Manufacturing and Engineering

James Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He is making some important points about local enterprise partnerships. The black country LEP, which covers my constituency, has been instrumental in developing a skills agenda for the area, which is absolutely vital, and in getting investment into the i54 enterprise zone. Some £500 million of investment has come from Jaguar Land Rover, which is already having a big impact on the automotive supply chain in the west midlands. I went to visit the high-tech engineering firm Sandvik in my constituency. It said that demand for its machine tools is at a very high level, so I commend the black country local enterprise partnership for the work that it is doing in my area.

[Neil Carmichael]

I thank my hon. Friend for his appropriate and useful intervention. The fact of the matter is that we need a degree of co-operation; we need to work together. Business has recognised that partnership is a good thing. However, there is also a need for competition, so we need to strike the right balance between the role that Government agencies perform, which is largely through partnership, and the role that businesses perform, which is largely through competition. We need the right framework for partnership and for competition. That is how we should look on our relationship with the European Union, the Government and the local authorities.

As I come to the end of my speech, I must say that I am overwhelmed with this general sense of agreement. That is a message that I will promote not just here to the Minister but to my constituency. I am quite determined to ensure that Stroud is on track for economic growth and, broadly speaking, that the whole of Britain is too. The key issue is ensuring that our businesses can have access to the appropriate investment. We need to work hard to get the banking sector right so that that happens. I urge the Minister to think carefully about that. It is necessary to redouble our efforts to ensure that the STEM subjects have predominance in the school curriculum. It is no good just talking about manufacturing and not actually ensuring that young people are enthused to become involved in that critical sector.

Whenever I visit factories in my constituency, I am always struck by the cleanliness, the modern sense of technology, the new approach, the research and development and the fact that young people would, if they ever got there, be really impressed and encouraged, which is why it is so important that schools have a strong and sustained relationship with the world of business.

Finally, we ignore our relationship with the European Union at our peril. We must recognise that manufacturing and engineering are a core part of our country; they need to be grown, nurtured and developed. We can do that by having good relationships with the European Union—Germany, France, Italy and elsewhere. That is the key point on which I want to rest. I thank all hon. Members for listening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

Thank you for allowing me to speak, Ms Clark. I anticipate making a short contribution to the debate. In fact, I did not intend to speak; I came here to listen to the debate, which I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) on securing, as I thought it was hugely important. However, as the debate unfolded I decided that I wanted to contribute a couple of important points. The first follows up on an intervention that I made about the impact on manufacturing in rural areas. I represent and have lived my whole life in a rural part of Britain—mid-Wales. Although I am a farmer by background, I spent a lot of my life involved in regional development, or what we term rural development. I was chairman of a local authority planning department for several years, and then I was chairman of a development agency responsible for mid-Wales.

When I was holding strategy discussions with senior officials about how I would begin to do that job, the British economy was becoming increasingly focused on financial services and the service sector. We did not think it was possible to develop the economy in mid-Wales, or indeed to transform it. It was in serious decline after the loss of jobs in agriculture and steel in neighbouring areas. The view that we took was that manufacturing was the route on which we should concentrate.

Over about 20 years—I gave the figures earlier—the proportion of manufacturing jobs in mid-Wales increased from about 7% or 8% to about a quarter of the work force, dramatically changing it. While the Government had a policy of intervention, which they do not have now, and while there was a Development Board for Rural Wales and a Welsh Development Agency to support it, the whole environment of mid-Wales was transformed. It became a dramatically important place, and we managed to do that on the back of manufacturing. There was no other way that we could have done it.

Another great benefit was that because mid-Wales is a sparsely populated area, the strategy involved growing very small manufacturing companies. That can be done in rural areas. It involved one and two-man businesses. They were success stories for us. We grew them. That is another fundamental platform on which a manufacturing industry can be based.

[James Morris]

I come from a constituency that contrasts with that of my hon. Friend—the black country in the west midlands. It was a great area for steel-making and industrial capacity, and is now having to be revived. Does he agree that one way that we can re-energise the manufacturing base is through enterprise zones? That is a good policy implemented by the Government. We should be looking to extend those enterprise zones and provide further enhanced capital allowances to encourage manufacturing investment.

[Glyn Davies]

Indeed. I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is not only about enterprise zones but about learning from them and perhaps extending the principles underpinning them across the country. As Ministers often mention, we have ended up with an imbalanced economy in Britain, because for decades we have not concentrated enough on manufacturing. We have looked to financial services and the service industry as the answer, but manufacturing has not been given its proper place in our economic strategy.

I will comment briefly on the biggest threat to manufacturing in my constituency. Policy on manufacturing is devolved to the National Assembly for Wales—I will not cover that in this debate—but that is not the biggest threat by a long way. Every business that I talk to now is worried about the impact of onshore wind development in mid-Wales. A huge project is proposed, and the whole manufacturing sector faces the prospect of the roads of mid-Wales being completely clogged up for the six, seven or eight years after the mid-Wales connection project is approved.

I cannot overstate the impact that the project will have. Businesses are already discussing moving out, because they will not be able to develop. At least three companies—manufacturing businesses that depend on transport—have written to me already to say that if the project goes ahead, they will not be able to function in the area. The impact of the project must be part of the Government’s understanding here at Westminster of what they are doing when they consign mid-Wales to becoming little more than an onshore wind farm landscape.

My final point is one that my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud referred to in his introduction. Again, I draw on my experience as chairman of a planning authority, which was my first venture into public life. I did that job for seven years, and I realised that it was crucial for the body responsible for the planning process in a local authority to have a close connection to economic development. Apart from dealing purely with planning regulations, looking at a chart and saying yes or no, we have to inject into the process the impact that plans will have on the local economy.

Yesterday I went to a business that wanted to change the use of its site. It would be hugely important for the town where I live, Welshpool. The planning authority is concerned about access. The business has satisfied the authority on access but the authority is insisting on a complete revamp of the whole site. The authority will therefore make it impossible for the business to continue on that site, and the company has said that if it cannot get what seems to be a sensible change-of-use agreement, it will have to move out. That is happening purely because those responsible for dealing with the planning application are not charged with any responsibility to promote economic development. There has to be a close link between those two objectives of a local authority if we are to have a sensible approach that will enable us to maximise the benefits that our nation can get from manufacturing.