The Economy — House of Commons, 2018-03-22
Topic: Agriculture
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): There is still quite a large number of net inward migrants to this country. I look forward to higher wages and more automation. All these problems are perfectly soluble. There are now some good automatic systems for picking produce, if people do not want to do those jobs. I hope that there will be more productive ways of employing people so that they can be paid more—for instance, if they work smarter and have more technology to support them. That would be good for the employee and for the farming business. Some of this is about scale and some is about investment I hope that we develop a farming policy that still provides public money to support farms sensibly, but that will be more geared to the production and successful sale of food, particularly domestically. We want fewer food miles on the clock and rather more local produce. I hope that the policy will allow and encourage more agricultural businesses in the United Kingdom to add value to the product coming from the field, shed or farm, because that is an important part of developing a prosperous and more successful economy The UK has enormous scope in sectors such as the media because we have the huge advantage of the English language. We largely share that advantage with the United States of America, which is also very good at media and internet-related businesses. I look forward to the tech revolution being an important part of our better-paid jobs and in the increase in jobs in the future. Once we are out of the EU, we will also be able to choose our own tax and regulatory regimes. I trust that we will choose a best-in-class, world-leading regime for both tax and regulation. Although I understand some of the irritations that the EU and others have with existing large technology companies, it is important that we also understand how phenomenally popular their services are, how hugely important they are as wealth generators, the choice they offer customers and the new jobs that they will create. We therefore need a tax and regulatory regime that is fair and is not part of a trade war between the EU and the United States of America, which seems to be developing at the moment in an unfortunate way Infrastructure is very important. One thing that perhaps unites the House is that we would all like more investment in infrastructure, although we then have disagreements about pace, style, and ways of financing it. There is huge scope for more infrastructure in this country. If we wish to take advantage of our greater freedoms and the kinds of business developments I have been sketching in different sectors, we will certainly need a lot more capacity in road and rail. Rail capacity can be increased more cheaply and more rapidly if we go over to digital controls. One of the features of our railway system is that we run very few trains an hour on any given piece of track. With better controls, we could increase the number of trains we ran on existing track—a quicker and cheaper solution than having to build lots of new tracks We are going to need improved road transport. Internet styles of purchasing require road capacity for all the van deliveries that will be made when people have bought on the web. Road capacity is also needed for those who still like going to a traditional shop and expect to find somewhere to park when they do so. Only the shopping centres that have really good access and really good parking are likely to flourish in today’s world, because people naturally want convenience. I trust that the Government will find sufficient public capital support for these necessary programmes, but will also be imaginative in finding new ways of harnessing private finance where that is appropriate, as it clearly is in areas like energy and communications where there are defined revenue flows that should be financeable through the private sector The aim of Brexit is to cheer the country up, to get wages up, and to get jobs up. So far it is all going reasonably well. There are more jobs after the Brexit vote, despite the false forecasts. Pay is going up a bit. We would like more improvement in real pay, and it is good to see some moves being made in the public sector. The big Brexit bonuses we want comprise spending our own money and knowing when, how much, and what we are going to get for it; having a fishing policy that makes sense both for British fishermen and for British fish; having a better agricultural policy that means we can grow more of our own food; and having an energy and industrial policy that supports more investment and more growth.