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Richmond upon Thames Liberal Democrats:Covering the constituencies of Twickenham and Richmond Park |
Vince Cable: Foreign companies can make British manufacturing great again
August 28, 2011 12:49 PM
• [Aug 22] Vince Cable writes: IT is easy to see where the negative thinking about manufacturing came from: the disastrous, destructive, industrial militancy of the 1960s and '70s, the rapid decline in manufacturing employment in the early 1980s and then, the even bigger retreat in the last decade. After 1997 the shape of manufacturing in the economy shrunk faster than in any other major country and now we look at Germany, Japan, Korea and China and ask how British firms and workers compete.
They can and do. In my job as Business Secretary I get to see the machine makers who export to Japan, the cycle company which exports to China, the car manufacturers who sell engines to Germany, the food companies who out-compete the French, the rebirth of British motorcycle manufacturing, and much more . .
. . Last, but not least, the new industrial Britain challenges our traditional ideas about patriotism. There are, of course, still great traditional British companies like Rolls-Royce. But most struggle to think of many more. And after British owners and managers ran the car industry into the ground, it was Japanese and American owner investment, management and technology which turned it around. Some of our most impressive industrial plants I have visited are Indian (Tata in steel and vehicles), German (Bentley, part of VW and BMW which make the Mini), French (co-owners of Airbus), Japanese (Toyota as well as Honda and Nissan) and Malaysian (Lotus). Hewlett-Packard has recently acquired Autonomy in Cambridge in order to bring their advanced software development into the UK.
Global companies can spring nasty surprises (like Pfizer in Sandwich). But Britain is proving that it is an attractive place in which to make things and we welcome overseas companies who work to make British manufacturing great again.
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