I appreciate a fellow Harlowian giving way to me. Does my right hon. Friend agree that part of employment is about skills, and one way the Government can support businesses is by ensuring that young people have the skills to succeed in business and in all workplaces?

My hon. Friend is 100% right. We heard businesses say to us loud and clear that they wanted radical and bold changes in the way that the skills levy was organised. The Government have moved to introduce flexibilities, and business want them to go further, faster.

We also heard business say that there is a good environment when it comes to start-up finance, but a terrible environment in this country for scale-up finance—I will return to that in a moment.

People want much stronger relationships between universities and businesses, and we in this country still do not have something like the Fraunhofer institutes in Germany, which have as their slogan that they are the research and development departments for the Mittelstand.

Where those knowledge transfer partnerships work, they are good, but they need to be far more prevalent. Finally, we heard businesses say loud and clear that the planning system needs a complete overhaul.

The infrastructure in this country is terrible, and we must drive down energy prices; right now, many businesses are being priced out of doing business because our energy prices are sky high. For all our differences, there are important points on which we can agree.

We on the Business and Trade Committee will continue to judge Ministers against many of the things that we heard from the business community as we travelled up and down the country, and I will flag up two or three points that we want to zero in on.

My right hon. Friend’s point about energy costs and opening markets chimes with everything that the ceramics industry is telling me about what it is facing.

He is right about the need for growth, and as well as being a wonderful Chair of the Committee, he is a doughty campaigner against inequality and inequity.

I am sure that he will agree that we need to ensure that the benefits of growth are felt in every community, be it in Birmingham or Stoke-on-Trent, and particularly in those communities that sadly, under the last Government, did not get the benefits they deserved.

I thank my right hon. Friend for his chairmanship of the Committee. Given the Prime Minister’s recent announcements, and our increased defence spending, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is important to support small and medium-sized defence enterprises?

My hon. Friend is a brilliant member of the Committee, and she makes a brilliant point. We know that we must come to a strategic culture and defence mindset in this country, so that our industry can innovate as fast as the battlefield changes.

We all know that there are defence manufacturers—drone manufacturers in particular—that struggle to get the working capital that they need to fund and grow their businesses, month by month.

We will have to change the way that we support smaller businesses, and that means transforming access to finance.

Time and again, the Committee has heard about business leaders being brought in once a firm gets to a particular size, and it being snapped up and shipped out, in particular to the United States, because we do not seem able to supply equity finance or debt finance of between £50 million and £500 million.

We have to think anew about how we ensure that the British Business Bank, the National Wealth Fund, the private sector and the proposed changes to pension funds work together to completely revolutionise access to finance for businesses in this market.

In the estimates, there looks to be a welcome £414 million increase in funding for the British Business Bank. Although it is hard to decode the accounts, it looks like about £127 million of that is provision for bad debt. Will the Minister clarify that?

The Committee will continue to press for us to completely transform access to finance, including through an inquiry that we will launch later in the year.

The final fear that I wanted to flag, which is coming through loud and clear to Committee members, is that the Government just do not work for business in the way that they need to.

We have heard over and over again about one Department doing something that completely undermines the work of another, or one regulator doing something that completely undermines what a different Department or regulator is trying to do.

We do not yet see anything about how we can knit Government together in a wholly new way in either the Green Paper on industrial strategy, or any of the commentary about the estimates.

There was no money left.

Well, there was an awful lot more money than there is now. We certainly did not have a debt interest bill of £100 billion a year, which is what the bill has risen to, and why so many difficult choices are having to be taken.

At that time, we were beginning genuinely to consider how to create single, pooled funds that came together from different Government Departments. A challenge for us in the House is that we have to reflect on the fact that we reinforce silos in Government, and do not reinforce joined-up Government.

This estimates debate is a good example: we are considering the accounts of the Department for Business and Trade, but in an ideal world we would also have here Ministers from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Treasury, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and a couple of other Departments, and we would ask those Ministers how they were working together to deliver a joined-up offer to our business community, because businesses have not got time to muck around and deal with all the red tape; they are trying to build a business.

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way—he has given way a few times already.

When I speak to businesses in my constituency, I pick up that young people who want to remain in the most rural communities simply cannot get to the jobs that they want to get to, and that businesses in rural settings have real trouble accessing a lot of the help that he refers to.

Does he believe that one of the particular sins of the past 14 years is that the business climate has been unfriendly to business, and particularly unfriendly to small rural businesses?

I will have to put Back-Bench Members on an immediate five-minute time limit, which may well go down in due course.

I will do my very best to reduce the comments I was going to make, Madam Deputy Speaker. I pay tribute to the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, the right hon.

Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), for his very thoughtful comments, which reflect the considerations of our Committee. Business is the lifeblood of our economy.

It creates jobs, funds our public services and drives the success of our country, yet under this Government, businesses face an onslaught of damaging policies that threaten growth, confidence and livelihoods.

The Government’s £25 billion national insurance jobs tax is making it more expensive to hire workers, their family business tax punishes those who drive local economies and their 1970s-style employment laws are stifling business growth. The result? The fastest rate of job losses since 2008.

Instead of supporting enterprise, this Government are actively making it harder for businesses to thrive. The budget of the Department for Business and Trade is being slashed by 6%, which means less support at a time when firms need it most.

The so-called Employment Rights Bill—or, perhaps, the unemployment rights Bill—will cost the Government £1 billion, while its fair work agency could add an astonishing £6.3 billion burden. Those costs will inevitably be passed on to businesses and workers alike.

This is not just about numbers on a spreadsheet: these policies have real consequences—workers losing their jobs, families struggling with rising costs and businesses already being forced to shut their doors.

The Government claim to support growth, yet their policies are driving firms into significant financial distress, with more than 632,000 businesses now at risk. That is a 32% increase in just one year. The irony is that Britain remains an attractive place to invest.

The PwC chief executive officer survey ranked us second only to the United States, but, alas, that survey took place before the Budget. A strong economy depends on strong business confidence, yet confidence in this Government’s economic management has been shattered.

Businesses no longer trust that the Government have a clear strategy for growth, which the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North has already mentioned. The numbers speak for themselves.

More than 200 leading hospitality and retail firms have warned that Government policies will force them to cut jobs and scale back investment. Businesses face ever-changing regulations, increasing tax burdens and a Government who appear out of touch with their needs.

My hon. Friend refers to the increase in regulation. The Government’s Employment Rights Bill, which I have in my hand, is 192 pages long. Only this week, Government amendments totalling 216 pages have been tabled for this House to consider in two days next week.

Does that not present any business with a vast quantity of new regulation to consider?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The time that we have next week to consider this number of amendments seems wholly inadequate. Businesses are facing ever-changing regulations and increasing tax burdens.

Many have said that they were misled—duped—into believing that this Government were pro-business when their actions tell a very different story.

Analysis by the Nuffield Trust has found that if the fair work agency were to increase social care workers’ wages to match the NHS Agenda for Change band 3, the cost could be as high as £6.3 billion, including an increase to the real living wage costing £2.2 billion.

That is another measure in the out-of-touch Employment Rights Bill. It is as if the 32 members of the Cabinet have a very limited understanding of the private sector and of business as a whole. Business owners, entrepreneurs and workers do not need more red tape and tax hikes.

They need a Government who understand that growth does not come from the state dictating terms, but from unleashing the potential of enterprise, and they need policies that encourage investment, not deter it.

Businesses in my constituency of Bognor Regis and Littlehampton are already struggling with the global impacts on their business environment, let alone the challenges at home.

The day one rights given by the Employment Rights Bill give the presumption of innocence to workers and the presumption of malevolent intent to employers. The reality is that neither is correct. The Government need to understand that when business thrives, Britain thrives.

That is the only way in which we will restore confidence, protect jobs, and secure a growing economy.

Will the hon. Member give way?

Go ahead—I would like to hear the hon. Member’s intervention.

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman would like to hear it. What I just heard was breathtaking. I remind him that Scotland’s economy is one of the best performing in the UK. Since 2007, Scotland’s GDP per person has grown by 10.5%, outperforming the UK’s 6.

5%, while productivity has risen at an annual rate of 1%. I would be curious to know what figures he is working from, because it is a topsy-turvy world, since Scotland has had the highest rate of foreign direct investment in the UK for the past nine years in a row outside of London.

I will now reduce the time limit to four minutes.

I want to follow up on my hon. Friend’s comment on international trade. Does he agree that the Government currently lack the capability to support businesses appropriately in international trade?

I completely agree that much more needs to be done on international trade. As I said, we lack ambition in this field, because we base so much of what we expect on previous deals.

Frankly, there has never been a deal like CPTPP, the putative deal with India and the dripping roast that is a free trade deal with the US. The Department for Business and Trade needs to step up, not be beaten before we even start.

Growth is the destination that we in this House should all agree on; the path there is where the disputes lie. We are in an economic relegation zone after a dud Budget. Can the Department for Business and Trade help pull off the shock result that we all need?

Britain’s got talent, and the Department for Business and Trade can boost it.

Order. There is now a three-minute time limit.

The Government were elected eight months ago with a promise to go for growth, but so far most of their policies seem designed to make life more difficult for business. Their £25 billion national insurance jobs tax is a direct assault on the businesses that create jobs.

The increase in capital gains tax, the introduction of the family business tax and the family farm tax all discourage entrepreneurship. The 1970s-style employment laws are slowing business growth and discouraging job creation.

Labour’s Employment Rights Bill will increase costs to businesses by £5 billion, borne mostly by small businesses. Take day one rights. If, after less than one week, it becomes apparent that a new employee is the wrong fit for a business, a complicated process must be followed to dismiss them.

Speaking as a former—though fully qualified —solicitor, I know the businesses that will be hit hardest are the ones with no human resources department. Get the process wrong, and they could be taken to court for unfair dismissal.

Another example is the obligation for the employer to notify an employee in writing that they have the right to join a trade union. Is that something we would reasonably expect from the local publican, or the proprietor of a family newsagent? In what world is that really going to occur?

Yet if it does not occur, those small businesses will on the hook for an additional four weeks’ salary in damages. That will have brutal consequences for very many microbusinesses and will deter them from employing people.

The Bill also establishes an advisory board for the enforcement of labour market rules. That body will advise the Secretary of State on matters relating to the labour market. It is an expensive and pointless exercise. The Secretary of State has plenty of avenues to collect advice already.

There will be a complicated process for selecting members of the panel, which will consume considerable amounts of civil service time and money. The members of the board will be paid hundreds of pounds a day.

This is a sham process designed to allow the Secretary of State to hand out sinecures to receive advice on strategy from his union friends that he could have got for free.

The first instinct of this 1970s-style old Labour Government is to regulate, to stifle innovation and to back the unions over business every time. We Conservatives will stand up for business and the people who make the economy work, and will continue to champion its success.

To wind up for the Liberal Democrats, I call Clive Jones.

Order. I remind the Liberal Democrat spokesman to bring his remarks to a close so that we have time to hear from the Minister and the shadow Minister.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. We need to take action to deepen bilateral trade with Canada. Does the Minister share Canada’s sentiment about strengthening our economies? Does he agree that we need to take tougher action to stand up for our Canadian friends?

Will the UK return to the negotiating table and start working on a trade deal with Canada as soon as possible?

The Minister is making an excellent speech setting out this Government’s ambitious plans. While he is looking at the industrial strategy and those eight high-growth areas, can I make a pitch for him to remember those foundational industries that sit below them, including ceramics?

Without ceramics, refractories and those foundational industries, delivering the growth that the Department wants in those eight high-growth areas will simply be impossible.

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I knew as soon as he rose that he would raise the subject of the ceramics industry, such is his record of championing it. I will certainly pass his comments back to the relevant Minister.

Working in industry, I have personally experienced the power of partnership between Government and industry when the Government set clear, powerful goals, and then collaborate with industry on delivering them.

That has, in my experience, really fuelled innovation and is key to delivering the growth that we desire. Does the Minister agree that a partnership with industry, in which the Government set goals and we work together to deliver them, is key to delivering a successful industrial strategy?

This has been an excellent debate. Let me once again say that I am incredibly grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for ensuring that we could spend time together debating the issues at stake. We heard some brilliant speeches from across the House.

In a way, my ambitions for the debate were satisfied, because I wanted to ensure, after our report on the priorities of the business community, and having secured this debate, that we actually heard business voices in this Chamber, and in the corridors of power.

We do not give enough time, space or attention to business voices, and to hearing about the challenges in boardrooms and on shop floors. If we did that a little bit more, it would surprise us how much consensus there is in this country about the big moves forward.

This is for the economic historians among us. We have to recognise that we are at one of those moments in history that occur every 30 to 40 years.

We have a series of geopolitical shocks, and then we have a big, agonising debate about whether the country is in decline, whether it is all going to hell, or whether there is a different way forward, in which the country rallies together and chooses to build a different kind of sovereign capability.

Inevitably, that has consequences for the kind of state that emerges. We went through this in the 1980s, the 1940s and after world war one.

We have to conduct that argument now at a moment when it is clear that the United States—that great power, that great ally of ours, that built the multilateral system beginning in 1944 in San Francisco and then through to the end of world war two—in the words of Joseph Chamberlain, is a weary titan no longer able to grasp the orb of its fate.

We have to recognise that for those of us who support that multilateral rules-based order, we will have to step up. That will be difficult and expensive, but it will bring new opportunities for business growth and, crucially, for our constituents to earn a good living.