Jack Dromey
Main Page: Jack Dromey (Labour - Birmingham, Erdington)Department Debates - View all Jack Dromey's debates with the Department for Transport
(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
I, too, pay tribute to the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) for initiating this debate. My father was a train driver for 15 years and he was proud to drive British trains. British trains were at the heart of a thriving manufacturing base that at its peak employed more than 8 million people. Successive Governments have presided over the decline of manufacturing in Britain. On one hand, the previous Conservative Government saw 3 million jobs lost in manufacturing during the 1980s, while on the other hand the Labour Government were slow to learn painful lessons. They eventually arrived at industrial activism, but only after 10 years, after our economy had become unbalanced, with too much emphasis on the financial sector and not enough on the manufacturing sector. There was too much financial engineering, and not enough real engineering.
Throughout that period, I fought many battles for procurement contracts. In 1992, I was involved with British Rail engineering works in York. We successfully won an order for Networker trains for the southern region, which kept that admirable world-class establishment open for three further years. In general—I hope you will excuse the bad pun, Mr Gale—the direction of travel has been depressing, with consequences for our country and especially the midlands. Some 30 years ago, the midlands had one of the two strongest economies in Britain; it now has one of the two weakest.
The country is recovering at a painfully slow pace compared with Germany and France, which had the wisdom to sustain a strong manufacturing base. Bombardier is right when it says that the situation we are now in could not have happened in Germany or France. In recent years we have embraced industrial activism, and the Government have said that they wish to rebalance the economy as part of the growth strategy. I welcome that, but profound lessons must be learned from this sorry saga. Why can the Department for Transport not seem to get backing British industry right? Will the Government recognise the immense leverage that exists in more than £100 billion of public procurement funds, and will they use that in an intelligent way to underpin our manufacturing economy as part of the strategy for growth? The Government must use their power to help manufacturing with a determination equal to that of France or Germany.
Will the Government look again at how contracts are procured? The process was fundamentally flawed. As hon. Members from all parties have said, there was no proper concern for the socio-economic consequences of the contract decision, or for the consequences on the supply chain and the long-term impact of such a loss of capacity in Britain. That includes contracts that could be won both in Britain and internationally, since the trains will no longer be manufactured in Britain.
Finally, it is not too late for the Government to think again. I have been impressed by the excellent contributions made by hon. Members from all parties during the debate. We must learn lessons for the future, but for the here and now we need the Government to state that only preferred-bidder status has been allocated and that it is not too late to change. Where there is a will, there is a way. The voice of people in the midlands is clear: they want the Government to back Britain and to back Bombardier.