Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-10-22
Topic: Foreign Trade
Questions: Workers’ rights matter. Given that eight out of 10 mums consider work-family balance before thinking about any new job opportunity, can the Government confirm they remain committed to considering the proposal that employers should make all jobs flexible unless there is a good reason not to do so?; British companies have been shown to be complicit in the fires and deforestation in the Amazon through their investments and supply chains. Will the Minister look at introducing mandatory due diligence to address this?; I recently visited Orbex in Forres, which is heavily involved in the new spaceport at Sutherland and is seen as a sector leader with its new innovative launch vehicle. Will the Minister outline what support the UK Government can give to companies such as Orbex, which plans to bring 250 high-quality jobs to the region?;   The town of Blaydon has been without a post office in its shopping centre for about five years, as no local retailer has been prepared to take this on. Leaving the availability of local post offices to the willingness of local retailers is just not working in Blaydon, so what steps will the Minister take to ensure that post office provision is retained where no local retailer can be found, as in Blaydon?; Next month will mark five years since the Government first announced they would undertake an independent review of the UK’s product recall system, and a failure to implement recalls has led to fire services responding to preventable fires due to product failures. Will the Minister today update the House on the review’s progress and whether the single recall register will be up and running this year?; When we leave the European Union, we will also leave the auspices of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, so what plans do Ministers have to provide regulatory certainty to the aerospace sector and for the thousands of jobs that it relates to in my constituency?; Scotland has 35% of the total European carbon capture and storage capacity, it has much of the infrastructure already in place, and it has in my constituency the world-leading research group Scottish Carbon Capture & Storage. Will the Secretary of State press the Chancellor to seriously increase the amount of investment in the next Budget that goes into the industry, so that it can upscale and go into commercial production?; Last week, Tata Jaguar Land Rover announced that it had created an electric drive unit, which the Government are helping to fund. In view of that, will the steel Minister work with Tata to ensure that the Orb steelworks in Newport stays open and is part of the supply chain? It would be a travesty to lose the capacity to make electrical steel in this country.; As 90,000 postal delivery workers threaten to go on strike at Christmas over job security and employment rights that were promised but remain undelivered, I note that the chief executive of privatised Royal Mail earns nearly 35 times what our beloved posties earn. Given the creeping privatisation of our post offices that is devastating community assets, will the Minister consider renationalising all our postal services, as demanded by the good citizens of South Kensington, who have lost their post office, so that they will deliver to the nation, not to the pockets of the few?
Philip Wilson (Labour, Centre-left): Sedgefield is home to the largest business park in the north-east of England, with 500 companies and 10,000 to 12,000 jobs. More than 50% of the jobs and businesses there rely in some way on trade with the EU. If the Secretary of State has her way and there is no more frictionless trade with the EU, no more customs union and no access to the single market as there is now, does she not have a responsibility to publish an economic assessment on the effects that will have on my constituents’ jobs?