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Industry and the Environment

If one looks at manufacturing and manufacturing employment overall, one sees that, under this Government since 1997, the number of manufacturing jobs has fallen by much more than during the previous period. The figure is an easily memorable 999,000, which indicates the scale of the problem. Let me turn to the heart of the problem of our economic performance. We need to tackle the challenge of raising Britain’s productivity. I was pleased by the reference to productivity that appeared, briefly, in the title of the Department. Let me remind the Secretary of State of some of the targets that the Government have set for productivity and their performance against those targets. The public service agreements of July 2000 included a commitment to improve UK competitiveness"““by narrowing the productivity gap with the US, France, Germany and Japan.””" Two years later, in July 2002, there was a commitment to"““demonstrate progress by 2006 on the Government’s long-term objective of raising the rate of UK productivity growth””." As recently as July 2004, there was a commitment to demonstrate further progress by 2008—they always slip the target date back a bit—on the Government’s long-term objective of raising the rate of UK productivity growth. That is what the Government said, but what has happened? In the first seven and a half years of the Labour Government, output per worker grew at an average rate of 1.69 per cent. In the previous seven and a half years, under the Conservatives, it grew at an annual average rate of 2.36 per cent. Performance has deteriorated. During the first seven and a half years of the Labour Government, output per hour grew at an average rate of 2.1 per cent. During the equivalent period under the Conservatives output per hour grew at an average annual rate of 2.33 per cent. We are not seeing progress or the achievement of the targets that this Government set themselves; far from it. Sadly, we are seeing a decline in performance compared with previous periods.