Britain’s Industrial Future

Chris Clarkson Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion). It is also a pleasure to take this opportunity to talk about the proud industrial heritage of Manchester and East Lancashire, not least of my own Heywood and Middleton constituency.

We still make things, important things. We might have started off as textile towns, but, across Greater Manchester, we are now leading the way in advanced materials and manufacturing—from graft to graphene, ours is a success story. That is why I am slightly confused about the tone of today’s debate. Unless Opposition Members have been asleep for the past few years—in all fairness, that would explain a great deal—they would have seen that this is a Government who have taken unprecedented steps to support British industry. We need only to look back a couple of years to the dark days of the pandemic when the now Prime Minister put £407 billion in to support British industry—jobs were safeguarded, firms that would have otherwise gone to the wall were supported and some sectors even grew during lockdown.

It is also wrong to say that the Government have done nothing to drive innovation. The UK is well on its way to becoming a net exporter of clean energy, with our work on hydrogen and offshore wind among some of the most advanced anywhere. That is to say nothing of the major investment being made in nuclear, with thousands of apprentices training to take advantage of high-skilled and well-paid jobs in the sector. With the advent of small modular reactors, another British success story, we could even see nuclear plants using waste heat to produce hydrogen from renewables. That is hydrogen that is both green and pink—or, if Members prefer, watermelon hydrogen.

A total of £211 million has been invested in the Faraday Battery Challenge, so that we can store this new green energy. Another £1.3 billion has been invested to accelerate the roll-out of charge points for electric vehicles, along with £582 million in grants for those buying zero or ultra-low emission vehicles. An increasing number of those vehicles are being made here in the UK, as manufacturers shift towards all-electric production across their lines.

Add to that, the National Shipbuilding Strategy, which was published in March 2022, along with £4 billion of investment to improve access to finance and to deliver vital skills and funding for crucial research to boost the development of greener vessels and infrastructure. That means more well-paid, high-skilled jobs and another industry secured.

To build those ships and much of the other infrastructure improvements that we are delivering, we need British steel, the best in the world. Thanks to the hard work and strong advocacy of my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft), millions of pounds have now been allocated to bolster that industry; she does not just say things but does them. Using homemade steel is cheaper and better for the environment than foreign alternatives. I should say that my hon. Friend has developed such a reputation as a champion for the industry that she is known affectionately on these Benches as the Steel Lady. Contrast that with Labour’s shameful record in Government, where steel production almost halved on their watch; I was going to stick with calling it brass neck, because I have already used the steel pun, but I think the record speaks for itself.

While Labour Members talk about tolerating businesses and describe them as the enemy, we have been working proactively to rebuild the industries left broken and moribund by the last Labour Government. It is under the Conservative party that a factory in Sunderland is now producing more cars than Italy, that seven of the 10 largest offshore wind farms are located in the UK and that £1.7 billion is being invested in new large-scale nuclear, so that we can reach 24 GW of clean energy on the grid. It is the Labour party who took a lump hammer to our nuclear industry and only managed an anaemic 7% of renewables on the grid, where we have managed 40%.

I will take no lectures from Labour on having a plan for anything, because I still do not think they have a plan or a strategy—no idea, no alternative and nothing worth saying. Last week I accused them of sixth-form politics; I would like to make an apology to sixth-formers everywhere.

I need only look at my own constituency to see industrious people making innovative products that improve people’s lives and contribute to the economy, whether that is Roxtec in Heap Bridge, making HS2, hydrogen and dozens of other industries work by providing sealing infrastructure, Union Papertech in Norden ensuring that our morning cuppa is not just delicious, but environmentally friendly, SMS in Middleton contributing to the next-gen Tempest fighter project, or dozens of other companies doing other amazing things. I have been incredibly proud to represent them over the past few years. I am proud of British industry and the contribution that the people I represent make to the economy. I am a little bit embarrassed for the Opposition that they genuinely think they cannot do any better than this.