Manufacturing Sector

Debate between Jonathan Reynolds and Alison McGovern

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and for his steadfast support in Parliament for manufacturing. The associate parliamentary group is incredibly important to this discussion. The competition that he has mentioned is fantastic. We should all get behind it and make sure that people see that some of the things that are made in this country are fantastically diverse. It is not about telling a story about our past, but about telling a story about what is going on now.

A company in my constituency makes the chemicals that are sent to Korea to help make iPhones. How cool is that? I think that young people from local schools who visit the company are genuinely inspired about where a career in science could lead them. That is about making the things that we have and use now. It is not about old-style factories from many years ago. I should also mention the work of General Motors in engaging schools. It has one of the most productive car plants in Europe in Ellesmere Port. Showcasing our high level of technology not only helps abroad—we will talk about exports later—but helps to inspire young people so that they can see that they have a future in this country and in making things that we all need.

Will the Minister agree to meet me and the Manufacturing Institute at some point to discuss how we can advance its ideas for the “Make It” campaign? It has been particularly successful in the north-west, and I would like to see those opportunities widened to people elsewhere in the country. The approach to schools has to be business-led. We cannot ask heavily-laden head teachers to do any more than they are already doing. We have to enable businesses in manufacturing to take the lead and to assist head teachers.

Something else that we might want to consider as a country is how we can get more business leaders from manufacturing to become school governors. There are a couple of examples on my patch that I think are particularly successful. It enables that body of knowledge to be used by schools and young people as a natural link that does not have to be forced.

The second issue that I want to address relates to exports and Government support. UK Trade and Investment recently produced an interesting strategy, and all of us who care about UK manufacturing and exports need to pay attention to it. It is an important document, because UKTI is in the lead now in terms of exports from this country. That could not be more important at a time in which we are seeing financial difficulty throughout Europe and in this country. I have said that I do not want a party political debate, but we have decided to change the structure of regional support in England. The Government have decided that regional development agencies were not the answer, and we now have local enterprise partnerships. I am grateful for the one that has been set up in my area, in the Liverpool city region. There is a changing picture and we need to work out how UKTI’s strategy will work. I have a few questions about that, which I will ask the Minister in a moment.

Before I do, I want to say briefly that one of the biggest opportunities in manufacturing right now is the supply chain. I mentioned in my opening remarks the place of sterling now compared with what it was some years ago and the business case for the supply chain shifting to the UK in the light of fuel and other transport costs. Some work could be done on that. I hope that businesses around the country and the Government are working to make that business case because it could go unnoticed; for many years, people have had an assumption that the best thing for any business is to source overseas because labour costs are cheaper elsewhere.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. I could not agree more when she says that the perception is sometimes that this country does not make anything anymore. Part of the reason for that is past changes to supply chains; people perhaps think that we do not manufacture anything at all. How can we get a wider understanding of how the supply chain works? The example that my hon. Friend gave from her constituency of how one specific part of manufacture leads to a much bigger picture was powerful. On the whole, manufacturing is a very successful story for this country.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is a difficult story to tell. When a journalist or somebody from the media is taken to Vauxhall Motors or any number of big, exciting manufacturing locations, they can see what is happening. However, in the future, there will increasingly be smaller, more specialist suppliers. In addition to fuel costs, the quality of the product is another driving factor behind the business case for moving the supply chain closer to sites of production.

As we move towards higher-tech production and try to meet some of the challenges of the greener economy, we need a better quality of product. In terms of quality control, we might be looking at smaller, more specialist producers. It is difficult to tell that story, but it has to be done. As the BBC moves northwards, I hope that there will be lots of opportunities for those of us from the north-west to get these stories out there. It is a difficult challenge, but it is about telling a story of high quality.