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Mr. Lansley: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Have Ministers approached you seeking to make a statement to correct a figure in the Red Book that is clearly wrong? On page 26, the figure for current receipts at £335 billion is clearly at odds with the more accurate figure on page 151 of £345 billion. It is important for the House to have correct information on which to base our debates.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): That is not a point of order for the Chair, but no doubt Ministers will have heard the hon. Gentleman's point.
6.8 pm
Mr. Barry Jones (Alyn and Deeside): It is always a pleasure and a privilege to follow the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Sir M. Spicer). I was glad to hear the speech of the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown). I was not glad that it was his last response to the Budget as leader of the Liberal Democrats. I think that I have heard every one of his Budget speeches.
Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster), I appreciated the way in which the Leader of the Opposition responded this afternoon. He made a good fist of it, as indeed he did of being Secretary of State for Wales. I did not agree with a word that he said--I will take out that insurance--but I was not surprised to see him come to the Dispatch Box in that manner. Such performances bring the House alive.
I very much appreciated the contribution of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. As far as I could assess it, it was a Budget for social justice and an agenda for economic regeneration. As ever, it was delivered with an easy command; sometimes humorously, sometimes teasingly, sometimes mockingly. It was produced well, and I thought it very heartening. I especially appreciated the measures that my right hon. Friend announced for our pensioners, which will be warmly welcomed in every constituency. I was much taken also by the imaginative announcement that every school will get a large subvention to be spent on books, which are a measure of our civilisation. That proposal is not before time and our children can only benefit from it. I was glad that my right hon. Friend found the time, in a complicated Budget, to make a statement of such significance for our children.
The Budget will be a boost for Wales. I estimate that Wales will receive some £1 billion, and that is magnificent news from which Wales will benefit hugely. That £1 billion will be spent on schools and hospitals, and on help for our people in Wales to get back into work. It will also be used to cut taxes to widen opportunities for families. Some 500,000 Welsh pensioners will benefit and they will see a real difference this winter in their incomes, with the winter allowance being increased to £100, from £20 and £50 for those on income support. I also calculate that pensioners will benefit from the new guarantee on tax.
The Budget was a clever one and will be successful. The country needed it, but I agree with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor that we must close the productivity gap with our competitors. We must steer a stable course for lasting prosperity, and we need high and stable levels of growth and employment.
Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland, my theme will be manufacturing. I am not as critical as he is, because I heard much in the Budget on the subject of manufacturing that encourages me. I will take any help that the Government give to manufacturing.
In my constituency, manufacturing remains a top priority, as it is for Wales and the whole of Britain. I want more manufacturing, and so does my constituency. I want to see small and medium enterprises, not just large factories, benefiting from Government measures. In Wales, we still overwhelmingly depend on small businesses. I welcome the new measures. Do they mean that we will invest more in capital plant and research? I believe that the answer is yes, but I have not read the small print.
The Government should act to enhance the standing of careers in manufacturing. We should have more measures aimed at making it a priority for our school leavers and graduates to enter manufacturing. Manufacturing as a career should have status and reward. I am far from sure that it has had that image in this century so far. As part of that process, more policy makers should have manufacturing experiences, and I draw a parallel with the Industry and Parliament Trust. Officials in our civil service and other policy makers need more experience in our manufacturing industries.
I wish to single out the steel industry. We need short-term measures to deal with the dumped and subsidised steel that is now flooding into the European Union and this country as a result of the collapse of the Asian economies. The consequence of the Asian crisis is now being visited on the European and British steel industries. Specifically, we need a cap on the electricity pool price and recognition that the steel industry is an intensive energy user. The industry faces sometimes ruinous costs for energy. We also need a negotiated agreement on the environmental consequences of steel making. Such an agreement needs teeth, but it should be negotiated because, without it, further costs could be imposed on what is still a great industry.
Steel in Britain is a success story. Shotton steelworks is in my constituency and I have observed its steelworkers meet every challenge set by the company. Like the British steel industry, Shotton steelworks is a thundering success. Output per employee has risen fivefold in the past 20 years. I thank the industry and my constituents, the steelworkers at Shotton, for that. The steelworks has
achieved a 10 per cent. per annum increase and the industry now exports 50 per cent. of United Kingdom production. Two out of every three tonnes go to the European Union and Germany is our biggest customer. One problem is still the strength of the pound; because of the burden that the strength of the pound places on our steel exports, I ask the Government to introduce urgent measures to assist the industry.
No hon. Member would deny that the aerospace industry boosts our export earnings. There are 3,700 British Aerospace workers on Deeside. They have called for more support for research and technology development in the industry. I must give credit to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, because he mentioned research, technology and investment in that sphere, but we need to know how much and how soon. Will the amount meet the demands already expressed by the industry?
Investment launch aid is how huge projects in the industry become successful. It is Government assistance, but British Aerospace repays it over the years from its profits. So far, investment launch aid has been a winner and British Aerospace is paying back handsomely for the investment aid that it has had in years gone by. British Aerospace and Airbus Industrie in Europe have a colossal and mighty competitor in Boeing. At one time, Boeing swept everything before it. British Aerospace and Airbus have fought back and, arguably, they now have parity with Boeing. However, if they are to continue to deliver exports of high value, the industry will need more investment launch aid.
Mr. David Maclean (Penrith and The Border):
I have listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman's comments about the pressures on British manufacturing industry, especially aerospace, compared with Boeing. Is he worried that, while Boeing is able to thrive in the USA in a highly deregulated economy, we are imposing more regulatory burdens on all our industries--including aerospace--making them less competitive?
Mr. Jones:
I am not complacent, but I do not share the right hon. Gentleman's worry. If ever a brutal blow were delivered to British manufacturing, it fell between 1979 and 1982 when at least 2 million manufacturing jobs were lost because of the deliberate policies of the thenMrs. Thatcher, Sir Geoffrey Howe and Sir Keith Joseph. Those three highly placed Ministers dealt a brutal blow to the future of British manufacturing, and that is one of the reasons behind what I am saying today.
I have only £535 million in mind as investment launch aid--perhaps before the end of the year--for the latest airbus project, the ACXX. That would be the largest civil airliner ever built and marketed, and it would take on the Boeing empire. I request those funds on behalf of my constituents.
There is a proposal that Britain should purchase 40 to 50 heavy-lift aircraft, previously known as the future large aircraft project. I hope that the Government will make a decision on that soon, and I propose that British Aerospace and the airbus consortium should be asked to build the aircraft. My constituents would willingly, happily and skilfully make the wings for that aircraft, as well as wings for the ACXX.
Our aerospace manufacturing industry is the most efficient in Europe. In 1997, it generated more than£15 billion-worth of sales, and it directly employed
121,000 people. The industry consistently makes a major contribution to our balance of payments. In 1997, it contributed £3.1 billion to the trade balance. Maintaining the competitive position of that great industrial sector is important to our country. It creates wealth, and it generates a large number of high-quality jobs.
In 1997, the civil aircraft sector in Britain provided 46 per cent. of our country's aerospace sales. We should be proud of that record. The leading company in the civil airframe sector is British Aerospace, along with its subsidiary, British Aerospace Airbus Ltd. which manages the company's 20 per cent. shareholding in Airbus Industrie. At the end of October 1998, Airbus Industrie had secured total orders for 3,140 civil aircraft. I was delighted that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry was able to celebrate with my constituents and me on Deeside the delivery last month of the 2,000th wing set from the Broughton factory.
Current airbus programmes provide direct employment for more than 21,000 people who work in British Aerospace factories or for major equipment and raw material suppliers and for the smaller companies that supply goods and services. The wealth created by airbus work is estimated to sustain a further 41,000 jobs in Great Britain. That makes a total of 62,000 jobs sustained by the programmes, in my constituency, in Wales, in Scotland and in England. That sector of manufacturing industry is making a massive contribution to the fortunes of Britain and the European Union.
I interpreted positively what I heard from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor about research and manufacturing. However, I would like the Ministers to confirm that my interpretation is correct. This great industry generates not only work, but skills. It trains in the local community, and it supports the education action zones. It contributes to, and sustains, the new deal. British Aerospace is an industry of which my constituency is proud.
The Treasury and the Ministry of Defence work together closely on huge projects. I have met Ministers at the Department of Trade and Industry, the Welsh Office and the MOD to talk about the latter's £750 million airborne stand-off radar project, for which a competition is being run. My plea to the Government is that they should resolve to give the project to Raytheon, which is in my constituency. Several hundred highly skilled workers there know that 400 or more jobs would be created over several years, and Britain would also experience a transfer of technology.
An important review relating to British manufacturing is the current review of the assisted area map. It is vital that our constituencies continue to receive the benefit of assisted area status. Deeside suffered Europe's largest ever redundancy in 1980, when 8,000 job losses were announced in one day. It was estimated that at least 10,000 consequential jobs were also lost. We got over that terrible blow to a fair degree because we were given assisted area status, from which infrastructural developments resulted.
I do not want my constituency to lose assisted area status. I have said so to the DTI, the Welsh Office and the Treasury. Ministers have given me a fair hearing, for which I am grateful, when I have approached them on my constituents' behalf. Flintshire county council has put forward a fine case, which I support to the hilt. We have
lost a lot of jobs in the past year, although we have gained jobs, too. All the evidence suggests that the loss of assisted area status would deal us a severe blow.
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor rightly made much of the new money that he announced for schools and hospital trusts. I thank him for that, but I have a question for him: can he be sure that the money for schools and hospital trusts will be spent wisely, prudently and against the headings earmarked for it? I am not sure.
The money is urgently needed, and I suggest that the Treasury should set up an audit so that every local education authority and hospital trust has to show where the new money is spent. They would have to show that it was used for the purposes identified by the Chancellor. I am not saying that Flintshire's LEA does anything other than spend wisely. However, in general, I suspect that Ministers' generosity is sometimes misplaced at the grassroots level.
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