Sarah Olney and Wendy Chamberlain challenge Sunak at PMQs

By The Voice | Wed 24th May 2023 - 8:39 pm

The Lib Dem success at PMQs continues with two of our number challenging Rishi Sunak today.

First up Sarah Olney:

Today, a solar power developer based in Oxford said the UK is the "least attractive" market in which to locate its new factory.

I therefore asked the Prime Minister why he thinks it is, that each week, more and more businesses are choosing to leave the UK under his watch? pic.twitter.com/HhRGwmunMn

— Sarah Olney (@sarahjolney1) May 24, 2023

Under the Conservatives, so much of the UK’s potential is going untapped, with anaemic growth, falling living standards and declining international competitiveness. Just this morning, a solar power company developing an innovation from Oxford University said that the UK is the “least attractive” market in which to base its business due to a lack of incentives. That is a home-grown company that could have provided well-paid green jobs—lost to this country thanks to the Government’s lack of an industrial strategy. Why does the Prime Minister think that each week more and more promising businesses choose to leave the UK?

The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady obviously missed the comments by the International Monetary Fund yesterday upgrading our growth performance, she obviously missed the survey of thousands of global chief executives just recently placing the UK as their No. 1 European investment destination, and it sounds like she also missed my trip to Japan last week, when we announced £18 billion of new investment in the UK economy.

Then, on the day when Rishi Sunak declined to order an investigation into Suella Braverman’s conduct over her speeding issue, Wendy Chamberlain asked if he would support her bill ensuring that ministers were properly trained in ethical standards an compliance:

Today at Prime Minister's Questions, I challenged Rishi Sunak to support ethics training for his ministers. 👇 pic.twitter.com/QC4oF7el3A

— Wendy Chamberlain MP (@wendychambLD) May 24, 2023

Before I was elected, I worked for a number of years in learning and development in both the police and the private sector. I am sure we can all agree that training is absolutely vital for encouraging innovation and creativity, as well as for compliance. Given that that seems to be a particular issue for the Prime Minister’s Cabinet, will he support my Ministerial Conduct (Training) Bill, which I will present later today?

The Prime Minister
As the hon. Lady knows, there are processes and procedures in place for ensuring professional standards across Government. With regards to training, I am pleased that we are rolling out the lifelong learning entitlement to ensure that people can, at any stage in their career, get access to years of Government-subsidised financing. That will ensure that we have a workforce who are fit for the future, and that everyone can realise the opportunities that are there.

4 Comments

nigel hunter 24th May '23 - 9:33pm

I remember Vince Cable talking about life long learning.
Roger Lake 25th May '23 - 11:43am

No disrespect intended, Nigel, but your comment is so backward-looking, and consequently so Lib Dem! It strikes me extra hard, because it is almost exactly a year since we all got that challenge from Humphrey Hawkesley to come up with a LibDem “Big Idea”. It generated a host of responses (about 90 I think), but so many of them , I think it’s fair to say, were Libdemly either too diffuse to have much Bigness about them; and not much in the way of identifiable — single — Ideas.
HH was disappointed, I fear,but within 24hours he had 23 responses, and gracefully wound up at 11.07 am on 12th May 2022. Do read his challenge and his signing-off.
Of course in the following days many more contributions poured in — and can be seen, all appended to HH’s . That was a year ago. A year lost? No — let’s NOW think again, post Boris! . . . Post Truss! . . . Pre-Election!
Ian Sanderson (RM3) 25th May '23 - 11:55am

@nigel hunter And Don Forster even earlier.
It’s vital for two reasons:
1 There are people who never reached their potential during childhood and adolesence for a number of reasons.
2 Society and technology (and law) moves on, so some of what you learnt in school and college becomes obselete.
Simon McGrath 25th May '23 - 4:29pm

Sarah Olney is right that there were comments from Oxford PV about the UK not being attractive as a place to build a factory. But that is becuase we don’t offer a big enough subsidy whereas the Grman Govt is paying 20% of the capital cost. There clearly is an argument that Sarah’s constituents should pay higher taxes so that the solar panel can be made here – but if thats so we need to be clear about what level of subsidies – and higher taxes we think are appropriate and to support what sort of jobs