Rail Manufacturing: Job Losses Debate
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Alex Cunningham
Main Page: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)Department Debates - View all Alex Cunningham's debates with the Department for Transport
Rail Manufacturing: Job Losses
Alex Cunningham Excerpts(7 months, 1 week ago)
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Huw Merriman
I thank my hon. Friend because—as he puts it himself, but he is being too modest—he is working with us constantly to ensure that Hitachi’s concerns are addressed. We have met Hitachi a number of times. We have great faith in its leadership, and we work closely with them. It is not consulting on any changes to the workforce at the moment. As I have mentioned, it has a share in the order for the 54 HS2 trains. He is absolutely right that the way we will fix these issues is to provide certainty through the tenders coming forward, to continue to invest, to try to get more exports for these train operations, and to work together in a collegiate way, not with scare stories. That is something I am determined to do, and I thank him for the work he does to that end.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
This is political, because this Government have got form in failing industry in the north-east. They abandoned primary steel making on Teesside, they failed to back local investors in the Sirius mine and they allowed the world-renowned Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Co. to collapse, despite promises to save it. Now they are at it again, and this time it will affect countless people from my constituency, which is the home of the first passenger railway. In a statement made just an hour ago, Hitachi has said it wants to continue to explore solutions so that the skills and investment it has in the region are retained. There is no doubt that these are at considerable risk. Is the Minister really prepared to fail Hitachi, and provide yet another example of how the Tories have abandoned the north-east?
Huw Merriman
The hon. Member’s argument is slightly punctured by the fact that Hitachi built its plant after the Conservative Government came to power, because it understands that we support businesses, attract businesses and want them to succeed not only with domestic orders, but with export orders. To say that we are abandoning it, when I have just described how we have had 8,000 new rolling stock vehicles produced since 2012 and the average age has gone down from 21 years to 16.8 years, rather demonstrates that he does not know what he is talking about.