Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Performance)

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

There are indeed many wise words in that book, which is why it has been reprinted several times—it retains its relevance.

Let me move on from the general picture of de-industrialisation to the specifics. Let me also deal specifically with the Pfizer closure, which is a serious matter and an extremely disappointing development. The implication in the remarks of the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen was that the Government had somehow or other failed to head off a closure, which could have been avoided. Let me therefore talk him through the sequence of events, which is also important to many colleagues behind me, and explain what we are doing about the problem.

We were first notified about this at the beginning of last week—on 28 January. The chief executive came to London and briefed the Minister for Universities and Science, who rightly immediately asked what the British Government should do to avert the closure. The answer was that this was not a matter for British Government policy, and that the choice was not made on the basis of whether Britain was an attractive place to do business. Rather, the company was making global closures, including large closures in Dusseldorf in Germany and Massachusetts in the United States. The cycle of the company’s patents was relevant, and it was a purely commercial decision. What happened with Pfizer is offset by what is happening elsewhere in the pharmaceutical industry. Only a few weeks ago GlaxoSmithKline announced a £500 million investment, creating 1,000 new jobs directly—and much else happening in the industry is positive.

The right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen asked me what we were doing about the situation. First, I have established a taskforce comprising Kent county council, local interests and the Department for Work and Pensions working together to look at the local labour market and what we can do to help. My ministerial colleagues are involved in the process. The Minister for Universities and Science is working with the Secretary of State for Health to see how we can relocate scientists from those research facilities into the rest of the pharmaceutical industries. We may well establish a model based on the relative success so far of Allan Cook’s efforts in the defence industry to see how best to pursue the relocation policy. However, the decision was not based on the investment climate in the United Kingdom. It was a commercial decision, and we are acting promptly in doing whatever we can to help the people who are caught up in that difficulty.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

Many of us who have been in the House for a while know that this country often suffers as a result of decisions involving local businesses which are made elsewhere in Europe—or, as was the case when the Peek Frean factory in my constituency was closed, in Idaho. However, all my experience since May, both in my constituency and around the country, suggests that people are desperate to see manufacturing back on its feet, and desperate for the skills and apprenticeships that will allow it to perform. That is the great demand out there in relation to Government economic policy, and my right hon. Friend is going in absolutely the right direction by making it a priority.