Ford Motor Manufacturing

Jon Cruddas Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Jon Cruddas (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab)]

As is the custom, I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) on securing this debate and those who have made contributions. We share the deep concern for our constituents and their material well-being following the announcement.

The workers who are employed at the Ford Dagenham stamping plant and tool room operations were shocked and bewildered by the hundreds of Ford job losses announced a couple of weeks ago. I have spoken to many of the workers who have been affected by the announcement, and the consistent response was almost disbelief. We were blind-sided on Thursday 25 October, which was a bad day for manufacturing in the UK, in Southampton and in my part of east London.

The Dagenham estate was built in 1929 and has been Ford Motor Company’s centre of production ever since. A couple of weeks before the announcement, I visited the stamping plant, the tool room and the two parts of the engine facility to meet management and workers to discuss bringing more workers to the plant. No one mentioned possible closure; it was not an issue. We knew that announcements were coming, but our concern was to secure more investment in the engine plant by getting the new Panther engine into Dagenham.

The background is that the Dagenham diesel engine plant and diesel centre covers some 2.5 million square feet, and employs approximately 2,000 employees. In 2011, nearly 1 million engine units were shipped from the estate. At present, the Lynx engine operation in Dagenham has an annual capacity of some 320,000 engines. That is scheduled to finish in the second quarter of 2013. The Puma engine capacity is another 400,000 a year. Our emphasis in the discussions was on securing the Panther engine at the Dagenham estate, because there is a natural fit in both the time line and capacity at the estate.

We have been lobbying people at the highest level of the Ford Motor Company internationally and the Government regarding the new engine, to ensure that the investment comes to Dagenham, so guaranteeing future jobs. An application for round 3 of the regional growth fund, covering questions of plant readiness and training requirements, was included in that process.

News of the job losses will worry many local families who are either employed directly by Ford or have a business that relies on trade created by the plant. At a time when the economy is suffering so much and when families are struggling to pay their monthly bills, the announcement is not good. I am sure that there will be generous voluntary redundancy offers from the company, and it has assured us all—I assume—that those who want a job will be redeployed at least across the Dagenham estate. In reality, however, the jobs will be gone for good. Those quality manufacturing jobs will not be available to young people in the borough in future, and the closure will shake down in terms of the supply chain, affecting local families and people’s future job prospects.

However, in the bipartisan spirit of our debate, I add that I am pleased that the Mayor of London has convened an emergency taskforce to deal with the effects of Ford’s announcement in east London. That will include representatives from the London enterprise panel, the London borough of Barking and Dagenham, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Skills Funding Agency, the Department for Work and Pensions and Jobcentre Plus. It has already met, and some of us will meet Ford’s chairman, Joe Greenwell, over the next couple of days to alert him to the establishment of the taskforce and to ask him for help. The Mayor of London is important for the future of parts of the estate, and the Greater London authority is a significant landowner in the area. The Dagenham stamping and tool room operations site is immediately adjacent to the GLA’s Beam Park and Chequers Corner sites, as well as being within close proximity to the Sanofi site due to close next year.

I urge Ford to investigate how Sanofi has dealt with its exit from my constituency over the last couple of years. Sanofi has worked brilliantly with the local community to redevelop its site and build more jobs and community facilities in the area. I request that Ford enters into similar discussions to ensure that the stamping and tooling operations site is decommissioned with limited detrimental impact to the local area and with an eye on future regenerative potential. The majority of redundancies will not come into effect until mid-2013. The expectation is that the stamping plant building will be decommissioned and shuttered, with all parts stripped and sold, and that that will take nine to 12 months after the closure next July.

As with Sanofi, I would like to think that Ford will release land for regeneration north of the railway line, following both demolition and clearance of the stamping plant and all related buildings, including remediation, decontamination and cleansing of the released land. That should be done with a view to future economic regeneration, perhaps as part of the Ford exit costs, given the benefits that the company has extracted for nearly 100 years from our part of east London.

I must put on record, however, that Ford’s announcement had some positive elements that should not be ignored; by that, I mean the decision to invest in the new two litre, four cylinder, low carbon dioxide Panther diesel engine at the Dagenham engine plant. The combined engine output will remain at approximately 1 million engines a year, and the new engine will support some 3,500 engineering, design, admin and support jobs in nearby Dunton.

Overall, although I welcome the news about the investment in the new Panther engine in my constituency —we have been fighting for that for months—I cannot hide my disappointment about the latest decision. We must do everything that we can to support local residents affected by the closures and those in the broader community. We will raise those points with Mr Greenwell here in Parliament this week.