Britain’s Industrial Base

Lord Bates Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who has great expertise in these areas, and his contribution was typically thoughtful and thought-provoking. As he was recounting the painful experience of awarding the Hitachi trains order, I could not help recalling that while he was Secretary of State he desperately wanted to make that order announcement before the last general election. However other forces were at play and therefore it was with enormous pleasure that this coalition Government actually made that announcement following the election, demonstrating their commitment to the trains and the industrial base.

Telling stories is a very powerful way of communicating essential truths, because in the north-east—which I know best—before the last election we suffered the body blow of mass redundancies announced at Nissan, the Hitachi order and then the closure of the TCP blast furnace on Teeside. That was the final blow for the process industry struggling in that part of the world. Since the election we have seen Nissan announcing new investment, taking on workers and expanding. We have seen the Hitachi order and even seen the blast furnace reopen. At a CBI dinner last week in Gateshead, someone reminded me that eight major process industries—there is a cluster around Teeside and they are often interdependent—had gone out of business and into receivership before 2010. Of those eight, four had now come out of receivership and were employing more people than they were before.

I tell these stories because I think that they are quite important in demonstrating that I cannot in any sense see that this Government have an industrial policy of default rather than design. It may not be the design that others would actually choose, but it is certainly a design. It says that we want to make the United Kingdom the most competitive economy in the world for setting up and running a business. That is the stated aim. It is backed up with policies of reducing the corporation tax to its most competitive level, reducing barriers and regulation on employment and actually providing incentives for people to employ, such as setting up enterprise zones, creating an enterprise culture and getting rid of other regulations. Noble Lords may not agree with that but, none the less, it is certainly a policy and is having some effect. As my noble friend, who I welcome again to his position, reminded us yesterday, we saw the fastest rate ever of new business start-ups in the UK last year, with 1 million new private sector jobs being added to the economy since the election. This is all evidence of something that is happening: the creation of an enterprise economy. These businesses may not be the great oaks but they are the small acorns from which the great oaks will come in the future—of that I have no doubt.

Looking at these stories, does that mean to say that we have got everything right? Far from it; we have a very long way to go. I bring another thought from the north-east, of the Alcan plant at Lynemouth, where 515 skilled jobs went just last year—a decision which was a body blow for that part of Northumberland. They went because of EU directives on carbon pricing, which are seeing the price that people have to pay per tonne for carbon in the energy-intensive industries that are key to industrial output and manufacturing go up from £7 per tonne to £16 per tonne next April. Then in 2020 they will rise to £30 per tonne. That kind of decision, which has been taken at a European level, is causing plants such as Alcan’s to be closed. Where does that industry go? Of course, some people sneer and imagine that it has probably gone on in the direction of Kazakhstan or China, or somewhere like that. No; it went to Canada, where they are building a plant that will put the emissions into the same atmosphere.

We need to get to grips with this whole area. Of course, we need to tackle the environment and there are massive numbers of jobs to be gained through green energy. However, we need to be sensible about how things are applied lest we undermine the means that we seek. In this respect, my noble friend Lord Marland has a particular role to play, not only as a businessman but—this is a critical element—in coming to his current brief within BIS from the Department for Energy and Climate Change. These are different pictures and there are different stories that we can tell, but they suggest that we are perhaps beginning to move in the right direction. Industrial output was up by 2.9% in June, its fastest rise for 25 years, while manufacturing output rose by 3.3% in June, its fastest rise for 10 years. To be sure, it does not mean that summer has arrived but it does perhaps mean that spring has started.