LORD JONES OF BIRMINGHAM AND MR ANDREW CAHN

16 JULY 2007

  Q1 Chairman: My Lord, Comrade Digby, Minister—I will get used to it in the end, I am sure. If I can get used to Mayor Boris, I am sure I can get used to Minister Digby. Welcome to this Committee. We appreciate it very much, coming so early on in your tenure of this new office. Obviously, the Committee knows Andrew Cahn very well, who is here to deal with any questions of detail on UKTI matters. You are both very welcome to the Committee. It is nice to see you again, Mr Cahn. Can I begin by a general, welcoming sort of question, which is: why did you decide to take the job?

Lord Jones of Birmingham: It came as a great surprise.

  Q2  Mr Hoyle: More so for us.

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: It was a huge honour, a huge privilege, and the Prime Minister asked me if I would really bang the drum for the UK overseas to attract inward investment here as well and to focus on that. It is something I believe in passionately and I believe most of the members of this Committee will know how passionately I believe in the ability of the United Kingdom to put the ball in the net as far as globalisation is concerned. In fact, I think globalisation was made for this country and, on that basis, I readily accepted the job and I hope that I can do it in a way that you will all be proud of. I hope you would all agree with me actually, especially for the purposes of today but also going forward, that trade and investment is basically the way the UK pays its way in the world, and I hope that you will see it is separate to the point-scoring and factionalism of party politics. It is somewhere other than there and the jobs of so many millions of people in this country and the tax revenues of this nation depend on it. So if I can do that with pride for my country, for its government and for the Prime Minister ...

  Q3  Chairman: We will see if we can take the partisanship out of trade. It is a plea I often hear from my constituents but it often proves difficult in practice to depoliticise any issue. Tell me what has happened to your old job as skills envoy. Is that disappearing or has someone taken the role on?

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: I truly do not know. What I do know is that the first part of the job was done, which was to take the Train to Gain project up to the point where the pledge to train to gain was launched to the public and private sector—that happened in early June—and the second stage, with which I will not be involved, is the pushing of it round the employers of the country. Whether they appoint a replacement as an independent, unpaid person I do not know but I do know the first stage of the job, by coincidence of timing actually, was done just a couple of weeks before.

  Q4  Chairman: I think we all know what you think your strengths are. What do you think your weaknesses are in this job?

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: Brevity and I are often strangers and I have to learn to be a bit more succinct, I think. Secondly, I am known for speaking my mind, and so often in this job—not because I will happily take the Labour whip in the House of Lords and happily represent my government and its Prime Minister but because I am a representative of the nation as opposed to one sector of it, which is what I was at the CBI—I have got to be wary of the fact that things I say overseas can have a huge impact on things that have nothing to do with business, things that have something to do with another part of government of which I am ignorant, and in that respect I just have to be a little more guarded at times. I am a quick learner and I will do that to the best of my ability.

  Chairman: Always the lawyer. On the subject of the Labour whip, which you raised, Tony Wright would like to ask you a question.

  Q5  Mr Wright: You said that you have taken the whip but you have not joined the Labour Party. The two to me really do not go together. You take the whip and you follow the government line in the Lords. If you do not, you are outside the government, so if you are going to follow it hook, line and sinker all the way through, why not go the whole hog and join the Labour Party?

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: If you are a member of the government of the day, you cannot be on that team unless you unconditionally support the captain. That, as far as I am concerned, is an absolute slam dunk. That is exactly what you have to do. You are on the team. It is a bit like if you are on the board of a company, you support the chief executive or the chairman. If you are on the team of the government, you support the captain. That is something of which no-one need have any doubt whatsoever. That includes taking the Labour whip in the House of Lords. That is a totally different thing to belonging to any political party. By the way, please do not take this personally. I would not join the Tory party or the Liberal party either. I do not and have not belonged to political parties and I do not. One thing I would say where I think it can be useful is that, as I said in the answer to that first question, one of the very important things about Britain winning in a century that belongs to Asia is that we just get trade and investment, and I would say also skills actually, up above the day-to-day, understandable but nevertheless consuming world of party politics and factionalism. If we can elevate it above that, I actually believe, in those areas—not in everything, for obvious reasons—it is possible, possibly, to get a better result because it reaches out to areas of our society and areas of our world that might be put off or have closed ears because of party politics. That is what I am trying to achieve.

  Q6  Mr Wright: I personally think in your particular role, the role you took in the past, where you have been critical in some form of the Government's policies, are you saying, for instance, if corporate taxation were to increase at the next Budget, that you would, say, put that to one side; for the greater good, we are following the captain and we will not go down this road, whatever mandate?

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: As far as my previous criticism of this and, by the way, other governments, is concerned, the first part of your question, I would say to you that was then and this is now. I am on the team and I am following the captain and my job is basically to bang the drum for the country, the whole country, all over the world and at home. As far as the second part about what would happen going forward, my job in that respect, one of the important parts of the job, is that I stay focused on trade and investment. That is the job but of course I will play my full part, as best I can given that focus, as a front-bench member of the Government in the House of Lords. If I forgot one other part of it, I would not be doing my job and that is that I can act as the eyes and ears for the Prime Minister and all of his Government in the business communities at home and also UK business communities overseas. So I do intend to listen, to learn, to understand, to experience and then take those messages through me to the Government. In that respect, that will be done in private; that will be done, I hope, in a way that is a very fair reflection, as opposed to just telling other members of the Government what I think they want to hear. I have no great political ambition. I have no desire to be promoted, so if they wish to shoot the messenger, fine, but my job is to relay that factual information to those who make the rules, of which I am part. That is part of the job, and I see that as an enormous part of the job actually, so that you have a businessman listening to business and relaying that to both party politicians and also people who make the rules. If, to answer the third part of it, you are going to say to me if they then did something which I did not agree with, then my personal views are my own affair and no-one else's and at that moment I am a member of the Government and I support it because that is why I am here.

  Q7  Mr Wright: You said there was no one more surprised than you when you were offered the position.

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: That gentleman was more surprised than me.

  Q8  Mr Hoyle: I am still trying to overcome the shock.

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: So is my wife actually, if you really want to know.

  Q9  Mr Wright: You said you were genuinely shocked. Do you really believe it is credible that there was nobody within the Parliamentary Labour Party, either in the Commons or in the Lords, that could actually do that particular job, or do you believe you were head-hunted for a particular reason?

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: You had better ask the Prime Minister as to why he asked me specifically to do it. I am not going to second-guess his view. What I do know is I have been going on for years at the CBI to government ministers, and especially very senior members of the Cabinet when it came to banging the drum, when it came to pushing trade, making sure that our companies, on which the tax revenues and the employment of this nation depend, just got the very, very best, and the problem with having some politicians do it who are rightly, happily, career politicians, doing a damn good job actually, through that medium, is that they have, rightly, other things to do as well. When you see the amount of money and time and application that some of our rival nations in this globalised economy into it, per capita—Ireland, 3 million people, put more in in financial and ministerial application terms than we do. When you see what Canada do, what the French do, what the Americans do, what the Germans do, it was time for a change, and what I do know in my meeting with him is the Prime Minister said, "We are going to change the way we do this. This is going to be different, it is going to be new and I want you to help me do it." I can hardly have gone on to him for seven years about doing this and then when he actually says, "I have listened to you and I really will change the way we do this," say "Sorry, I know the road is going to be a bit rocky to start with but no, I'm not going to do this." I do understand how change is difficult. It is difficult for me, believe me, but I do believe he wants to run this differently and I am going to support him all the way in doing it.

  Q10  Mr Wright: You have had the meetings with the Prime Minister to discuss the future. What do you actually expect to deliver over the next 12 months?

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: The best thing of all is, of course, I am hitting a road running because UKTI—and that is my primary job, to chair UKTI and be—

  Q11  Chairman: I am sorry to interrupt, Minister, but one of my colleagues wants to come in before you get to the details of UKTI.

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: You just said what are you going to do in the next 12 months.

  Chairman: Exactly. I am going to ask you to answer that question again in a few minutes time because that is directly related to UKTI. I am not going to lose that question; it is a very important question.

  Q12  Mr Hoyle: Quite rightly, Lord Jones, you make great play about being on the team, part of a board of directors. When you are part of a board of directors you must have a shareholding as well in the company.

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: Why?

  Q13  Mr Hoyle: Why not?

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: I have been on the boards of loads of companies where I have not had a shareholding.

  Q14  Mr Hoyle: Let me put it another way. Have you ever been on a board of directors and had a shareholding?

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: Yes.

  Q15  Mr Hoyle: In which case, why cannot you franchise this new position by being a member of the Labour Party in the same way? Would that not be a good example?

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: Because I have been on loads of boards of companies where I have not had a shareholding.

  Q16  Mr Hoyle: But some you have. Why not this company? Why not join the club? Come on, be a team member. Pay your dues like the rest of us!

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: Because, at the end of the day, I have chosen to take a particular route and my party politics is my affair.

  Q17  Mr Hoyle: Your party politics are quite open. I could agree with you on that. Did you not say you have voted Conservative, you have voted Liberal but would never vote Labour? Quite rightly, you will never be allowed to vote Labour because you cannot vote against. That is the one good thing.

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: When did I ever say I have never voted Labour?

  Q18  Mr Hoyle: In one of your speeches.

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: When?

  Q19  Mr Hoyle: Chairman, can you remind us?

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: Yes, please.