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Rail Manufacturing: Job Losses

I was disappointed and sorry to hear what the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) just said, because, as she knows perfectly well, there has been a substantial amount of cross-party working on this issue over many months and years. Given that the factory is in my

constituency, I find it a little disappointing that, although I am told that there have been many meetings between the Secretary of State and local Conservative members, at no point have he or his office chosen to involve me.

However, that does not matter at all; what really matters—and what I find most difficult about this whole issue—is that, over the years that I have been in this House, we have had so many of these conversations about failing industries. We ask what are the prospects for the future, and there is a struggle and, as always, an argument between those who want to look to the long term and those who want short-term financial savings. This is not an industry in which that is the problem. In the longer term, there will be millions of pounds’ worth of orders for rolling stock, because rolling stock renewal is needed right across the country, as everybody in the rail industry is aware. It is an industry with prospects and an ongoing, realistic vision of secure, high-value and high-reward jobs, yet one in which Government inaction is, I am afraid, putting those jobs at risk, particularly, as was said moments ago on both sides of the House, in the supply chain.