§ Mr. Neil Thorne (Ilford, South)I am delighted to have the opportunity to address the House on the very' important issue of measures to encourage the buying of British goods by domestic consumers.
One of the most outstanding British enterprises has just launched a campaign under the banner
Buying British Goods Means Supporting British JobsThis is not the first time that the philosophy of Marks and Spencer has been enunciated in the House or in the corridors of government. The leading article of the St.Michael News tells us about Mrs. M, an average housewife who has a good husband, healthy children and a nice home in a reasonable street. Her kitchen has all the usual labour-saving equipment, such as a German dishwasher, food mixer and the like. However, as she puts the dirty clothing, much of it made in the Far East, into her Italian washing machine and then drives in her French car to the shops, she is worried, because her eldest boy is still without a job six months after leaving school and her husband's firm is laying off staff.If Mrs. M thought about it, she would have much to worry about. Department of Trade statistics show that, between 1970 and 1982, the percentage of penetration by overseas manufacturers in the chemical industry rose from 18 per cent. to 33 per cent. In the metal manufacturing industry it rose from 19 per cent. to 32 per cent., in mechanical engineering from 19 per cent. to 36 per cent., in the instrument engineering industry from 34 per cent. to 63 per cent., in electrical engineering from 18 per cent. to 46 per cent., in the vehicle industry from 12 per cent. to 46 per cent., in metal goods from 6 per cent. to 17 per cent., in textiles from 14 per cent. to 41 per cent., in leather goods from 21 per cent. to 45 per cent., in clothing and footwear from 12 per cent. to 37 per cent. and in paper and printing from 19 per cent. to 23 per cent. Those random examples are extremely worrying from a national point of view.
In view of the close relationship between buying British and preserving British jobs, the board of Marks and Spencer has instituted a management policy that, provided that quality and value are competitive, its managers must be committed to goods produced in the United Kingdom and made with British equipment and British raw materials so that jobs at home will be secure and additional employment created. As a result, although 50 per cent. of all men's woven shirts sold in the United Kingdom this year were made abroad, no less than 99 per cent. of Marks and Spencer shirts—it is probably the largest single shirt seller in the country—are produced at home. Only 40 to 45 per cent. of footwear is made at home, but Marks and Spencer purchases between 80 and 85 per cent. from United Kingdom manufacturers, with a policy of buying abroad only when it is impossible to find high quality and good value at home.
Marks and Spencer's foreign suppliers, especially of food, have been encouraged to set up new process factories here. The chairman of the company, Lord Sieff, said:
Today we face grave problems with increasing long-term unemployment and the inability of school leavers to find work. But by implementing good human relations at work, practical involvement in the community, and the determination to encourage United Kingdom production before seeking to import will help to ensure a better future.1122 Why is it necessary to draw attention to the need to buy British? It was not very many years ago that that was considered the natural thing to do. British always stood for best—best design, best made and best value for money. What went wrong? First, of course, through indifferent management and unco-operative trade unions, our enterprise and efficiency began to flag. This, coupled with poor selling techniques, gave our competitors the opportunity for which they were waiting. Our products were at a severe disadvantage in overseas markets and, as a result of the economies of scale, these same foreign companies were able to beat us in our markets at home.We are still the largest per capita exporting nation in the world and we must expect and accept free and fair competition. Unfortunately, many of our competitors do not believe that the scales of fairness should be held in a just way and have not been against a little tilting, in some instances a great deal. In some instances our goods were completely excluded on the pretext of helping struggling infant industry but, like the Japanese motor cycle industry, the restrictions were not removed until the baby had become a giant capable of completely squashing the competition. This has been followed by the motor industry and a number of other industries, including optics and television.
I tried to purchase a British made television at the nearest retailer to the House of Commons. I found that it had not one set available that had been made in Britain. This is a sign of what is to be found throughout the country. If there is not a complete ban, we are all familiar with the petty regulations such as those practised by France and again Japan. These practices lead to disputes about the size of the lettering on our goods that they import. It is said to be minutely too large or too small.
In Spain we meet another type of special restriction. Our exports of cars are subject to a 36 per cent. tariff, whereas imports of cars from Spain suffer only a 4 per cent. charge. Faced with this type of barrier, it is no wonder that our manufacturers are unable to compete in quality, availability and value.
Until relatively recently these restrictions and controls on commercial life appeared hidden or lost in the fog of an expanding economy, but the world recession has exposed the hard facts of international commerce. In the circumstances, we cannot afford to carry any passengers, whether management or staff. The trade unions must realise, as the German unions realised a long time ago, that they must help their companies to lead the milch cow to the best pasture before they can expect to draw their members' share of the milk. How on earth the steel workers allowed themselves to be led into a disastrous strike in 1980 against all advice we shall never understand, but there is no doubt that if large users of steel, including the nationalised industries, cannot trust their suppliers when they themselves adopt the modern industrial practice of keeping minimum stocks to save interest payments, they have to buy some of their supplies abroad to ensure that they will never be brought to their knees by militant trade union action. This is of course done at the cost of jobs in the steel industry at home.
Neither shoddy nor unsafe goods can be tolerated and it seems that we should be much more aggressive in our approach to imported products. So many of the cheap fancy goods flooding the market seem entirely unsuitable and unsafe. The importers of these goods should be required to place a bond with the Department of Trade to 1123 guarantee the safety of their goods. I believe that our manufacturers are now realising the importance of ascertaining first what the customers want and then setting about satisfying the demand rather than telling the public what they are prepared to sell.
There are still excellent opportunities for the enterprising and in a world intent on labour saving to cut costs and the introduction of robots in large companies we must look to small businesses to help reduce unemployment. My constituency is fortunate to have firms such as Lelliots the high quality builders and Croydon Display the shopfitters, which are making substantial and successful efforts to expand their operations. A small business man wrote to me yesterday to thank me for my Christmas card. He wrote:
I hope that the New Year will see our Government go from strength to strength and with it the economy of Great Britain. I should like to take this opportunity to defy the Socialist doomsday forecast by the fact that I proved to myself that the economy has never been healthier. I managed last year to start my own business on borrowed capital and I am now running a flourishing business with a very pleasant turnover which I have achieved by a lot of hard work.That man has started a jewellery manufacturing business in the way he describes.Whichever way we look at the issue, we come back to the fact that British goods mean British jobs. Therefore, I believe we should do much more to make the public aware exactly which goods are British. It is my view that the origin marking order earlier this year is confusing and inadequate. Some people tell stories of goods being described as British-made when only some trifling final operation is carried out in Britain. Incredibly, the whole item is described as British. One firm of crystal manufacturers has recently started describing its goods as "wholly made in Britain" to distinguish itself from its competitors. Surely in this day and age of computers it would be possible accurately to assess the contents by value of any product that was partly made here and for that percentage to be displayed as the portion attributable to British manufacture.
As we are so restricted in what action we can take against imported goods, not only because of our need to survive as the leading exporting nation of the world but because of the rules of the EC, can we not ask Her Majesty the Queen to institute an award for the top 10 companies each year that retail the largest value of wholly-made British goods on a similar basis to the Queen's award to industry? That would enable those firms to display a sign over their doors to their customers showing that they are selling substantial quantities of goods that provide real and worthwhile jobs for British workers.
It is only in that way that we can show the British consumer exactly what is available and what is not available to him in the shops. Of course, it must rest with the consumer whether he is prepared to accept the quality and value for money that are provided. However, it is the Government's responsibility to ensure that it is clear to the consumer what is being produced at home.
At the moment the system is too confusing. The man in the street who is determined to buy British cannot do so. Another constituent who wrote to me recently said that he tried various shops in my constituency with the sole intention of buying British, but had the utmost difficulty in doing so.
Therefore, it is up to us, while accepting that free and fair international trade is a requirement of a modern 1124 civilised society, to make it absolutely clear to the man in the street precisely what he is buying in the shops and to give him every opportunity to choose from the various alternatives those that create jobs at home.
§ The Minister for Consumer Affairs (Dr. Gerard Vaughan)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) on raising this subject. I am grateful to him for reminding us of the link between supporting our manufacturers and reducing unemployment. I listened carefully to his constructive speech. I was particularly interested when he gave his idea of a special award and when he talked of his anxieties about origin markings on various products. I am considering that matter to see if we can do more about it.
My hon. Friend was right to remind us that we are a trading nation. We export more of our gross national product than any other industrial country. It is in our interests to take down and not to put up international barriers. It is very much in our interests to have free international trade, but free and fair trade between countries. We must support our own trade more. As one overseas buyer said to me the other day, we cannot expect others to buy our products if we do not buy them ourselves.
We should all be worried when the Confederation of British Industry says that the recent 10 per cent increase in imports has lost us 800,000 jobs. We cannot complain about high unemployment if we are not prepared to buy our goods ourselves, and if our manufacturers are riot prepared to make the goods that we want to buy. I was looking the other day, for example, at the manufacturing of video recorders. We have the highest proportion of video recorders per home in the world but we still do not manufacture a single video recorder ourselves. Ai a nation we talk so much about what is wrong with what we produce but take for granted so much that is right.
Leaving oil on one side, every month Britain sells overseas goods and services worth £3,500 million. An awful lot of people must think that those goods are worth the price and are worth buying. We really must stop talking down our British products and talking up goods from overseas. We produce a great deal in this country of high quality and very good value. One of the crucial themes of Government policy is to improve still more the competitiveness and the quality of British industry and commerce—to improve value.
I, too, read the St. Michael News. I, too, was filled with enthusiasm about what I read there and about what this great firm is doing for our British economy—so much so that a few days ago I wrote to Lord Sieff to congratulate the firm on what it is doing and to ask why, if it could do it, other sections of our trade could not do the same. Perhaps Marks and Spencer and the St. Michael News will tell them how to do it.
The main responsibility must be industry's to produce goods at the price and of the quality, style and availability that we want. My hon. Friend might ask what the Government are doing to help. I should like to refer to one kind of help that we are giving. In July this year my noble Friend the Secretary of State for Trade presented a White Paper to Parliament, "Standards, Quality and International Competitiveness". This all sounds rather dry and formal but I can assure the House that the implications of that paper are of tremendous significance to our economy.
1125 We intend, by developing—in the way that West Germany and Japan have developed—widely used and widely accepted standards, to make it easier for customers both at home and overseas to be confident that our products will be a good buy and that "Made in Britain" will mean made well. We are asking Government Departments and major companies to use these standards rather than always to produce standards of their own.
I am talking not necessarily about higher standards which would price us out of markets and reduce competitiveness but of more general and widely known standards. We are working at the moment with the British Standards Institution to develop this commercial tool—that is what it really is—as fast as we can. At the same time we are producing a register of firms whose goods match good standards. We will be extending that list steadily through the coming months.
At my end, I am looking at our safety standard—at our safety checks. Despite all our legislation, too many shoddy, unsafe goods come into this country and I am afraid are sometimes still being made in this country. Surely when one buys something one has a right to assume that it will be safe if it is used in a sensible way. Once goods are on our shop shelves it is often too late to stop them. So I am looking first to see whether importers and distributors can be held more responsible than at present for the safety of what they bring in and distribute. Then I am also looking to see whether we can more quickly get suspect goods off the shelves so that we can act as soon as we begin to suspect that a particular kind of goods may not be safe.
All this links closely with the work on safety standards. We are examining both the quality and safety of goods sold in this country. More than that, however, we expect manufacturers to give far closer consideration to the kind of goods that customers wish to buy. It is clear from St. Michael News how much effort that company has made to discover exactly what the market wants.
I still hear chairmen complaining that too few people buy their goods and people complaining that the goods that they wish to buy are not available. There is still a huge gap between what manufacturers think the market will stand and what the customer actually wants. I do not understand why so many companies watch with amazement while their sales fall and customers go overseas to buy similar goods. The problem is not price, but the quality and style of the goods and their suitability to people's needs. Flexibility is too often lacking.
Listening to my hon. Friend, I wondered how many companies make it easy for the great sleeping army of customers to tell them what they want the company to manufacture. How easy is it for messages to get through? I tried phoning a number of company chairmen through the companies' general switchboards, as though I were an ordinary customer wishing to make a complaint. I assure the House that it is extremely difficult for an ordinary person to register his needs with those who set the policy of manufacturing companies. Companies should do far more to encourage customers to tell them what is needed. They might also give more status to the often underestimated experts in sales promotion.
In the second part of my letter to the chairman of Marks and Spencer, I said: 1126
My job is to see that customers can buy safe goods at the right price and of good quality. Many of the goods are made in this country. If they are not, customers must ask why not and must be able to say what it is that they want to buy. I am concerned that too often it is difficult for a customer to make his needs known to the trader and the manufacturer. Perhaps again you can show others the way.
§ Mr. Neil ThorneI was interested to hear of my hon. Friend's concern for safety in the manufacture of fancy goods and toys. I hope that he will give special consideration to the manufacture of toys which may cause much needless harm to young children. Producers in the Far East who are trying to cash in on this area are turning out a great deal of shoddy work. We have heard recently how dangerous Christmas lights may be if they do not comply with safety standards. I hope that we shall use our ability to stop such rubbish coming into the country in the first place.
I should be glad to hear my hon. Friend's comments about delivery times. British manufacturers are often taken to task for their poor delivery times, although I understand that there has been a considerable improvement in recent years and that that is now much less of a worry than it used to be. Perhaps my hon. Friend will comment briefly on my suggestion that products should carry details as to the percentage by value that is British. Here one thinks particularly of cars, for which the tyres may be made in France, the spark plugs in Belgium, and so on. Anyone who buys a Ford car, for example, needs to look very closely to discover the origin of the bulk of the product. Information of that kind would be helpful. I should be grateful if my hon. Friend would comment on my suggestion of an award to retailers for selling wholly British goods.
§ Dr. VaughanAs I said earlier, my hon. Friend has raised a number of interesting and constructive suggestions. I gladly undertake to look at the possibility of identifying which part of an article is of British origin and which is not. However, there could be difficulties in doing so. I shall also look at the possibility of an award.
On delivery times, I am glad to say that my hon. Friend is talking about the past. Those problems, which at one time received much publicity, are largely non-existent today. Our delivery times are quite as good as, and in many cases a good deal better than, those of many of our competitors.
I share my hon. Friend's anxiety about some of the products now coming into the United Kingdom. I am worried about some of the toys that fall apart and leave sharp and dangerous spikes exposed. I am also worried about the paint used on some imported articles which has high levels of lead or cadmium.
I am most worried by some of the electrical goods now coming into the country, which are extremely dangerous. The recent report on the home accident survey system showed that, apart from cuts and various other accidents caused by loose rugs and other articles in the home, there was a high incidence of accidents occurring as a result of electrical faults. Of the 5,000 deaths in the home in 1980, quite a proportion were due to electrical accidents. We are very concerned about this, and I agree that a greater legal responsibility must be placed on people distributing such goods, either by importing them or by manufacturing them and distributing them through our warehouses.
It is too late to take action once such goods are on shop shelves. Once a rumour circulates that such articles may 1127 be unsafe, a shopkeeper who is worried about his cash flow or who is not a scrupulous trader can rapidly unload those goods on to the general market, often at a cut price. I am looking at the possibility of shortening the gap between suspecting that an article is unsafe or dangerous and the issuing of a prohibition order.
This has been a useful debate, which follows on well from the previous debate on high levels of unemployment. To paraphrase the St. Michael slogan, "Yes, there are jobs to be found in housewives' shopping bags." I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising the subject.