Manufacturing: Investment Growth Forecast
Debate between Lord Bishop of Derby and Baroness Wilcox
The Lord Bishop of Derby
My Lords, I hope you will allow the Bishop of Derby to ask the Minister about Bombardier in the context of the very important commitment to manufacturing investment. Could the Minister indicate to us where the design and making of trains fit into a strategy within which we have to invest in manufacturing; and what investment in manufacturing in that strategy would have to say to a highly skilled workforce in a place like Derby that it is facing collapse through lack of investment and lack of opportunity?
Baroness Wilcox
There are a lot of questions from the right reverend Prelate. I will answer as many as I can, or as many as my Leader will allow me to. We all know about the announcement that Bombardier made this morning that 1,200 jobs would be lost at the plant in Derby. The company had already told us that this was going to happen regardless of whether it had won the Thameslink contract. As we know, this particular industry is very volatile. The company has had enormous contracts, it is coming to the end of them and it did predict that it would lose jobs. As a volatile industry, it has to hire and fire at will, but we hope that it is a temporary situation. We are doing everything that we can to try and help it grow. We are introducing 21 new enterprise zones across the local enterprise partnership areas, which will benefit from superfast broadband, lower taxes and lower levels of regulation and planning controls. At the end of the day, it is very important for us to support our industry wherever we can.