Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Beckett Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We want to see maternity networks so that mums can make a choice about where they give birth, whether in a community setting, midwife-led, or whether in a district general hospital with all the paraphernalia of consultants and the rest of it. It should be a choice made by them with their GP and others on what is right for their needs.

[Margaret Beckett (Derby South) (Lab)]

Is the Prime Minister aware that yesterday, when Bombardier had to announce the redundancy, among others, of skilled engineers and designers, the company made public for the first time the fact that it had offered to establish a new academy in this country for the design and manufacture of cars for the next generation of high-speed trains for the UK and across the world—a global centre of excellence, providing more jobs and jobs with even higher skills. He will not have had time to familiarise himself with the details, but will he undertake to look into that with care to give substance to the commitment that he made in my constituency to British manufacturers?

[The Prime Minister]

I will look carefully at what the right hon. Lady has said about this issue. I want to see more British jobs in manufacturing as, indeed, we are seeing across the country. In the case of the Bombardier train contract, the procurement process was designed and initiated by the Government of whom she was a member. We are bound by the criteria that they set out, so we have to continue with the decision that has been made according to those criteria. Separately, we are setting out to ask what more we can do under the rules to make sure that we boost manufacturing and not have situations like this in future.