Economy and Finance

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate and to congratulate my noble friend. Not only did he make a really good speech, he has shown over many years a real consistency in terms of good business, making sure that business is supported and seen as part of the nature of our society and our communities. In a sense, that is what I should have liked to pursue in my remarks, but I am afraid I shall upset the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, because I, too, will have a rant about the crisis that we have been plunged into, totally unnecessarily, and the effect that it will have on my region, which I suspect he does not know in any great depth.

Those of us who come from the north-east—I shall have to be careful not simply to repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said—are extremely concerned about the referendum and the potential effect on our region. I very much agree with my noble friend Lord McFall on referendums, and I think this one is not about listening to the British people. I could not help but smile when I heard the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, talk about the great debate. It has been a terrible debate and most of the British people are turned off by it, but they know that they will have to make a decision when they do not feel that they have heard honest assessments of what the outcomes will mean.

What sort of economy do we want? That is where I want to start. I am dismayed that many of the people who are talking about leaving say that manufacturing is not as important as it used to be, and they are satisfied with that. I want an economy that takes manufacturing seriously and goes back to understanding that what we are able to make is still very important. Yes, services are important and I am pleased that the European Union is well down the track in negotiating a service agreement and free trade, in addition to the current agreements that there are within Europe. None the less, I would have thought we had learned the lessons from the crash and what happened to the banks and to the rest of us following that crash. A service industry-led economy will have problems. We need a strong manufacturing economy to make sure that services can succeed.

In the north-east in 2014, we exported £7 billion of goods to the European Union. That was 56% of the total of goods exported from this country. Is it any wonder that those of us from the north-east are very worried about Brexit when we overwhelmingly export the most of what this country exports to Europe? We know that we have to increase the amount so that we can do such things as tackle what is still the largest unemployment rate in the country. We want to do that around jobs that people can value and where they are valued in doing those jobs.

Think about Nissan and consider all the arguments that took place in our region, and elsewhere when Nissan first came to Sunderland. It is now the UK’s largest car manufacturing facility. One in three cars built in the UK are built in the town I was born in. That is a matter of pride. When I talk to people who work at Nissan, they have an amazing experience. I have one friend whose son started at Nissan, having had a somewhat troubled adolescence, I might say. His dad was just so pleased that he got a job. Then he got involved in training and ended up being a senior salesperson who frequently went across to Europe to make sure that the cars were sold. Nobody would have imagined him doing that. That was because the company got hold of training, spotted his potential and developed it even though he did not join with lots of qualifications. Nissan built more than 500,000 cars in 2013 and more than 80% of those were exported. The bulk went to Europe; most of the rest went to other countries on the back of EU agreements with them.

Hitachi has now established itself in Newton Aycliffe, which is not very far from the constituency that I represented in County Durham. It is building trains there. Its chairman made absolutely clear a couple of weeks ago that the only reason it came to the UK was because it is a gateway to Europe. We know from Nissan’s example that Japanese manufacturers like to be in the UK because English is their second language. Hitachi’s chairman came to the north-east because of very good negotiating from my honourable friend the Member for Sedgefield in the other House, Phil Wilson. It has just started and has made clear that it is thinking about contingency plans in case Brexit goes wrong. Its investment is there because the UK is the gateway to Europe.

I have lots more to say about other companies, but I do not have time. This is a rant, but it comes from the heart because I want my region to continue to succeed and succeed even more. It will not if we leave Europe.