Jobs and Work

Margot James Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in support of the Queen’s Speech, which contains several measures that will impact positively on employment. The Gracious Speech builds on a record of achievement: the deficit will be cut by 50% this year; unemployment is down from the 8.4% that the Government inherited to 6.6%, as announced today; and our economy is growing faster than that of any other country in the G7 and across the European Union. Unsurprisingly, business and consumer confidence has returned.

There have been difficult decisions and people have made many sacrifices to bring about this economic turnaround: people working in the public sector have endured pay freezes or redundancies; people relying on savings have endured low interests rates that have been vital to the recovery; and many private sector employees have voted to take a salary cut, to safeguard employment among the wider group. Let their sacrifices not have been in vain. We on the Government side of the House, as evidenced in the Queen’s Speech, will work hard to ensure that there is no return to boom and bust or to tax and spend, when “more of” was the answer to every question and every challenge.

Earlier this week, I hosted a reception in Parliament for the Federation of Small Businesses. This year is its 40th anniversary. I am proud to represent so many specialist manufacturing companies in Stourbridge, particularly in Quarry Bank, Lye and Cradley. Most of them are family firms that have excellent employee relations, but their main concern is that their employees are ageing and they will have to replace that skilled work force.

I run a programme in my constituency to encourage young people to broaden their career horizons. I lay on university, apprenticeship and career events, and I always aim to get across the opportunities in engineering and manufacturing. Employment in the manufacturing sector declined from 5.7 million to 4.3 million between 1981 and 1996, and then it plummeted by 2.5 million up to 2011. Finally, after 30 years of continuous decline, the number of people employed in manufacturing is on the increase again, up by almost 100,000 since 2011. That is proof that the strategy of rebalancing the economy towards manufacturing and regions outside the south-east is working.

The problem for the sector is the image of manufacturing and engineering in the minds of so many young people, especially girls. That has been a problem for most of my life; it is nothing new. What is new is the opportunity in the sector. I have mentioned the growth in jobs, but output is also buoyant, with growth of over 4.4% in the past 12 months. Technological advances, innovation and export opportunities make for a very different working environment from the machine tool business that my father ran in Wolverhampton during the 1970s. We have a shortfall of 40,000 engineers every year. Several Members have mentioned women in the workplace. Fewer than one in 10 engineers is a woman. If we could treble the number studying science, technology, engineering and maths, we could really address the skills shortage.

Today’s news on employment is an excellent platform from which the measures in the Queen’s Speech can impact even more on people’s employment opportunities. I hope that with the help of businesses, schools and colleges, we can transform the image of manufacturing and engineering and attract the talent that the sector needs further to boost the economy and add to the great work that it has been doing over the past few years.