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Work Programme (Wales)

The right hon. Lady has not discussed the matter with me. The first time that I discussed it with her was when I stopped her in the corridor. Such behaviour is graceless. Employment and the Work programme is a more pressing topic, however. The job situation is difficult and it is important, first, that we have a Government who are committed to creating economic growth and jobs, and, secondly, that we have a Government who facilitate opportunities for those who have found it difficult to get into work. Growth is important. We are in an area of the country—this is not well known enough—that has been extremely successful at generating economic growth. This is the home of one of the UK’s greatest industries, the aerospace industry. The British aerospace industry is No. 1 in Europe and second only to the United States in importance. We have already heard about Airbus, which is at the head of an important supply chain for this area that includes Magellan, Tritech and Cytec. They are all within the Wrexham constituency and provide high-quality jobs to my constituents and to young people who want to develop tremendous, eye-opening careers with massive potential. Many chief executives in such industries began with apprenticeships and worked hard in those apprenticeships to develop powerful manufacturing strategies for UK manufacturing. There are massive opportunities in this area. I am delighted that Toyota on Deeside opened its doors last week to invite local schools to see what a tremendous automotive industry we have locally, too. That industry, too, will offer tremendous opportunities to those people and drop the scales from the eyes of young people who have an out-of-date attitude towards manufacturing and the opportunities that it presents. We have companies beyond aerospace in Wrexham, including JCB, Redrow in the construction sector and Sharp, which does tremendous work in renewable energy. We have Pirelli, which supplies cabling for offshore wind. In pharmaceuticals, we have companies such as Ipsen Biopharm and Wockhardt, which, again, provide high-quality manufacturing and scientifically innovative work within the Wrexham constituency. All those companies have tremendous local support from Deeside college, Yale college and Glyndwr university, which are building up important infrastructure for training and developing the skills that will be essential to making those businesses competitive. That is why those businesses are in this area. We are proud to have had a university in Wrexham since 2008. We fought hard to secure that university and we are determined to hold on to it, because that level of skill and education is the only way that Wales and the UK will compete going forward. It has been an historical weakness in north-east Wales that some of the jobs we have attracted, which tend to be short-term, have been low skill and low wage. Companies such as Tetra Pak have recently moved away from manufacturing in the Wrexham area. Tetra Pak came here in the 1980s and, unfortunately, how now left because it thinks it can produce items more cheaply elsewhere. By contrast, Sharp came here in the 1980s and has stayed. The company secured tremendous inward investment under a Labour Government in 2004, when it began to manufacture photovoltaic cells. That is the backdrop and those are the opportunities for the local economy, but we have a major problem: the attitude of the UK Government. Businesses and industries were developed in recent years because we had a Government who supported aerospace and supported the automotive sector through innovations such as the car scrappage scheme. They stood by Toyota at a very difficult time and kept it going. We have a deficit because we had a world economic crisis that required immediate action, which it got from a UK Government. The Tories did not oppose the car scrappage scheme when it was introduced. They are now reinventing history and have been talking down the British economy since they were elected. They have been doing that because it is in their political interests so to do. As far as they are concerned, all the problems of the British economy can be laid at the door of the Labour Government. That is completely untrue—[ Interruption. ] They are braying like donkeys because they have a political interest in maintaining that message. The reality is that they are talking down the British economy and talking down local jobs. In riposte to the hon. Member for Cardiff North, let me say that I worked in the private sector for my whole life before I came to Parliament. I ran my own business employing 12 people and I will not take patronising lectures from him about running businesses. If he talked to them, he would know that in reality small businesses—the Federation of Small Businesses—support cuts in VAT. I was interested to hear for the first time a Tory Back-Bencher support that here today. When the shadow Chancellor first suggested it, he was described as mad, but the proposal is becoming accepted faith. I predict that in due course the Chancellor of the Exchequer will come round to that view, too. What is happening now is what happened in the 1980s. The reason why Waldorf and Statler over here feel passionately about politics and why we believe that the Tory Government, propped up by the Liberal Democrats, are so wrong is that we saw what happened in the 1980s. We are old enough to remember that there is a lost generation. The people who were on incapacity benefit in the 1980s are still there, because of the policies that the Tory Government are pursuing.