Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
LORD JONES
OF BIRMINGHAM
23 FEBRUARY 2009
Q20 Chairman: The headline on your
own story in The Daily Mail a week ago was: "Gordon
Brown says that he will create 100,000 jobs. One in four will
be shelf-stackers". It was a slightly unfair summary of your
article but it was the way your article could easily be interpreted.
Lord Jones of Birmingham: I write
an article about my findings around the country on where the jobs
are being created. That is a true statistic but it is not the
thrust of the article. But, you know, we live in the real world.
It is no good bleating about it; we have to go and do something
about it.
Q21 Chairman: It is a bit last chance
saloon stuff, is it not? You said, "Unless the Government
takes bold steps right now to preserve jobs, skills and factories,
we could blight an entire generation with long-term unemployment".
Lord Jones of Birmingham: Yes.
Q22 Chairman: You think the stakes
are quite high.
Lord Jones of Birmingham: I do.
I do not know if you saw that programme a week today. There is
a chap called Colin, he is 19 years old, and he has just been
made redundant by Nissan up in the North East. He did everything
that people like you and I would expect: school, training programme
at a quality, long-term investing Japanese company, and he hits
19 and, rightly, for proper reasons, no blame on Nissan, they
make him redundant. His father has been unemployed for 10 years.
He comes from a family, as many of his friends' families will
be, of long-term unemployment. Is it not better to say: Colin,
you make a bit of a sacrifice; Nissan, you make a bit of a sacrifice;
and you and I, Chairman, our taxes will make a bit of a sacrifice?
Then, when the upturn comes and people are buying the quality
stuff that Nissan make around the world, Colin's job is not only
preserved, his skills are preserved, and the guy is not going
to be what he is in danger of being, another statistic of long-term
unemployment in the North East. Is that not a better investment
of my money than, frankly, in six months time paying £2,500
to an employer to get him back into work when he should not have
been going out in the first place?
Q23 Chairman: There is a policy precedent
in the UK for it, I believe. This kind of policy has been followed
in the past in this country.
Lord Jones of Birmingham: I think
it was followed in the 1981 recession.
Q24 Chairman: Yes, it was.
Lord Jones of Birmingham: I was
only a glint in my daddy's eye then, Chairman! No, I was not—I
was a lawyer in Birmingham then.
Q25 Chairman: You were indeed. Let
us move on to the main subject. You were a minister for 16 glorious
months—which does not sound very long to some of us, but,
equally, you and I know it is quite a long time for a minister
in any department of state.
Lord Jones of Birmingham: 45 overseas
visits in that time.
Q26 Chairman: Yes, I have a list
of them at the back of my brief. You have expressed your views
about the Civil Service to another select committee earlier on,
but what difference do you think you make in those 16 months?
What did you achieve?
Lord Jones of Birmingham: In no
order of priority. An uplift in the morale of UKTI. I wanted them
to strut their stuff a bit more around Whitehall, and to see themselves
with a little bit more of the arrogance that the Foreign Office
and the Treasury tend to do, because at the end of the day they
are as important as any of them, because without the UKTIs of
this world then it is more difficult for companies to create wealth.
If they do not create it, they do not pay tax. If they do not
pay tax, you do not get schools and hospitals. It is not rocket
science.
Q27 Chairman: So morale. Does it
help to say: "I was amazed how many people, frankly, deserved
the sack ..." Does it help to say that kind of thing in terms
of people's morale?
Lord Jones of Birmingham: I actually
did not say that.
Q28 Chairman: It is a direct quote.
Lord Jones of Birmingham: No,
I actually did not say that. I know it is quoted. I actually said
that I was amazed how many people "it was not possible to
sack". And it is different. But can I just say that my remarks
were not entirely tailored to UKTI.
Q29 Chairman: Ah! UKTI is exempt
from this general critique.
Lord Jones of Birmingham: No,
no. There would be people there who, in a perfect world, you would
have moved on in a different way from the way they are moved on
in the Civil Service. But the one thing was the lift in morale
and to get them to understand that they mattered far more in government
than they felt they did. Linked to that, it came as something
of a surprise to the Department of Business & Enterprise when
I announced that I wanted to go and put my office physically in
the department that I was in charge of, because no other minister
had done that before, they had all been up at the Department of
Business. One civil servant said, "Why do you want to do
that?" and I said, "Because if we are going to change
the way they do this and we going to get the morale up, then the
boss should be in amongst them with his sleeves rolled up".
They said, "No, if you want them, they will come to you".
That, to me, was not the way you lead and it was not the way you
try to effect change.
Q30 Chairman: To be fair, you were
a dedicated trade minister. Previous ministers had had other jobs.
Lord Jones of Birmingham: Certainly.
Q31 Chairman: You did not.
Lord Jones of Birmingham: Sure.
Q32 Chairman: You had the luxury
of being just the minister.
Lord Jones of Birmingham: The
Prime Minister asked me to do the job differently and he kept
his word to me on the way that I did it and I kept my word to
him in doing it.
Q33 Chairman: You have talked about
morale, but you did say in another quote I have from your appearance
before the Public Administration Committee, "... the job
could be done with half as many".
Lord Jones of Birmingham: I did
definitely say that.
Q34 Chairman: Was that about UKTI
as well?
Lord Jones of Birmingham: I think
if you change the system of government in the way that initiatives
and policies are delivered, then it would be possible to deliver
on policy with half as many. I picked half, but I am not saying
half, it is just a term—but substantially fewer people.
Q35 Chairman: Are you saying that
if we are to get this country exporting out of recession, you
could do it with fewer people?
Lord Jones of Birmingham: Not
if you had the current system. You would need to change the Foreign
Office as well. You could not just do it on UKTI. The one thing
I saw as a happy difference between when I started at the CBI
in 2000 and when I was UKTI minister in 2007-08 was how more business
attuned and wealth-creating attuned the Foreign Office had become,
very much more in tune with promoting British goods, services,
companies around the world. I thought that was fabulous to see,
it was a happy thing to see. You asked me what else. Because of
the nature of the way that we run our political system, (a) you
had, as you say Chairman, my predecessors trying to do another
job as well, and (b) they tend to be democratically elected and
they tend to sit in the House of Commons and they have to be there.
That is entirely inconsistent with being able to be overseas banging
the drum and promoting Britain—which is what I did—and
it is extremely difficult to do both the job of a political career,
wanting advancement, wanting to be in the beltway, wanting to
be seen around doing the job in Westminster, and also being in
some far-flung market for British business. The job was done differently
by me in that respect, and I think it would be fair to say that
the posts around the world and the businesses that I promoted
thought that that job was done reasonably well. I do not say that
to criticise my predecessors because they (a) had other responsibilities
and (b) were having to be back to vote.
Q36 Chairman: This is an important
point, because this Committee has expressed concern at this in
the past. This is not an attack on the current Prime Minister
by colleagues; it is a problem for all prime ministers. Presidents,
like the President of France, find it easier to tour the world
and fly the flag. The system makes that easier for them.
Lord Jones of Birmingham: I am
glad you said this, because it could be levelled at any prime
minister of this country. If you are up against Sarkozy, if you
are up against Bush, as it was in my case—now it would be
after Obama, if you are up against Merkel—and these are
quality countries with quality companies wanting the support of
the boss of the country—it is easier for them to travel
than it is a British prime minister. The system in this country
militates against promoting the ability for this country to trade
its way out of its current problems.
Q37 Chairman: So a high profile trade
minister would help.
Lord Jones of Birmingham: Yes.
Q38 Chairman: When you went, you
were not immediately replaced.
Lord Jones of Birmingham: No.
Q39 Chairman: Lord Mandelson first
of all said he would do the job himself.
Lord Jones of Birmingham: Yes.
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