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UK Manufacturing

I should love to agree, but I am afraid that I cannot. I am a free marketeer, and so believe that the market is rather better at choosing appropriate exchange rates for most countries than politicians are—certainly, it is better than politicians in this place. In addition, Germany's experience with the level of the Deutschmark and now the euro has not been altogether happy in many periods of its history. I am not sure that it is a good example, although I accept the underlying point that I think the hon. Gentleman is making, which is that many countries' currencies have been overvalued or undervalued for periods. That clearly creates stresses and strains in the world economy. To illustrate how long our relative decline has been going on, it is instructive to look at the rate of job losses in our manufacturing sector. Because of various comments from the other side of the House, I shall make one comparison—and I shall limit myself to this—between the Labour and Conservative records. Under the previous Conservative Administration, 137,000 manufacturing jobs were lost each year. However, I am afraid that the rate has accelerated under the current Labour Government, and that the number of manufacturing jobs lost each year is now 152,000. Clearly, we are still making mistakes and we still face a fundamental underlying problem.