Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Logan Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. We made a major announcement on MND research and will shortly be setting out our fully funded broader dementia and mental health missions. On research bureaucracy, we are looking, through the Professor Adam Tickell review, at how we can reduce administrative bureaucracy in the system so we are able to get those grants out much more quickly. I will happily talk her through that.

[Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)]

T9. Mr Speaker, would you believe it? Where I live in Westminster there is a lift that was made by the Bolton Gate Company 100 years ago and is still operating at the back end. Bolton Gate leads the door industry on the latest standards, but will the Minister outline what support we can provide to companies like Bolton Gate to navigate the new UK Conformity Assessed marking regulations, and to ensure that both Bolton Gate Company and its MP will be operating for another 100 years?

[Paul Scully]

As well as the Minister for product safety and standards, I am also the Minister for the hair and beauty sector, so can I thank my hon. Friend for supporting the sector with his new haircut? In all seriousness, we are taking a pragmatic approach to implementing the UKCA regime. We know the challenges that businesses have and we are committed to supporting businesses to adapt. We continue to work closely with industry to understand and resolve implementation challenges. We are also engaging extensively with the industry in the UK and around the world to explain our new requirements.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Logan Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I think it is absolutely vital that the net zero agenda—the climate change action agenda—is situated firmly in a Business Department, and I am delighted to head that Department.

[Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)]

I have two questions for the Secretary of State. What role can life sciences play in the Advanced Research and Invention Agency? What role can Bolton play in ARIA?

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Logan Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

Cracking down on non-compliance in the labour market is a priority for the Government, and the new director of labour market enforcement will be appointed as soon as possible, but the temporary vacancy has no impact on workers’ rights. The three enforcement bodies themselves are responsible for overall work and enforcement responsibilities, and they will continue to work hard to protect workers and bring enforcement actions against employers who break the rules.

[Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to support the Government’s levelling-up agenda.

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to support the Government’s levelling-up agenda.

--- Later in debate ---

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

We have made a commitment to level up all areas of the country. The plan for growth is a critical part of this and we will go further with the publication of a levelling-up White Paper later this year.

[Mark Logan [V]]

I wrote to the Minister outlining Bolton’s bid to be the home of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, featuring the full support of the vice- chancellors of the University of Bolton and the University of Manchester, along with Innovation GM and a wider coalition. I am sure that even my neighbour but one, the Speaker, would find it difficult to resist Bolton’s attraction. We have kindly received a response from the Minister, and now that the advert for the ARIA chair has gone live, will she tell us when she would like to visit Bolton to support us in our ambition to reinvent Britain’s biggest town in line with the Government’s levelling-up agenda?

[Amanda Solloway]

My hon. Friend paints a fantastic picture of Bolton North East. He really is a wonderful advocate for his constituency, and he has a keen interest in ARIA, which I am delighted by. No decision has yet been taken on ARIA’s location, and I do not expect one to be reached until the chief executive officer and the chair are in post, but my hon. Friend will be delighted to hear that the open recruitment process for a visionary chair began yesterday, and I would encourage him and other hon. Members to share this exciting opportunity widely to reach as diverse a pool of candidates as we possibly can.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Mark Logan Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con) [V]]

How many times do we see politicians tweeting, Facebooking or, for that matter, speaking in the Chamber and saying, “I welcome—” or “It is with great delight that—”? The irony is that I have tried to ban such things from my previous external communications, but today I am both proud and delighted to welcome the Government’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill. Along with the Secretary of State, I thank everyone who has been associated with getting us to this unique moment this evening.

A framework in the future, as the Minister said, will ensure that all parts of the United Kingdom will benefit from ARIA, which is why I continue to extend my hand of friendship to ARIA for it to be headquartered in Bolton. Bolton is a town of invention. We have a steady supply of inventors, long-standing institutions of invention, the appropriate infrastructure for future inventions and the mother of all invention: I have already secured a premier office location in Bolton that is ready for ARIA to move in. Essentially, invention is in Bolton’s DNA, and ARIA is made for Bolton.

ARIA is not just for Bolton or for Britain, but for the world and for the brainchildren of tomorrow. Invention blossoms from competition and diversity, so ARIA needs a range of cultural backgrounds to catalyse that creativity. We have the human capital, and people will come from far and wide to this new centre of invention, from all walks of life. I very much welcome the job advertisement, which I think went live last week, for the position of CEO of ARIA.

In conclusion, we have the tools ready to welcome a world-class invention hub. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss the points I have raised with the Department, the ministerial team and, of course, the new CEO once they come on board. With that, I very much congratulate everyone who has been involved in getting us to this point this evening.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Mark Logan Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con) [V]]

I welcome the Second Reading of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill, which marks an increasing awareness across Government, Parliament and the country of the importance of innovation in securing our collective prosperity well into the future. The last year has shown us just how vital it is that we further bolster this country’s science and research ambitions. The Royal Society of Biology, with which I spoke last month, can attest to how our assiduous investment in the life sciences has clearly paid off, as we are reaping the benefits with our vaccination roll-out. Indeed, just look at the dividend that the UK’s sequencing expertise is now paying. That is why I emphatically welcome the Government’s commitment to increase public R&D expenditure, which, along with ARIA, forms part of the fundamental building blocks for the Britain of the next era.

We have thought hard about the pennies. Now we are turning to the pounds we pack internationally. Last week, we on the Science and Technology Committee heard from Dominic Cummings, who spoke about the need for the UK to take science more seriously. He said that competitor countries around the world debate at the highest level cutting-edge S&T on a daily basis. We are not entering—but rather have already entered—a new era of heightened global competition. We should not fear such a transition, as change is the only constant. I suggest that we all read “Who Moved My Cheese?”, and advance our science and technology expertise.

The strategic framework for the integrated review has S&T as the very first of four overarching objectives. I agree with the implicit argument that science and technology is often the forgotten magical element in Britain’s soft power. I trust that the Minister is considering how we use the global talent visa programme to add to this effort. As my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Alan Mak) rightly pointed out, the UK has had 99 Nobel laureates. This fills us with pride. Aiming for at least another 99 fills us with focus. Taken together with the integrated review, this Bill will provide the UK with immense opportunities to become a science superpower across many domains.

The Government are here to get the big things right, but we must also—slightly counterintuitively—be prepared to get things wrong. By this, I mean that we face a cultural challenge in Whitehall, Westminster and, indeed, all walks of life when it comes to failure. It is an acutely British niggle. Fear of failure in both Government and business has limited our ability to take more calculated risks. Who can blame people, when the media is constantly ready to take someone down for the slightest slip? I am hopeful that ARIA can be part of a cultural change that can boost us in taking more risks for higher reward, and to scale up our ideas to compete with the east Asian and US giants.

ARIA may currently be of no fixed abode, but we are on standby to fix its abode in Bolton. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) will be up shortly to join what is probably going to be the most important debate of our generation: should ARIA’s office be in the west or the east of Bolton? Bolton and Greater Manchester’s thirst for radical innovation is palpable, with the National Graphene Institute a stone’s throw away and the University of Bolton just a few doors down from me. As the Bill outlines, ARIA’s membership is to consist of a small network of executive and non-exec members, in line with the Government’s agenda to level up, and what better location is there to base that network in than the north-west, surrounded by the brightest young minds, at the centre of Bolton North East?

Through the vaccine roll-outs, we have all witnessed the benefits of being able to work at speed and scale, and this has been testament to relinquishing overreaching bureaucracy. In its present form, the Bill can engender more clarity to signal adequate space for ARIA’s leadership to operate independently from Government. Exceptional scientists need room to decide which research to pursue and to give them the confidence and agility to make decisions, although I also appreciate the need for some parliamentary oversight. This has been emphasised repeatedly by the Science and Technology Committee’s witnesses. Let me finish by saying a big well done to the Government for being ambitious and bringing this Bill to the House, and for providing us with the stepping stones to punch not above our weight but above our basal metabolic rate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Logan Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

What plans he has to support the development of the renewable energy sector.

[Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to support the renewable energy sector.

[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to support the renewable energy sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

We have ambitious targets for future decarbonisation and the systems that will go with it. We will be publishing an industrial decarbonisation strategy in the very near future, which will help to support businesses as we look at all the issues that the hon. Gentleman raises.

[Mark Logan [V]]

I declare an interest. I have been listening to too many Elon Musk conversations on what is now all the rage, which is the Clubhouse app. What support can be provided to help Bolton to explore green technology opportunities, especially electric vehicles, boosting our local job market and future growth?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I am delighted to see my hon. Friend championing the north-west and the opportunities that our green industrial revolution will bring to his area. The north-west is incredibly well placed to benefit from our £1 billion commitment to become a world-leading sector in technology to capture and store harmful emissions away from the atmosphere. We have also launched the green jobs taskforce, which will help us to develop plans for green jobs, including in the new green automotive sector across all regions, and we advise on what support will be needed for people who are in those transitioning industries.

National Security and Investment Bill

Mark Logan Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 17th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat). I especially agree with him that the Minister and his team have been exceptionally good at communicating this over the past weeks, so long may that continue.

With the right clarifications, I stand to support the Second Reading of the Bill. It is incumbent on all of us here to think in terms of the contribution we can make to our collective livelihoods—a contribution of security, a contribution of transparency and a contribution of prosperity. On prosperity, the Minister and other colleagues have been working hard to assuage some of my concerns. I gravitate towards this side of the House because I believe in opportunity—the opportunity that overseas investors see in the UK to grow market share, reach new customers and develop cutting-edge technology, thanks to access to the brightest brains on the planet, and a confidence that a penny put into Britain today can become a pound tomorrow. We do not want the Bill to herald in uber-protectionism by stealth; otherwise I would have great difficulty in subscribing to it.

Foreign direct investment is a powerful contributor to the UK. Indeed, conservative estimates show that FDI has created over two Boltons-worth of jobs. That is 600,000-plus jobs, as the Minister actually told me last night, so I hope that is correct. Over 57,000 new jobs were created as a result of FDI in 2018-19 alone. The “World Investment Report 2019” showed that the total value of the UK’s inward investment stock was $1.89 trillion—the third highest in the world, and worth more than the figures for Germany and France combined. Indeed, the northern powerhouse has been one of the top winners from FDI. Manchester has been recognised as Europe’s fifth best large city for business, ranking ahead of places such as Rotterdam. Bolton is a significant recipient of FDI through, for example, the £250 million redevelopment of the Crompton Place shopping centre, and this is central to our town’s rebirth. We need to be on the ball, as the value of the UK’s inward FDI has been falling. In 2016, the value of inward FDI was equal to 10% of GDP, which fell to 2% in 2018. I welcome the new Office for Investment, as we must not lose out to friendly competitors on our own doorstep. FDI contributes so much to our economy and society.

Moving on to security and transparency, the Bill seeks to contribute by putting the UK on a similar footing to other major economies, such as the US, France and Germany. Indeed, the CFIUS regime in the US reviews certain foreign investments in businesses to determine whether such transactions threaten to impair US national security. That is a sound premise and one that every nation state should embody: protecting one’s core sovereign interest. Indeed, the Bill aims to offer more security for British businesses and people and protection from actors or, indeed, actresses harbouring malign intent.

I appeal to the Minister to ensure that the Government will only use their brand- spanking-new powers exclusively on national security grounds and not for broader economic or political measures. Mission creeping may lead to capital seeping. I encourage the Minister to articulate how to safeguard against spurious applications of the new powers. Some analogous screening systems are viewed as not transparent, such as those that do not give parties the opportunity to debate the conclusions. I understand the intention of our own UK version is to allow a quicker, slicker investment process for investors.

I also understand that a new digital portal will be made available to investors, and the Government have committed to a 30-working-day service timeline. Along with mandatory notification of investments in key sectors, that provides much-needed transparency for firms, while providing proportionate defence against those targeting sensitive UK assets.

Finally, my humble contribution to today’s debate will imminently fly towards the Minister, like a not quite national security-protected Airbus paper plane. Alas, I have penned a mnemonic. According to Hansard, the word “mnemonic” has only been used once in this House, and without actually producing one. This could be an epic fail, so the House should brace itself. I will give way to the Minister if he would like to intervene straight away or, indeed, anyone else in the Chamber who can rhyme off the 17 industries that may feature in this final legislation. If not, forever hold your peace. Silence—great. It goes like this, and it does not roll off the tongue. It is CQC—which we are all very familiar with—CASCADED MS TEAM. C is for communications. Q is for quantum technologies. C is for computing hardware. I could go on, but I will simply repeat again: CQC CASCADED MS TEAM. That, hon. Ladies and Gentlemen, along with the Bill’s contribution to security, transparency and prosperity, is how I would like to personally contribute to today’s debate.