Clothing Industry: Ethical and Sustainable Fashion

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Young, on bringing this subject before us. When we talk about the clothing industry and fashion, it is something where Britain has a considerable history. Indeed, the authority of this House is the Mace that rests upon the Woolsack. We have been dealing in textiles for just about as long as there has been an organised Britain, and we started the industrial revolution with wool until cotton took over. We have a history of great production lines. However, we also set the pattern whereby every time you want to industrialise or get into something, you go into textiles. As the noble Baroness pointed out, that textile is usually cotton.

As we look at the stance taken towards industrialisation, we can see that it mirrors what we went through: bad labour conditions, overexploitation and no environmental consideration. The first time we polluted our rivers, we did it with dyes on a mass scale. Mining might have challenged that, but streams in the north of England that turned different colours as dyes were used is definitely something that can be traced back to the textile industry. It goes back to when we produced virtually all the textiles in the world, so we have a great deal of experience of what happens.

We also know, thanks to the work of many people who are involved in this, that taking your workers and driving them into the ground is not the best way to get the best out of them. Sir Robert Peel, the father of the Prime Minister of that name, brought in the first Act about the treatment of workers and their hours and conditions. This might be an odd thing to ask a Conservative Minister, but are this current Government going to help in setting up organised labour and encouraging how this can be done to get the best out of the labour force, and how to make things not so exploitative yet more efficient? This is probably something that comes through in much of what the noble Baroness said. I think I got quite a lot of the same briefing—she handled it very well and I will not repeat it. If we are going to make sure that the workers in these overseas industries are better treated, making sure that the textiles and the product we consume here are valued is a good first step—making sure that you invest in these people to get a better return. The technology needed to enter this industry tends to be at the lower end. The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, has said there are higher-tech solutions, but the entrance level—which I believe is mostly what the noble Baroness was talking about—tends to be fairly low-tech, or yesterday’s tech. Can the Government tell us what they are doing to encourage those employers and those states that are involved to represent and cherish these people?

I got a great deal of ribbing in my party when it was heard that I had to talk about fashion, although not primarily from those who are here, it has to be said. Fashion is a driver of consumption in this country. When we talk about ethical fashion, we are talking about getting away from throwaway fashion; or, if we are going to throw it away, about how we recycle. Relying on landfill, as has been pointed out before, is a ridiculous state of affairs when you have to export it all around the world, with huge costs in transport. How are we going to get out of that? For instance, are we going to encourage, as the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, has suggested, more home-produced textiles, which will basically mean wool? This is something for which the Government must encourage research and development. Our universities, which now have a slightly more secure financial situation, might well have to take this on. Will the Government tell us exactly how much support is going into that? Fashion itself has a moral responsibility to make sure that it encourages not merely consumption but consumption done on a civilised basis—that is, one in which you are encouraging people who are being treated well to produce it, and one where there is not abuse and throwing away.

That is far too many questions for a speech of under five minutes, but I encourage the noble Lord to answer this in the sprit in which this subject has been raised today—as an all encompassing global industry, in which we are players.