN’s Luton plant in my constituency are world leaders in ice protection systems for flight-deck windows and fast-jet canopies, and I believe they will share my dismay that the assurances the Secretary of State has put in place amount to little more than the new management picking up the phone and informing him before it does things that damage our national security and national interest. Is not the reality of the quasi-judicial nature of the decision-making process that he and future Secretaries of State will always veer on the side of caution, rather than face the prospect of being challenged in court when a takeover goes through?

[Greg Clark]

I am sure it is an unaccountable oversight that the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) has never served in government.

For the constituents of the hon. Member for Luton South (Mr Shuker), during the takeover bid, the incumbent management criticised the commitment to hold the aerospace division for five years. Given that a majority of the company was to be sold as part of the incumbent management’s plans, it is fair to observe that it is not clear there would be any greater stability—I put it as mildly as that—if the incumbent management had continued, rather than the new management that shareholders chose to manage the company.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Greg Clark and Gavin Shuker

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

We consulted widely on the Green Paper, and the set of reforms that we are making has enjoyed broad support. We are proposing to extend the holding periods for long-term share incentives from three years to five years. I think the hon. Lady played some part in the introduction of the three-year periods, and I hope that she will welcome the extension. We are also making it a more explicit requirement of boards, including boards of directors, to reflect in their reports and accounts what they are doing for a wider range of stakeholders, not just the short-term issues. I hope the hon. Lady will welcome that as well.

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

11. To ask the Secretary of State what assessment he has made of the capacity of the industrial strategy challenge fund to increase economic growth.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Greg Clark)]

The industrial strategy challenge fund will help to drive growth in all parts of the country by using research and development to position us well in global markets where Britain has particular strengths.

[Mr Shuker]

Can the Secretary of State explain why his challenge fund is directed at sectors that are dominated by an over-representation of men, while many of the professions in which females are over-represented face low investment, low skills, low pay and low productivity?

[Greg Clark]

Our exchanges this morning show the potential and the strengths that we have in successful sectors such as the automotive, healthcare and medicine, and satellite and space sectors, in which we are creating very good jobs. However, my ambition and my Department’s ambition—which I hope the hon. Gentleman shares—is to increase the proportion of women and other groups who are under-represented in those industries, because there is talent there that we should be using, and part of our drive is to get the best talent into those world-beating industries.