LORD JONES OF BIRMINGHAM AND MR ANDREW CAHN

16 JULY 2007

  Q120  Chairman: Welcome.

  Mr Cahn: Thank you very much, Chairman. I am going to be very presumptuous and say that I really welcome Lord Jones, who I have known for years as Digby Jones, coming to join us in UK Trade & Investment as our Chairman and as our minister. I am sure that we are going to become an even more marketing led and even more effective organisation because of that. To address Mr Binley's question, over the last three years we have reduced our headquarters staff by about 40%. We have absolutely listened to critics, to commentators and to parliamentarians who have said that we had too heavy a central function and we have changed that. More to the point, we do involve our networks, both the overseas network and the regional network. As an example, we had a senior managers' conference just two months ago and most of the people there were either from overseas or from the regions and that was all about, "how are we going to deliver the strategy, how are we going to deliver for the UK". I absolutely agree with you, the frontline troops are the most important troops but they do need to have targets properly set, they do need to have some guidance from the centre, and that is what we are creating, an intelligent centre.

  Q121  Mr Binley: One quick point. They also need assessing for effectiveness as well. That has been missing in some areas of activity with business and we need to make sure that we are doing things which work for UK plc, quite frankly, UK Limited.

  Mr Cahn: I agree with that. We have put a lot of effort into our evaluation system, our performance and impact management system, which is now fully operational. I am convinced that it is world leading. It is giving us a lot of information which we can use to make sure that we devote our resources in the right place, that we know which of our programmes work effectively and add value, and which are less valuable. I think that our evaluation system is going to enable us to do exactly what the Minister says, which is to add value to Britain.

  Q122  Mr Clapham: Given your programme of visiting long haul and then short haul, a question on each. With regard to China, for example, are we likely to see you pushing the idea of clean coal technology? For example, Matsui Babcock is producing boilers, some of which have been sold in China already, super critical boilers, fitted for carbon capture. Is that a technology that we are likely to be pushing in China?

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: Not only yes but, secondly, one of the things I want to achieve, and I guess on my first visit to China I rightly should, is I will go to Beijing, and that is absolutely right. I hope that Bo Xilai, the trade minister, will meet with me. I got to know him when I was at the CBI. What I really would like to do, and I know he wants me to do this, is let us go and start getting the Union Jack seen and understood more in Western China. A lot of the coal pollution issues in China are happening in the west of China, not in the east of China. If we can get British goods and British culture, economic culture, I mean, I do not mean social culture, into there, including clean coal technology, including making sure that the factories that you and I were discussing with uniforms and things, making sure that we get Britain on the page in Western China and as well Eastern China, I know that the Chinese Government want us to do that and it is something I will do. That is going to places that you and I have probably never been to. If we could take with us this fabulous environmental engineering technology that we possess, and presumably more that we will develop which you and I do not even know exists at the moment, then that will be part of the job, yes.

  Q123  Mr Clapham: Looking at the short haul, thinking in terms of the ten new entrants.

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: The accession states, yes.

  Q124  Mr Clapham: In taking evidence recently, this Committee heard that we are losing out, for example, to the Germans, French and Italians. I was asking earlier, what are we going to do different to ensure that we can compete with other EU partners?

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: In the short term I know that one of the UKTI senior directors was there last week in Romania and Bulgaria, but I have received a request this week from Romania to go as quickly as possible, and I will, that is a short term issue. The medium term issue, which is the one you really address, which is how do we turn that place to advantage, one thing we have got to do, and it is a frustration actually, is there was one nation which stood up constantly for these ten countries—not in respect of Cyprus and Malta—the ten in the Eastern Bloc, eight at the first tranche then Romania and Bulgaria, if you look at those ten, the one country above anybody else who constantly said "We want them in" was Britain. All the others at one point or another, bit flaky here, play to the political agenda but we never varied, we never once wavered. Could we capitalise on that more, you bet we could. I really do want to make more of an issue of that. The second point is that if you talk to the average, especially small business person, not the big boys, they tend to know about it. If you talk to the small ones, they tend to go and risk the money because every time they go and invest overseas or invest in a big trade project they are betting the ranch every time. The trouble is—not trouble, that is unfair—where do they go, they go where they understand where they feel comfortable. It tends to be America, the Commonwealth and Western Europe. Why? Either geographical proximity or it is English or it is what they were taught about at school. The theatre of operations that we were never taught about at school, the area that is a little bit too far and they do not speak English, that naturally is Eastern Europe. To get smaller businesses to have more confidence to get in there and help I think is a major project for UKTI actually.

  Q125  Chairman: We do not want you to say too much because we are just finishing our inquiry. We are meeting tomorrow morning. We will recommend to you.

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: I will help you, Chairman.

  Chairman: You cannot write our recommendations for us in advance.

  Q126  Mr Hoyle: Following on from that, do you then support Turkey joining the EU club?

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: Both me personally and me as a member of the Government, yes.

  Q127  Chairman: That is something we may be looking at as well possibly as a Committee in the future.

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: If you would like me back here to talk about that in detail from a trade and investment point of view, I gladly will.

  Q128  Chairman: We hear a lot of criticisms of the balance between inward investment and trade promotion activity from British businesses, quite a lot of them think there is too much on inward investment, not enough on trade promotion. Is that an issue you will be looking at?

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: I will do more than be looking at it. One of my stated intentions with the support of the Prime Minister is to accent it as much into trade as investment. In other words, get the trade moving as well as investment. That is one thing he specifically asked me to do, and I will.

  Miss Kirkbride: You took the title of Lord Jones of Birmingham and you know the West Midlands intimately, and whilst you are a minister of the Crown and, therefore, should not show favour to any particular area I could not help but ask you what as a minister for trade you can do for the West Midlands, what you think it can do for itself and what in the next 12 months, two years we should be doing for ourselves.

  Q129  Mr Hoyle: Nothing more than you do for the North West.

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: I will answer that in two ways. The first way is that when I became Director General of the CBI I was known as a Brummie lawyer who had just come down the motorway to London for the first time doing the job and lots of people for the first few months were saying, "Oh, he will only favour Birmingham because he has never been here". I think you will find, to be fair, I think you would all say this over the six and a half years, I campaigned for every single part of the United Kingdom actually, and I will do that in this job. More than that, because of the CBI job, I understand Manchester, I understand Liverpool, I understand Leeds, Newcastle, Belfast, Glasgow, Cardiff as well as Brum and I suppose if I do not say Cambridge, Bristol, London and Norwich as well I will get into trouble, and Truro! My job is—and it is very important, this is a precursor to answer you specifically—to fight for this nation and its elected government and its Prime Minister. That is the job and I shall deliver that to the best of my ability, overseas and at home, on trade and investment period, whether it is in Liverpool, Manchester or Cambridge. To come to your second part, of course I would not be human if I did not wake up in the morning and be proud to be a Brummie, of course I am. I would not take the title if I was not and every day I just say thank you to the city which gave me my break. Birmingham has got specific challenges, the West Midlands has specific challenges. They are different challenges from those which were there ten years ago. Ten years ago Birmingham was leading in urban regeneration, it was the city everybody went to but if you now go and look at the centre of Manchester, if you look at the waterfront in Liverpool, if you look at the fabulous riverside in Newcastle, look at what they have done with Leeds railway station and all round there, there is some fabulous urban regeneration and Birmingham has got to now say, "Welcome to competition, this is what happens, you have got to raise your game again". The challenges that Birmingham and the West Midlands have are different ones from ten years ago and they will be different again in ten years' time and there will be another city. It might be, I do not know, Bristol saying, "We have challenges we did not have". One of the jobs I will be doing, I hope with some success because of the knowledge that I have just explained about around Britain, is you get a better result if you let the cities do it, you do not get as good a result if you try to get uniform development. The competitive element of it is one of the ways in which people raise their game. One of the problems I think that we do have in the Midlands, and I include the East Midlands for this purpose, is I am beginning to define South East England as a place where a postal worker, a nurse, a firefighter, a policeman, a teacher is finding it difficult to buy a house. You can see South East England creeping north just as we are sitting here. Those challenges for Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, those challenges for Birmingham and the Chairman's constituency south west of Birmingham, all of that as South East England creeps up, I think they present enormous challenges and I do not see that stopping. It is a big challenge.

  Q130  Chairman: There is one last question I want to ask. It seems to me what the Government has done is put one of its most effective critics inside the tent, I will not complete the metaphor but you know what I mean. Those of us who live in Worcestershire are used to you playing for the wrong side, and you know what I am referring to, the Leicester Tigers.

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: For the record, you had better explain what you mean.

  Q131  Chairman: The Leicester Tigers are not a Worcestershire team.

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: Yes, the Worcester Warriors, yes, quite.

  Q132  Chairman: The Worcester Warriors are the team you should be supporting. A question has come to mind. You might make history, it strikes me, in one way, first of all by doing what you have done you have made history but just say at the next election a Conservative Government is formed and they ask you to carry on in your same role, would you do it?

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: No comment. One thing I would say is I am giving up absolutely everything I have been doing, every single paid position and most of my voluntary ones to do this job because I think it is so important and I cannot focus on it if I do anything else. Indeed, if I was paid to do anything else it would be an obvious conflict of interest. That is a huge issue for my wife and myself but that is how much I believe in it. The one thing that the Cabinet Secretary has allowed me to keep is my non-executive directorship of Leicester Tigers Rugby Club so I will see you down at Worcester Warriors, Chairman.

  Chairman: Okay.

  Q133  Mr Clapham: When will we see you at the British stunt car!

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: I hoped you would as I got out of this building actually!

  Q134  Chairman: I thought I had won actually. "No comment" is a pretty unusual answer from Digby Jones but you ended up making a comment. Minister, thank you very much indeed.

  Lord Jones of Birmingham: Thank you for having me.

  Chairman: If you change your mind about Leicester Tigers, you will be very welcome there. I cannot speak for my party! Thank you very much.