Job Title: Executive and Parliamentary Assistant

Working For: Lord Bilimoria of Chelsea CBE, DL

Location: London

Salary: £24k

Job Details

Lord Bilimoria of Chelsea CBE, DL – a Crossbench Peer, the Founder and Chairman of the Cobra Beer Partnership and Chancellor of the University of Birmingham is seeking a highly motivated Executive and Parliamentary Assistant. Working under Lord Bilimoria’ s Office Manager and Parliamentary Researcher and working alongside Lord Bilimoria’ s Personal Assistant and the wider Cobra team, the selected candidate will assist Lord Bilimoria with business, parliamentary, personal and charitable affairs.

Job description:

• Manage Lord Bilimoria’s mailbox and respond to all correspondence
• Research and draft articles, opinion pieces and press releases
• Occasionally organising events in Parliament and assisting with tours
• Prepare presentations
• Manage Lord Bilimoria’s social media; twitter account, websites – lordbilimoria.co.uk and www.zoroastrianappg.com

Key traits:

The ideal applicant would have experience of:

working in Parliament

dealing with and processing a large amount of correspondence – email and written

dealing with media in print, radio and television.
Furthermore, applicants should possess:

• An excellent working knowledge of MS Office, particularly Outlook
• Impeccable spelling and grammar
• A willingness to work some evenings and weekends
• A keen understanding of how Parliament works

Desirable but not essential:

• Knowledge of the procedures and membership of the House of Lords
•  Awareness of South Asian culture, politics and business practice
•  University-level education

While it is not expected that selected candidates will be politically neutral, they must prevent their personal political views from interfering with Lord Bilimoria’s status as an Independent Crossbencher, and the duty of non-partisanship that such status entails.

Interview/Start Dates

Applicants may be contacted for interview before the closing date and we may appoint before the closing date.

Application Details

Please submit a CV (no longer than two sides) and a cover letter (no longer than one side), both as PDF documents, to Lord Bilimoria’s Office Manager and Parliamentary Researcher, Monica Sharma at sharmamc@parliament.uk

E-mails must include the subject line “Executive and Parliamentary Assistant application”.

Please direct any further enquiries to Monica Sharma, via the e-mail address above. Note that not all queries can be answered before the deadline.

It may not be possible for us to contact candidates who we cannot invite for interview.

Website: http://www.lordbilimoria.co.uk/

  Education: A-levels in Creative Subjects

 03 November 2016

​

Baroness Brinton

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they intend to take to ensure that exam boards continue to offer a range of creative subjects at A-Level.

 

Lord Bilimoria:

Brexit: Impact on Universities and Scientific Research

03 November 2016

Moved by Lord Soley

That this House takes note of the potential impact of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union on funding for universities and scientific research.

 

Lord Bilimoria:

My Lords, when I visited CERN in Geneva, I realised that the experiments that led to the famous Higgs boson discovery, ATLAS and CMS, were both headed by British scientists: Professor Dave Charlton from the University of Birmingham, and Professor Sir Tejinder Virdee from Imperial College. And of course it was Sir Tim Berners-Lee who actually created the world wide web at CERN. Then, this year, we had the gravitational waves proving Einstein’s theory of relativity, 100 years later, with 1.3 billion light years being measured. Who were two of the principal scientists behind that? Professor Alberto Vecchio and Professor Andreas Frieze—EU scientists at the University of Birmingham. What makes this country great—this 1% of the world’s population, as my noble friend Lord Kakkar said—is not our natural resources but our talent. The jewel in our crown is our universities, which are the best in the world, along with those in the United States of America.

 

I declare my various interests, including being the proud chancellor of the University of Birmingham, chair of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School and the president of the UK Council for International Student Affairs, representing the 450,000 international students in this country, of whom 180,000 are from the EU.

 

I say that we achieve all this excellence in spite of underspending on HE. We spend way below the EU and OECD average, and we are well behind the United States of America. When it comes to our research and development spending as a proportion of GDP, South Korea spends double the percentage that we do and we are way below the EU average, let alone that of the United States. What is scary is that the proportion of GDP spent on R&D, 1.6%, has been falling from 1985 to 2013. Will the Minister acknowledge this?

 

We heard from my noble friends Lord Rees and Lord Smith and others that at the University of Cambridge, around 16.5% of university staff are EEA nationals. When it comes to PhD students, that figure is 27%, and for MPhils, it is 21%. Look at the awards: UK institutions have won more ERC awards than any other country—989 compared with France’s 577.

 

On the implications and opportunities of leaving the EU on science and research, the University of Cambridge’s response is that,

 

“it will create significant challenges for Universities. We recognise that there is a great deal of uncertainty”.

 

Everyone has said that today. But the university also said that the political instability raises significant questions in the following areas. It refers to,

 

“our recruitment and retention of the brightest and best staff and students regardless of nationality … the future of our substantial European research funding”,

 

and the point that many noble Lords have touched on,

 

“the extensive global network of the University’s collaborations”.​

Sixty percent of the UK’s internationally co-authored papers are with EU partners. The mobility of our scientists is phenomenal—I have given you just one illustration. Professor Alice Gast of Imperial College, one of the top 10 universities in the world, said:

 

“Foreigners improve the creativity and productivity of home-grown talent, too”.

 

They enrich our universities, both academics and students.

 

Cambridge was the highest recipient of EU funding allocated under Horizon 2020, about which lots of Peers have spoken. I want to ask the Minister about intellectual property. In the event of Brexit—which may not happen, by the way—the value of any EU-based research for exploitation may be limited. Does the Minister agree with that? The UK has played a key role in shaping the design and implementation of the EU’s research programmes to ensure that the funding has been allocated on excellence. That has not been mentioned so far. Legislating for the ERA could have potential negative impacts on our current world-class systems.

 

People talk about the drop in the number of EU applicants, which is real—will the Minister confirm that? But the other aspect is that as the Royal Society said, the scientific community often works beyond national boundaries on problems of common interest and so is well placed to support diplomatic efforts that require non-traditional alliances of nations, sectors and non-governmental organisations. This is known as science diplomacy.

 

I conclude by saying that what worries and saddens me about this whole situation is that here we are talking about excellence and Britain being the best in the world, and yet my noble friend Lord Smith spoke about hate crime. I have lived in this country since I came here from India as a 19 year-old student in the early 80s. In 35 years I have never experienced any hate crime except for this year—and this year I have received it in abundance. Whether it is tweets, emails or letters, I cannot even repeat what people have been saying to me. It has saddened me. And yet this is the country that Liam Fox talks about opening up to the world. The world is laughing at us. They see us as closing up to the world, inward looking and insular, not open, not diverse, not plural, not tolerant and not brilliant. The headline of an Indian newspaper would read: Lord Bilimoria—this is not the Britain that I know and this is not the Britain that I love.

Cobra’s Lord Bilimoria: ‘People don’t appreciate just how creative business is’

How did you get started in business?

 

After attending seven different schools (I moved around a great deal as my father was a general in the Indian army), I skipped my A-levels altogether and went straight to university in Hyderabad. I graduated with an honours degree in commerce by the time I was 19 years old and then decided to come to the UK to continue my studies. I started out doing accountancy training at what’s now Ernst & Young and then began studying law at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

My first enterprise idea came to me there, when I joined the polo team. I realised there was a niche opportunity for importing Indian polo sticks, and I started selling them into places such as Harrods and Lillywhites.

It was also in Cambridge, when visiting local restaurants, that I realised I hated fizzy lagers. Some ales were quite pleasant, but far too heavy and bitter to enjoy with a meal. I wanted to create a beer that had a smoothness and a good, distinctive taste that would work well with food. That’s what I aimed to achieve with Cobra when I founded it in 1989, having worked with a brewer to develop it in India, and imported it to the UK.

 

How did you persuade restaurants to stock Cobra?

 

I had to turn a lot of “noes” into “yesses”. We started selling it door-to-door, restaurant-by-restaurant, beginning with Chelsea. It was difficult; distributors just didn’t want to supply it. But, bit by bit, we built up relationships with more than 100 top restaurants and our reputation grew. From there it was a snowball effect. Once customers tried it, they wanted it again, which is what helped us, as an early craft beer, break through in a market dominated by enormous, much older household name brands.

We also made a very deliberate decision to target Indian restaurants. The popularity of curry houses was rocketing at this time in the Nineties – it was to become one of the nation’s favourite cuisines. We saw an opportunity to grow alongside the industry. In a similar way, brewing company Peroni pursued similar opportunities with Italian restaurants such as Pizza Express.

 

What was the greatest challenge you faced in starting up?

 

Financing. Raising the finance we needed was a massive challenge. I was in debt from paying for my studies and we had to raise every small bit of money piecemeal from a variety of different sources. As an enterprise you have to look everywhere for sources of money and think hard about what might work. Invoice factoring [or invoice financing, where sellers auction their unpaid invoices to third parties], for example, can be very useful.

There’s no doubt that the first five years were the most difficult for Cobra, because like any new business, there was this credibility gap between what we felt we could achieve and what other people could see we had created so far. As an entrepreneur you have to have faith in yourself, and confidence, belief and passion in what you do. You have to use that to persuade people and convince them that your vision is well-founded.

 

What’s your top tip for other entrepreneurs?

 

Don’t give up on your education. I’m a firm believer in lifelong education. I never stop learning. If you’ve got a business idea, don’t give up on your degree, finish it. I still regularly attend business courses at Harvard Business School and I’m very involved with the Cambridge Judge Business School, because there’s always a new way to think about business.

It’s also vital to build up a strong network of friends and family. I’ve nearly lost the business [Cobra] three times. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I can be sure that three things helped me to carry on: having a strong brand, great support from my family, and the right values. You have to hold on to a sense of integrity when it [business] is at its most difficult.

Business networks are also important. It helps to have met other business leaders who really understand the kind of pressures one sometimes has to face.

 

What do people get wrong about business?

 

People don’t appreciate just how creative it is. I didn’t. I used to look back on what my talents might have been when I decided at 26 to go up against the drinks industry giants. For years I never really thought I had a particular strength; I wasn’t gifted at art, for example, or music. But now I realise that I was – and still am – creative. That’s what allowed me to develop a brand that was different and innovative.

But the misconception I’m most frustrated by is how often people completely misunderstand business – those people who are entirely negative about it. A business generates taxes. Without taxes there would be no public services – no functioning welfare state.

You can be ambitious in two ways about business: you can want to create a brand that is the best in the world, but also one that is the best for the world. I wish more people understood that and how business can be a positive force.

The full article is available here

 Forging Closer Ties With Booming India Will Unlock Vast Opportunities for Britain

 

On the eve of Indian independence on 15 August, 1947 (whose anniversary was celebrated yesterday), the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said that “the achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us.”

 

India’s independence was not even 70 years ago, yet the country is now the world’s fastest-growing economy, expanding at a rate of 7.6 per cent. The country’s liberalisation started in 1991, but it has been the great reforms introduced in the past two years that have really seen its economy take off. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a clear vision for India, with policies such as Make in India paving the way towards his target of increasing manufacturing from 16 to 25 per cent of the Indian economy.

 

With industrial strategy now at the heart of our own government’s policy, British manufacturing has an unprecedented opportunity to partner with Indian business. But the potential goes much further than that – if we can get policy right.

 

Our previous government placed China ahead of India, as indicated earlier this year by the announcement of a pilot scheme offering Chinese visitors a two-year visitor visa for just £87. Currently, Indian visitors have to pay £330 for the same arrangement.

 

Meanwhile, the number of Indians travelling abroad is increasing 10 per cent year-on-year and, in spite of the cultural ties between the UK and India, France has overtaken us as the number one European destination for Indian tourists. The government should introduce a £87 two-year visitors visa for India immediately.

 

In education, while the number of Indian students planning overseas education is rocketing upwards, the UK is failing to ensure they are made welcome here. Britain risks missing out entirely to the US, Australia, Canada and, increasingly, other European countries. We need well-evidenced immigration policies, beginning with the reinstatement of a simple route into post-study work for foreign graduates whose skills our economy desperately needs.

 

The gains from closer cooperation could be even more significant in the future, as India works to move many more people from poverty into the middle classes. The Indian economic reform agenda is driving ahead, with one of the greatest developments, legislation introducing a nationwide Goods and Services Tax (GST), being passed just this month. This will transform India’s economy by simplifying taxation across the 29 states and seven union territories, bringing the country’s 1.25bn consumers into a single market and creating a level playing field.

 

This latest bill will create wealth by reducing bureaucracy and costs, while also tackling corruption. It holds enormous potential to help move the Indian economy forward, with estimates that the introduction of GST will increase India’s GDP by 2 per cent per year.

 

Quite understandably, there is apprehension among Indian business leaders surrounding the effect of the EU referendum vote in Britain. The terms of our relationship with Europe will have significant implications for the possibility of a free trade agreement between India and the UK, and for the vast majority of those Indian companies whose European headquarters are in London, which they also consider by far the number one financial centre in the world.

 

In my view, UK-India trade relations will only continue to grow, and Cobra Beer along with our joint venture partner, Molson Coors, is continuing with expansion plans of our existing manufacturing in India. Now is the time for UK businesses, including our SMEs, to partner in India’s phenomenal growth story.

 

The article is available here

 NHS and Social Care: Impact of Brexit Next

21 July 2016

Motion to Take Note

Moved by Baroness Watkins of Tavistock

That this House takes note of the implications of the European Union referendum result for government policies on ensuring safe staffing levels in the National Health Service and social care services.

Lord Bilimoria 

 

My Lords, the NHS is Britain’s national treasure. It is something we are all proud of in this country, something we all benefit from and rely on from cradle to grave—yet it is an institution that is constantly under pressure and which faces enormous challenges. It is the largest employer in the country and the sixth-largest employer in the world. Across the board, with doctors, nurses and administrative staff, the NHS has always relied on huge numbers of foreign staff, from within the EU and from outside it. Today there are nearly 60,000 EU nationals working in the NHS. Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, voiced concerns about the impact of a leave vote, stating that, “Another issue”, alongside the potential impact on NHS investment,

“is the damage caused by losing some of the 100,000 skilled EU workers who work in our health and social care system. Uncertainties around visas and residency permits could cause some to return home, with an unpredictable impact on hard-pressed frontline services”.

Simon Stevens, the chief executive of the NHS, said:

“We’ve got about 130,000 European Union nurses, doctors, care workers in the NHS and in care homes. And we should surely miss the benefit they bring were we to choose to leave”.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, for initiating this debate. It is widely acknowledged that the NHS is struggling to recruit and retain staff. In 2014, there was a 50,000 shortfall between the number of staff that providers of healthcare services said that they needed and the number of posts, with particular gaps in nursing, midwifery and health workers. Yet the coalition and Conservative Governments set themselves a target to reduce net migration to a level of tens of thousands, which they have completely failed to achieve, with the current level running at 330,000. Just this week, the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary distanced themselves from that target, discussing sustainable levels of migration rather than specific targets. The Prime Minister has now been forced to accept that it will take some time to reduce migration to the tens of thousands. Will the Minister confirm that it is still the Government’s policy to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands and clarify when exactly that ambition is likely to be realised—particularly keeping in mind how the Government will achieve that when the NHS and care sector alone employs 130,000 migrants?

I remind the House of the widespread fear created last year when the Home Office announced that nurses would have to leave the UK if they were not earning £35,000 within six years of living here. I remember how appalled the public were on hearing that. Nursing is one of the noblest professions; nurses work extremely hard, long and unsociable hours, and have always been significantly underpaid for what they do. Many nurses who have come here from the EU and outside ​would have been forced to leave the country. People who have contributed to our country and who have helped to save lives would have been uprooted from families through a draconian, ruthless and uncaring move. Thankfully, though a public outcry and the nursing professions’ emphasis on the severity of the UK’s nursing shortage, the Government did a U-turn and nursing was added to the shortage occupation list at the end of last year, meaning that nursing was exempt from these rules—thank God.

The Government’s thinking is what is so worrying here. It has led to ill-thought-out policy decisions previously, with the Government committed to Brexit and with Vote Leave’s campaign focused mainly on reducing migration. We are again in danger of implementing draconian measures that would cause untold damage to our most prized public service. The Government want to reduce migration, but here we have our treasured NHS reliant on that same migration. We are told that it is business as normal until Britain leaves the EU, but it is not. Every day of uncertainty risks skilled EU nationals leaving our country and the NHS. We need to give them reassurances to ensure that does not happen. Will the Minister give us that reassurance?

Quite apart from Vote Leave’s constant claim that EU migration is putting pressure on our public services, in this case, without EU migration, the NHS, the jewel in our crown, would collapse. People speak about migrants making it more difficult to see their doctor, but more than a third of doctors working in the NHS were born abroad. The whole campaign in the build-up to this wretched referendum was toxic, and much of what people voted on was nothing to do with the European Union. In fact, the King’s Fund said clearly that the tension between staffing levels and the financial pressures felt by care services is nothing to do with the EU.

A member of my team, who moved to this country 16 years ago and is married to an Englishman, went to the emergency room on the weekend after the EU referendum with a bloody finger which was broken in four places. She was told by somebody sitting next to her in the waiting area that she was a burden on this country. She has worked hard, paid taxes and contributed hugely to this country but was called a burden. That is just one of the many reported sad cases of racism and hate crime that have exploded since the referendum result.

During the EU referendum, there were many cases in which the NHS was used, as it has been used so many times in history, as a political football. There was the infamous Vote Leave battle bus, which had emblazoned on it:

“We send the EU £350 million a week, let’s fund our NHS instead”.

Then there was the infamous Vote Leave campaign film showing the fate of the NHS inside and outside the EU, ending with the words:

“Every week the UK pays £350 million to be part of the EU. That’s £350 million that could build one new hospital every week, £350 million that could be spent supporting our doctors and nurses. Now is your chance to take back control and spend our money on our priorities, like the NHS”.​

Those were absolute lies. The £350 million was incorrect. We contribute £150 million net a week, which is £8 billion a year, and even if the £8 billion was all spent on the NHS, it is a department with a budget of well over £100 billion. Nobody put the £8 billion into the context that it is 1% of annual government spending. It would not even shift the needle, but the Pied Pipers of Hamelin fooled the British people. I have heard of individuals saying that they voted to leave the EU to save the NHS. That is sickening, gut-wrenching. Does the Minister agree?

We are meant to be a first-world country. What was the Electoral Commission doing allowing a campaign bus bearing false information to drive around for months and feature as the backdrop of TV interviews day after day? When my business, Cobra Beer, advertises on TV, it is regulated by the Advertising Standards Authority. We cannot make claims that are untrue or misleading as the ASA would make us take down the ads immediately and we would face the possibility of fines and a loss of reputation. However, I am told that in the referendum the ASA had no control. What is going on? Will the Minister explain why he and fellow Ministers stood by and allowed false statements to be made without holding the perpetrators to account? Does he agree that we need elections to be supervised by an Electoral Commission with teeth? In India, which held the largest democratic elections in the world, with 800 million voters, the Chief Election Commissioner is the most powerful person in country at election time. He is more powerful than the Prime Minister.

The pressures on the NHS and its staffing are because of many other factors that are nothing to do with the EU or migration, such as our ageing population. Even before the EU referendum, the causes of the current nursing shortage were identified: the Government had not funded enough student nursing places; the nursing workforce was ageing; and gaps were not being filled. Since the Francis report, safe staffing levels and increasing healthcare demands on NHS services have pushed up the demand for nurses, while at the same time trusts have faced greater financial difficulties which have made recruiting more difficult.

After the EU referendum result, Jeremy Hunt told EU workers:

“You do a brilliant job for your patients, you are a crucial part of our NHS and as a country we value you”.

Underlying all this is uncertainty surrounding what will happen to EU nationals in the UK while we are negotiating with the EU and whether Parliament will be fully involved in the decision on whether or when to invoke Article 50. Will the Minister tell us that it will go through Parliament and will not be a government decision alone, in the way the Government decided to withdraw from the presidency of the EU in the second half of 2017 without consulting Parliament?

Hours after the EU referendum result, Nigel Farage stated that the official Vote Leave campaign’s call to spend £350 million a week extra on the NHS with money saved from contributions to the EU was a mistake and could not be guaranteed to happen. What hypocrisy!​

There are further, broader implications of leaving the EU—for example, for companies seeking to conduct clinical trials. The UK will lose influence over the European Medicines Agency. Simon Stevens, the chief executive of the NHS, wrote recently of his blueprint for the NHS to survive life after Brexit, including acting on prevention and health inequalities. He says that how NHS healthcare is provided needs a major overhaul, and that if GP services fail, the NHS fails. He even says that there is no need to “take back control”, in the words of Vote Leave, as:

“We already make the big decisions about our health system largely as we please, as do the Germans, the French and the rest”.

He says that the Government need to invest in NHS infrastructure and,

“as the largest employer in Europe, the NHS needs to do a better job training and looking after our own staff”.

He says that while the NHS is the cheapest health system in the developed world, there are still major inefficiencies to be tackled, and the time for change is now.

To conclude, here we have the three Brexiteers that the PM in her wisdom has appointed to take us out of Europe. Their motto must be, “All for one and none for all”. David Davis has said that his target is removing the UK from the EU on 1 January 2019 and pressing the button on Article 50 by 1 January 2017. I say to him, “Dream on”. The PM says, “Brexit means Brexit”. I ask her, “What does ‘Brexit’ mean?”. It is still very much up in the air. This debate is just one example of the drastic impact of Brexit.

The NHS, the heart of this country and of everyone’s lives in this country, is reliant on EU migrants to keep us alive—and we want, in the words of Vote Leave, to “take back control”? We are losing control day by day.

 

Cobra Beer founder Lord Bilimoria explains the immigration policy behind Britain’s curry crisis

 

Since they first started becoming popular in the 1940s, curry houses have become a staple of Britain’s towns and evenings out.

 

The nation’s favourite cuisine was adopted and then adapted from its spicy, South Asian roots to suit our more sensitive tastebuds. Along the way, it has spawned an industry worth £4bn and, directly and indirectly, employs an estimated 100,000 people.

 

But the sector is also in the grip of a crisis. To date this year an estimated 65 curry restaurants have had to close, at a rate of more than two a week. A significant driver of these closures, according to Cobra Beer, has been a skills shortage in the industry and the UK’s immigration policy.

 

Sold in more than 98 per cent of the UK’s 7,000 licensed curry restaurants (there are 5,000 unlicensed venues, making an industry total of around 12,000), Cobra Beer is well-placed to sound the alarm bell for a meal that has become as British as it is Indian.

 

Cobra’s founder, the House of Lords crossbencher and chancellor of the University of Birmingham Lord Bilimoria, believes immigration policy changes introduced in April will only drive the sector into more of a decline.

 

“Curry is one the best value cuisines,” Lord Bilimoria insisted in an interview with City A.M. “Restaurants struggled in the recession but they managed to remain resilient.” Now, however, that resilience is being tested afresh.

 

Following the April immigration changes, eateries will need to offer salaries of £35,000 for skilled workers from outside the EU who have been living in the UK for less than 10 years if they want to settle here for good.

 

As chefs fall under the government’s “shortage occupation” list, this minimum salary threshold is lowered to £29,750. On the other hand, this exemption is nullified if the restaurant offers any takeaway services – which of course includes most curry houses.

 

​“It’s almost as though we’re an ungrateful country,” Lord Bilimoria said, shaking his head in disbelief.

 

Without the ability to bring chefs in from South Asia, the rate of restaurant closures is unlikely to improve. Even pursuing a policy of training more local apprentices would not fill the skills gap quickly enough. “It takes almost seven years to train a professional curry chef,” Lord Bilimoria explained.

 

The solution, he believes, would be to allow for immigrant chefs to have a lower salary threshold, at around the average rate in the profession of £20,000.

 

Sadly, his vision for UK immigration policy, the subject of a “terrible” argument during the referendum debate, is unlikely to change quickly enough.

 

The full article is available here

A video of his speech is available here

EU Referendum and EU Reform (EUC Report)

15 June 2016

Motion to Take Note

Moved by Lord Boswell of Aynho

That this House takes note of the Report from the European Union Committee The EU referendum and EU reform

Lord Bilimoria:

My Lords, there is a great deal I do not like about the European Union. No one knows who their MEP is. MEPs have no connection with the people they represent and are not accountable or representative. The EU Parliament moving from Brussels to Strasbourg every month for a week is a ridiculous waste of time and money. The euro is a complete failure—one size will never fit all. It is surviving ​only because it is more difficult to dismantle than keep together. I used to think we lost out on tourism and business visitors by not being in Schengen; now we are fortunate, given the migration crisis and security concerns, not to be in Schengen. I am a true Eurosceptic.

However, given a choice, I have no hesitation in saying that we should remain in the EU. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, and his committee for producing their reports. I came to this county from India as a 19 year-old student and I have seen the immense change in this country from the time I arrived in the early 1980s, when it was the sick man of Europe, to today being the envy of Europe. The transformation is remarkable. Back in the 1980s, this country had a glass ceiling. Today it is a country of aspiration and opportunity where anyone can get to the top, regardless of race, religion or background. We have seen the highest cumulative GDP growth rate in the European Union since the single market began in 1993. For the United Kingdom it is 62% versus Germany, for example, at 35%. On this point alone, the well-known economist David Smith said in the Sunday Times:

“Britain succeeds in the EU: we’d be daft to leave it”.

This country, with its flexible labour market and open economy, has given me the opportunity to build Cobra Beer from scratch. When we first exported Cobra we chose European Union countries to export to because it was so easy. Now we have exported to more than 40 countries.

I cannot believe that Vote Leave could put out a TV advertisement that states the UK pays £350 million into Europe every week, and then states the purported health spending that this could result in. This is complete nonsense. It should have been taken down by the Advertising Standards Authority. The Vote Leave campaign cannot even get its sums right. We get a rebate from Europe that brings it down to about £150 million a week. If we leave, our current growth rate of 2% a year might flatline or even go into recession. That would be a drop of well over £30 billion —four times our net contribution to the EU.

This country has to wake up and smell the coffee. The Vote Leave campaign is based on a number of bogus claims. Brexit bogus claim number one is about loss of sovereignty. What loss of sovereignty? We are in the EU, but not in the euro; we are in the EU, but not part of Schengen; we are in the EU, but we drink our beer in pints not litres; we are in the EU, but measure our roads in miles not kilometres. No one can tell this country what to do. We have total sovereignty.

Brexit bogus claim number two concerns the lack of democracy. There are elected Members of the EU Parliament. The EU Commission is appointed by elected representatives from each country. We are having a referendum on EU membership right now and we can pull out of the EU whenever we want. Where is the lack of democracy?

Brexit bogus claim number three: Vote Leave says EU regulations cost British businesses £600 million a week. Where has this figure come from? It is completely subjective to try to quantify the impact of red tape. The claims are made by people who have never run a business in their life. Of course there are unpopular regulations, but there are good regulations that protect ​workers’ rights. I can assure noble Lords that when you run a global business, as I have, you do not thinking about EU red tape, you just get on with it. The biggest barriers to business are the UK’s own overly complex, vast and continually increasing taxation, housing and planning laws. These are self-inflicted by the Government of the day and are nothing to do with the European Union whatever.

Brexit bogus claim number four concerns migration. Immigration has benefited this country over the decades. EU immigration has been continually demeaned and vilified by Brexiteers. There are 3 million EU migrants working in the UK. This has built up over a number of years and we know how hard-working they are. For example, surveys show that the Polish community is respected and appreciated by the British public and seen as contributing to our country. We have one of the highest levels of employment on record. We have one of the lowest unemployment levels ever seen—in fact, in practical terms we have full employment, despite 3 million EU migrants. Where is the problem? There are a few bad apples trying to take advantage of our welfare state, but, on the whole, EU migrants have helped us to become the fastest growing country in the EU and they contribute to this economy five times more than they take out.

People talk about a drain on public services. If we need 3 million people to boost our economy, our Government have failed if they have not been able to provide the necessary accompanying public services. In fact, our public services would collapse without the contribution of those 3 million people. Our country needs migration due to our ageing population. Misleading nonsense is proliferating from the Vote Leave campaign about immigration, which states that if we leave the EU we will be able to take in immigrants from elsewhere. Michael Gove has said that he wants to bring net migration down to the tens of thousands. We have net migration of 330,000 now, of which half—about 180,000—is from outside the EU. Even if EU immigration stops dead on Brexit, we still have well over the tens of thousands. Their argument is illogical and the public should not fall for it.

Brexit bogus claim number five is that we could negotiate more trade deals with other countries and we would be in control of our destiny if we left the EU—that we could engage in trade deals with India and America. We are the second-largest recipient of inward investment in Europe. Some 60% of companies operating in the EU have their headquarters in the UK. Would they continue to if we leave? Of course not. Our inward investment would dry up and London would no longer be the number one financial centre in the world. Other countries see the UK as the gateway to Europe. As a professor from the Harvard Business School, of which I am an alumnus, said, we would be mad to leave the EU. If we were to have a deal like those of Switzerland or Norway, we would still have to agree to free movement of people and we would still have to contribute—maybe not £8 billion, but maybe £4 billion.

The Brexiteers tell us that those advising against leaving the EU should not be listened to: “Who are they to tell us? They’ve been wrong in the past”. We do ​not live in a vacuum. We are an integrated member of the global economy. We are not a superpower, but a global power—we sit at the top table of the world: the UN Security Council, the G7, G8, G20, NATO and the EU. If we leave, we jeopardise our standing in the world and our future investment. I did not think I would ever quote the Prime Minister’s wife, but she said:

“I want my children growing up with the advantage of starting their careers in a country that is a big fish in a big pond, leading the way in Europe”.

If we leave the EU we will be a tiddler in an ocean.

Brexit bogus claim number six is that the EU is in a mess and our share of trade with it has been falling. That is quite obvious because we are trading more with emerging markets, but the EU still accounts for 44% of our exports and 55% of our imports. It is too big to jeopardise.

Brexit bogus claim number seven is that there will be further integration, leading to a superstate, and we will be dragged into EU bailouts. There will never be a united states of Europe. I come from India, a country that is a true federal state. Europe will never look like that. The Prime Minister’s negotiations have ensured that we are not committed to further unification and bailouts in the future.

Brexit bogus claim number eight is that there will be an EU army that will subsume the British Army. This is complete fantasy. This will never ever happen. It is also claimed that peace in Europe has been brought about by NATO. It has been brought about by NATO and the European Union.

Brexit bogus claim number nine is that Turkey will become a member of the EU and we will not be able to stop 75 million people coming here. Turkey is light years away from joining the European Union—this is scaremongering.

Lastly, Brexit bogus claim number 10 is that the EU is an economic mess, with youth unemployment up to 50% in countries such as Spain, Italy and France. These countries have been in a mess since 2008-09, when the financial crisis began. We, on the other hand, because of our flexibility and control of our destiny, have thrived. The fate of these EU countries has not prevented us succeeding and getting our economy back on track. Even if the economies of Europe absolutely implode and Europe breaks up, I would rather we were at that table trying to help out and knowing what is going on. As has been said, I do not want to jeopardise our own United Kingdom in a Brexit situation, where Scotland might want to leave. Then there is the huge number of years it has taken to get to the present Northern Ireland situation, which would be jeopardised.

Brexiteers try to say that they are the ones who are proud of Britain. I am proud of Britain—a country that has given me everything, that is not isolationist, selfish or blinkered. What speaks more about a country than anything else is its spirit and values. British people are respected around the world for their values. If we Brexit, we will be sleep-walking over the cliffs of Dover into huge uncertainty and instability. Even Brexiteers are saying that it will take years to renegotiate our position with Europe. A protracted period of ​negotiations, a possible recession, the loss of jobs—we have a fragile recovery and huge debt. We have a current account deficit and a budget deficit. Why risk all this when we do not have to? It is far wiser and far more productive for us to try to reform the EU from within. Why destroy the growth we have achieved? Why risk our standing as the fifth largest economy, with the highest growth rate in the EU and the largest amount of investment in the EU?

There is an African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”. We are in control of our destiny and we have our sovereignty. I conclude with a very short poem—my favourite poem—written by the Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, which is so pertinent to what we are speaking about:

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake”.