HC Deb 08 June 2000 vol 351 cc406-8
3. Judy Mallaber (Amber Valley)

What action he will take on the recommendations relating to education and training in the strategy document for the United Kingdom clothing and textile industry published on 6 June. [123335]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Ms Margaret Hodge)

I welcome the report and, with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, was pleased to announce a 12-point plan to support the industry and help it to adapt and meet global changes. The industry has a turnover of almost £18 billion, has exports worth more than £5 billion and employs 277,000 people, so it has a strong future and must respond and focus effectively on its key strengths. We have accepted all the recommendations on education and training in the strategy document and have worked actively to establish and support two national training organisations to encourage more effective education and industry links.

Judy Mallaber

I thank my hon. Friend for her reply. I agree and confirm that textiles and clothing remain one of our largest manufacturing sectors and have a positive future, provided that they are helped to adapt to compete in world markets, along the lines suggested in the report. However, in the past decade or so, tens of thousands of workers in the industry have lost their jobs and many more face redundancy. What are the Government doing to help those workers?

Ms Hodge

There have been redundancies in the clothing and textile industry but, each quarter, 8,000 new jobs in the sector are reported to the Employment Service. In areas where there has been concentrated redundancy, such as that in the William Baird case, we have been able to employ rapid response units to good effect to give immediate assistance to people affected by closures. As well as our existing resources, we have identified £2 million of new, additional moneys for the industry.

We have asked the textile and clothing strategy group to report to us by the end of the month with proposals as to how we can establish a pilot to link people who have been made redundant, or who are in danger of redundancy, more swiftly with job opportunities in their locality. We want to know how we can intervene in a fragmented industry where redundancies have a widespread impact. We are also evaluating the effectiveness of the north-east regional taskforce to see whether that has added value.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield)

I welcome the Minister's replies and fully support the views of the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Judy Mallaber). Does the Minister accept that, sadly, the clothing and textile industry will not have a good future unless the large retailers stop pressing down the manufacturers' margins—that would encourage investment and employment—while they themselves operate margins of over 300 per cent?

Will she encourage Departments of State, particularly the Ministry of Defence, to purchase British goods, and not those from overseas? [Interruption.]

Ms Hodge

I am hesitating because I did not know whether I was hearing a contribution from an old Labour market interventionist or a Conservative free marketeer.

Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham)

Where does the suit come from?

Ms Hodge

I have been asked where my clothes come from, and I can tell hon. Members that today I represent the European Union, but my fundamentals are well and truly British.

Mr. Winterton

The Minister has not answered my question.

Madam Speaker

Order. I do not think that the Minister attempted to answer the question, although it was an amusing response.

Mr. Winterton

Am I permitted a point of order, Madam Speaker?

Madam Speaker

I am afraid that I do not allow even the hon. Gentleman a point of order in the middle of Question Time. He may return to the point later, if he wishes. The House will realise that I have given the Minister the opportunity to answer the question, and she appears not to want to do so.

Ms Hodge

I thought that in the first part of my response I was starting to answer the question. The serious point is that, as part of the 12-point plan, we are examining how we can impact on the supply chain to ensure that we protect the textile industry. If the hon. Gentleman were to read the strategy document, he would find that that proposal is incorporated in it.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)

Does the Minister understand that there is nothing wrong with intervention? The Government may have started out in 1997 with the starry-eyed idea that market forces would ensure jobs for everybody in every part of Britain, but the truth is that we have to intervene, and we always have done. Intervention has recently taken place in Rover and other cases, and there is nothing wrong in that. In mining, too, there has been limited intervention, although some of the money will go into Richard Budge's pocket.

I am concerned about the fact that, in Bolsover, 700 textile jobs have been lost in the last three months, which in a small geographical area is equivalent to the Rover job losses. We all know that there has been a seepage of jobs from textiles for donkey's years, but the Government must understand that there is nothing wrong with intervention; market forces will not resolve the problem in peripheral and coalfield areas. Now that the Government have a chance to move away from the operation of market forces and to understand that, to save jobs in textiles and other industries, we have to intervene. If we do that now, before the general election, everything will be all right.

Ms Hodge

That is a serious contribution, and there is a real issue about ensuring that, when the Government intervene—this Government believe in active government and intervention—we do so in a way that ensures that jobs are sustainable over time in an economy that is changing and restructuring fast and that we protect and promote not only the interests of workers, but those of consumers who need to buy those products. The intervention has to be of a nature that will ensure that there is strength and sustainability in the jobs. In the clothing and textile industry, we have to focus on the high-quality, well-designed products that we produce here in Britain, of which we are justly proud.

Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire)

Tubbs Elastics, Sherston, which is in my constituency and is the largest elastics manufacturer in the United Kingdom, is equally concerned—like the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Judy Mallaber)—about the future of the textile and clothing industry. In that context, like the textile and clothing industry generally, it is worried that the so-called summit held the other day and the 12-point plan are all about spin, PR and gimmickry rather than actual substance. As an example of that, is the Minister not ashamed that, on the day when she knew that she would answer a question about the textile and clothing industry, she should barefacedly come to the Dispatch Box wearing a French suit? Is that not an example of the Government's approach to industry? Knowing that she would talk about the industry, why could not she have worn a British suit, for heaven's sake?

Ms Hodge

I tried—[Interruption. I am sure, Madam Speaker, that you would stop me presenting each label on every garment that I am wearing today, but I tried to demonstrate that I am a good European by wearing a mixture of European and British clothes. Can I make a serious point? The Conservative party never did anything to support the textile and clothing industry to restructure and ensure that it had a proper, sustainable future. In response to growing redundancies and problems in the area, we have put together a group that has produced a report, and I suggest that the hon. Gentleman read it. This is the start of action. If he is suggesting that we as a Government should be protecting sectors of an industry that are unsustainable, that is a massive shift in Conservative party policy.