Manufacturing

Debate between Lord Evans of Rainow and Guy Opperman

Thursday 24th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of the future of manufacturing.

Manufacturing should be at the heart of any long-term plan for economic growth. It is a sleeping giant that, if revived, would become the backbone of a strong UK economy. It is entirely right that, five days before the autumn statement, we should have the opportunity to debate the subject in broad terms in the House. I thank the Backbench Business Committee and the House of Commons staff for their assistance in bringing this matter before the House and, in particular, I pay tribute to my co-sponsors, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) and the hon. Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle), who have adopted an all-party approach to this problem which affects us all.

It is well known that I used to be a jockey and a lawyer, so it is legitimate to ask how on earth I can have any credibility in speaking about manufacturing. All MPs do, because we all have small and medium-sized enterprises that make something in our constituencies. We all have credibility on this issue.

My family came to this country as immigrants. They were engineers, specialising in gears. In May 1924, in the depths of a very bad recession, they set up Opperman Gears in a basement in Albemarle way in Clerkenwell. It had four staff—my great-grandfather and his three sons—who worked in the basement on two lathes, three milling machines and a couple of tools. They had borrowed £110 from a distant relative to set up the business. It grew rapidly and by early 1939 it moved to Newbury, where my family set up a larger firm that was able to produce the parts for the Wellington bomber with its long-term partner, Vickers.

We do not run that company any more, but I should declare that I am a shareholder in the small manufacturing business run by my father and that my family members are involved in a number of different manufacturing businesses up and down the country. I should also make it clear that I resigned my directorship of the family business in 2009 and am not paid by it in any way.

I should also declare that I am a wholehearted supporter of my local manufacturing businesses in the north-east, notably Kilfrost, EGGER, SCA, Agma and others, and their financial support allowed the charitable functions I ran this summer in the constituency. I should declare an indirect link, in that a director of one of those firms made a contribution to my association.

I hope I am doing my bit to try to create jobs. I was the second Member of this House to employ an apprentice and I urge those Members who have not to do so. She is a young lady who works in my office in Hexham and who has been with me now for nearly a year, and is doing extremely well. Members of all parties can take on apprentices—it is allowed under the rules—and I urge them to do it.

The scale of the manufacturing deficit is huge. The nations that expanded post-war specialised in and pushed manufacturing. Those nations—Germany, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China—knew what they were doing. Today, the services sector alone can prop up Britain no longer, and there is a strong argument for greater industrialisation and changing things. We have seen the demise of manufacturing—it accounted for 20% of gross domestic product in 1997 and now accounts for 11%—and there is a strong argument for specialising not just in high-tech industry but in other industries, which are often derogatively labelled “metal-bashing”. Their products are unassuming, even if they are created by some of the most precise machines on the planet.

My constituency is in Northumberland and my four biggest non-public sector employers are all manufacturers. The north-east might be the birthplace of ships and steel, but we have reinvented ourselves. I was pleased to see SCA recognised in the Government-backed “Made by Britain” awards, which were so ably organised by the hon. Member for Huddersfield. That company employs about 435 local people in Prudhoe, including 60 apprentices. It could not be doing any more to support its local community. It does not make glamorous, eye-catching products—or perhaps some people think it does—but it produces one in every five toilet rolls in this country, as well as vast quantities of paper towels. I am sure we all agree that those are essential products.

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

Flushed with success.

[Guy Opperman]

It is, indeed, flushed with success, as my hon. Friend so ably quips from the sidelines—as always, he is on the money. The wood pulp goes in at one end of the factory and paper products come out at the other. The machinery is highly technical; this is modern manufacturing in the modern age.

In this time of austerity, I am extremely proud that the north-east has a positive balance of trade and is the only region consistently to do so. We should trumpet the fact that the North East chamber of commerce is the only regional chamber of commerce in the country. It represents more than 4,000 businesses and covers more than 30% of the region’s work force. If I had to single out one local concern that it has highlighted to me from the multitude of things it would like to be done, it would be to urge the Minister to conduct the review that it is hoped will be undertaken of the planned carbon floor price and other climate change and energy-related matters.

How are we to address the manufacturing deficit? I have three main suggestions. First, we need a Minister for manufacturing. That is not to decry the efforts of the Minister with responsibility for business or the Business Secretary, both of whom are worthy men, or those of any parties in that Department. However, the fact remains that, according to the House of Commons Library, there has not been a Minister for manufacturing since 1945.