Manufacturing: Investment Growth Forecast

Lord Hughes of Woodside Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

There are a lot of questions from the right reverend Prelate. I will answer as many as I can, or as many as my Leader will allow me to. We all know about the announcement that Bombardier made this morning that 1,200 jobs would be lost at the plant in Derby. The company had already told us that this was going to happen regardless of whether it had won the Thameslink contract. As we know, this particular industry is very volatile. The company has had enormous contracts, it is coming to the end of them and it did predict that it would lose jobs. As a volatile industry, it has to hire and fire at will, but we hope that it is a temporary situation. We are doing everything that we can to try and help it grow. We are introducing 21 new enterprise zones across the local enterprise partnership areas, which will benefit from superfast broadband, lower taxes and lower levels of regulation and planning controls. At the end of the day, it is very important for us to support our industry wherever we can.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

My Lords, did the Minister not hear on the one o’clock news today the chairman of the Derby company, I believe, who gave no indication that it was going to have troubles anyway, and who claimed that the reason for Siemens getting the contract was that the Germans actually support Siemens through subsidies? If we have to have competition in the European Community, why can we not have it on a level playing field?

[Baroness Wilcox]

There is no doubt that it is always a shock when we do not get a contract like this. Today, the Transport Secretary and the Business Secretary have written to the Prime Minister underlining the need to examine the wider issue of whether the UK is making best use of the application of the EU procurement rules. I think this House will be very glad to hear that.