§ Lord Taylor of Warwickasked Her Majesty's Government:
What plans they have to address the reduction in size of the manufacturing workforce by 116.000 workers in the three months to November 2003. [HL835]
§ Lord Sainsbury of TurvilleA trend of declining manufacturing employment has been a feature of advanced economies over the past 30 years. Even so, new jobs are created all the time. Around 250,000 manufacturing vacancies were reported to Jobcentre Plus in the past year. Where there are signficant redundancies in the manufacturing sector, the Rapid Response Service works to move people quickly into new jobs, preventing them becoming detached from the labour market. Overall the UK labour market is performing well, with total employment rising by nearly 1.7 million since spring 1997, and unemployment falling in every region in Britain over the past year.
We published the Government's manufacturing strategy in May 2002—the first such strategy for 30 years—which we developed in partnership with industry, trade unions and other stakeholders, following a summit meeting on the challenges facing manufacturing held in December 2001. The manufacturing strategy aims to create a high value manufacturing sector in the UK with a highly skilled well paid workforce, moving away from competing on the basis of low skill and low wages.