Manufacturing

Chris White Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am keen to make sure that every Member who has indicated a wish to speak in this debate—

[Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

You may sit down, Mr White, as I will not forget you and you do need to know this before you start speaking. I am going to change the time limit, because if we have 10-minute speeches, we will not get everybody in. I am therefore reducing the time limit to eight minutes per Back Bencher from you onwards, Mr White. However, you have the great joy of being called next, so the Floor is yours.

[Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)]

Thank you very much for that warning, Madam Deputy Speaker.

May I, too, start by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for securing time for this important debate? As co-chair of the Associate Parliamentary Manufacturing Group, alongside my friend the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), I have a particular interest in this area of policy. I was pleased to hear from earlier speakers who were able to bring their own experience to this debate, for example, my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and the hon. Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle). I am also pleased that Westminster is being visited today by the leader of my local district council, who also has a background in manufacturing industry. Perhaps it would not hurt too much if more Members of Parliament had a background or personal experience in manufacturing, engineering or industry itself.

If we do not secure both a rebalancing of our economy towards manufacturing and growth in the sector, the UK will be very much the weaker, not least in my constituency, which is home to names such as Ford. Things have changed very much over time. My area has one major manufacturing works; the reason why we no longer have soot on our food is because Flavel, which won an award at the Great Exhibition, managed to change that by an innovative process and, to this day, the factory is still producing cookers in my constituency.

As the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) said, we need to look forward. What does a prosperous manufacturing sector need? It needs a large skills base, a strong communications network, a focus on exports and the opening up of new markets. There has been progress on the first point. In Warwick and Leamington, we have 210 additional apprenticeships compared with last year. Great thanks must go to places such as Warwickshire college for managing to secure that.

Young people need to be encouraged to make a positive choice to take up careers in manufacturing. As the hon. Member for Huddersfield said, if that is to happen, design and technology must play a much greater part in our schools. We need to build on it through our entire education system. We cannot just wait until young people are 16 before they begin thinking about careers in the sector—it should thread right through our education system.

We cannot afford to fall behind other countries in this vital area. We should be under no illusion: competitors like China and India will be doing more, not less, to educate their young people in those subjects. The national curriculum is under review and I hope that the Department for Education will consider the importance of design and technology for the future of our economy and work with organisations such as the Design and Technology Association to ensure that D and T remains at the heart of the curriculum.

I believe that if we are to see long-term progress for manufacturing, we need the Government to be at one with the sector as a whole. Given the importance of manufacturing to our economic future, it makes sense that, as has been mentioned, the Government should create a dedicated Minister for manufacturing, and I would support the creation of such a Minister.

[Mr Sheerman]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if that Minister for manufacturing was linked to a clear long-term strategy for manufacturing, that would be even better?

[Chris White]

I very much agree. A Minister and a strategy could go hand in hand.

We need a strategic vision for manufacturing, with measurable targets of success so that we can see how our efforts at rebalancing our economy make headway and whether more needs to be done to help the sector. A Minister for manufacturing, tasked with creating a cross-departmental manufacturing strategy with targets and measurement tools to plot success or failure, would be a good start.

The Government, for example, could make it their goal to boost manufacturing to 15% of our GDP by 2015. This “15 by 15” target would send a powerful signal and boost confidence in the manufacturing sector as a whole. The mere creation of a Minister and a strategy will not bring about growth and jobs, but it will signal the Government’s intent, give manufacturers a voice in the decisions on economic policy, better co-ordinate Government manufacturing policy and ensure that manufacturing is properly considered across all Departments.

The UK is now the ninth biggest manufacturer in the world, unfortunately down two places on the previous year. We need to recognise that although we need to promote high-tech manufacturing we cannot ignore the rest of the industry. To quote a recent report,

“‘low-tech’ does not mean ‘low-value’”.

A Minister with responsibility for all manufacturing could ensure that it was not ignored and that we had a strategy in place that benefited all manufacturers.

If we are to remain at the forefront of manufacturing globally, businesses need to be able to access the funds that they need to compete and grow. I therefore also support the creation of a bank for industry, similar, perhaps, to the green investment bank. We should not be content to allow Britain to slip down the league any further and we should make it our goal to climb back to the top of the table.