Jonathan Reynolds

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for the question. The £2.5 billion investment will support thousands of jobs in the midlands, Bristol and across our country. The significance is that it is not just another public-private investment in an exciting area of the future. It is a genuine opportunity for a leading British firm to break into an incredibly lucrative market, which is currently dominated by two main players, where we could be significant in the future. Last week, I visited the Rolls-Royce site in Derby with the Prime Minister and Chancellor to discuss this very issue: British industry, British talent and British jobs. Everyone in the House will be aware of how outstanding Rolls-Royce is on apprenticeships and opportunities for the next generation. It is excited about what the future holds for the UK, and the Government will work hand in hand with it to make its growth ambitions a reality. We are backing British business not just through our industrial strategy, but by ensuring that we remain an outward and open-looking economy and that we stay true to the principles on which the modern British economy was built. We intend to reindustrialise our country, but we will not use punitive trade measures and tariffs to do so. In many cases, tariffs hinder businesses and hurt consumers far more than they help them. They are ultimately paid by our own people. That is why the Government are using the Budget to suspend tariffs on more than 100 essentials, which will support farmers who import fertilisers and households who use heating oil; by lowering costs on products like baked beans, chocolate, marmalade and fruit, it will also support people with their supermarket shop. Government cannot reduce all the pressures on the family shop overnight, but we can use all the levers at our disposal to bring prices down, and that is exactly what we are doing. While other nations turn inward, restricting trade with the rest of the world, we stand as a proudly internationalist country and global hub for trade and investment that is ready to deepen our partnerships with new friends and old allies—not least the European Union, which remains our largest trading market. That is the message we will be taking into the UK-EU summit later this month. Our ambition is clear. We want to continue simplifying trade. We want to conclude negotiations on our sanitary and phytosanitary and emissions trading deals, which could add up to £9 billion a year to the UK economy and would be a huge win for small business.