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Manufacturing and Employment

In the little time that is available, I wish to make several brief points. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle), who, as ever, has picked up issues that really matter to our constituents. My hon. Friend probably agrees that we need to draw a careful distinction between saying that the Government ought to be active in their policy on employment and encouraging the industrial and manufacturing base, which can involve the proper use of Government procurement to ensure that British firms are advantaged, and saying that we ought to move to some kind of economic protectionism. I am not a natural free-marketer, but, nevertheless, we are a trading economy. My hon. Friend gave examples of British companies that successfully manufacture all over the world—those companies do not necessarily assemble cars in the end, but they manufacture the parts that go into them. We cannot take part in a process that involves cutting off our nose to spite our face, which would happen if we got the balance wrong. There is nothing inconsistent about adopting the kind of policies that are adopted by some of our European neighbours to support home industries. We do not have to cross the boundary into the wrong kind of protectionism.