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NEWS
Weekly Comment
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Greg Clark Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells
Wednesday February 16 | 2022
Greg Clark was first elected MP for Tunbridge Wells in 2005. He has held a number of positions in Government, including Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. He is currently Chair of the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committe.
Democracy depends on disagreement but we have more in common than what divides us WESTMINSTER has been pretty acrimonious in recent weeks – as has been evident on our TV screens. Day after day, accusation has been followed by counter accusations, with the Speaker having to warn of the need for civility and moderation. Of course, it’s not the first time in our history that the chamber of the House of Commons has been a cauldron of confrontation. That is, partly, its function. But for all the noise and the division, Parliament can be a place of mutual respect and common purpose. Where I sit in the House of Commons directly in front of me on the opposite wall of the chamber is a shield with words ‘More in Common’ beneath it, visible to everyone in the chamber.
Honoured It commemorates Jo Cox, the MP who was murdered in 2016. In her maiden speech in 2015 – to which I responded as the Minister on duty – Jo said that one of the things that she had realised since being elected an MP was that ‘we are far more united and have far more in
common than that which divides us’. I think that’s true locally too. I was touched and honoured when the Conservative MP David Amess was murdered last Autumn, it was Andrew Sharp of our local Labour Party who suggested and organised a memorial service for him at St Augustine’s in Tunbridge Wells. Amid all the turmoil of recent days, last week the House came together to mourn the loss of Jack Dromey the Labour MP for Birmingham Erdington and I was privileged to speak in tribute to him. Though we faced each other on opposite sides of the House of Commons, Jack and I were friends and partners in our work in Parliament. In my speech I recalled how Jack incited my very first rebellion against the Party whip! So reasonable and persuasive were his arguments in favour of an Opposition amendment to the Bill that I was steering through the House, that I voted for it. Despite being the Minister in charge of resisting the amendment and the whips looking outraged… Jack was a successful trade union leader – a former Deputy General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union. I am a
every month with the leaders and trade unions in the main manufacturing industries, who told us that shortages of skilled labour was their number one challenge and so we pressed the case for apprenticeships.
Alliance
former Secretary of State for Business. We were both passionate advocates of manufacturing industry – not just in providing millions of really good jobs for people, but in offering a brilliant future given the strengths we have in science and technology. Over the years we joined forces to work together. We campaigned to ensure that the automotive industry had minimal barriers to and from the EU market after Brexit – and succeeded. When Covid struck we jointly proposed what became known as the furlough scheme and was adopted by Chancellor shortly after. We met
So Jack was very much in mind last week when I joined a cross-party alliance to mark National Apprenticeship Week. On Friday, on a visit to Aspens – the local charity (formerly known as Pepenbury) that gives such wonderful support to adults with learning difficulties, I met Jamie hands, Emily Banks and Ashley Brawn, who are undertaking apprenticeships with Aspens in everything from horticulture to administration, and in so doing gaining skills and helping the work of the charity. If any Times readers want to find out more about apprenticeship opportunities, contact me or go to www.apprenticeships.gov.uk Politics is a rough trade. Democracy depends on disagreement. But it’s not the whole story. There is more in common than divides us, and it’s worth acting on that.