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UK Manufacturing

This short debate has shown the passion that exists in this House on the issue of manufacturing. Of course this has been a changing story for our nation and we no longer have as many large manufacturing plants with thousands of employees as we did some decades ago. However, in that story of change we must not be too quick to ascribe a story of failure and decline. One of the themes to emerge from this debate is the impact of the recession on manufacturing. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson) rightly said that it would be remiss of us not to acknowledge that, given the people who have lost their jobs and the companies that have gone to the wall. We do acknowledge that, but I wish to say something about the scale of the impact and to repeat the figures that I used in my opening comments. In the year to April, manufacturing output in the UK declined by 13 per cent., which compares with 14.6 per cent. in the United States, 19.9 per cent. in France, 24.3 per cent. in Germany and more than 30 per cent. in Japan. There has been an effect and companies have gone to the wall, but the United Kingdom has not been hit disproportionately hard compared with other countries—some countries have done worse. A second theme was shown in the agreement across the House on the importance of the transition to a low-carbon economy for our manufacturing future. The hon. Members for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) and for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), and my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) commented on that. It is right that carbon capture should be considered as part of that. This country has to make the most of the transition to a low-carbon economy. Hon. Members have also stressed that we need to equip our workers with the skills to take part in the low-carbon economy, and it is important to create opportunities, as well as to know that the demand exists. To that end, we have the Train to Gain programme, we have 12,000 new apprenticeships this year and we have 300,000 more higher education students than we had when we came into office. Ensuring that our country has the skills to take part is crucial, and not only for economic reasons. If we do not ensure that, there will be a great sense of exclusion from the economy of the future, and we must guard against that. The third theme of the debate was demand, which was raised specifically by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey). He rightly said that the Government made a choice as the recession hit to do what they could to stimulate demand, be that through construction, other capital projects, the car scrappage scheme or action in other areas. We have done what we could to stimulate demand. I accept that we must continue to work on the schemes that we have announced to ensure that they are effective. We have been active on some of the specific problems that have been mentioned, for example in respect of discussions between Corus and EDF Energy about energy prices. The final theme of this debate that I wish to mention is local pride. That can be seen in the companies mentioned by hon. Members from across the House. Manufacturing gives shape and identity to our constituencies, and what goes for our constituencies also goes for our country. That is why manufacturing is such a crucial part of our economic future. Question put and agreed to. Resolved,"That this House has considered the matter of UK manufacturing."