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Mrs. Caroline Spelman (Meriden): Surely the Secretary of State should have mentioned in the same breath that today Massey Ferguson announced that it was feared that 2,000 jobs would be lost at its Coventry factory, because of the difficulties experienced by the company. We should not jump to conclusions; the solution at Marconi may be neutralised by losses in other key manufacturers in the west midlands.
Mr. Byers: It is unfortunate that the hon. Lady did not refer to the whole statement made by the chairman of Massey Ferguson. He said that, if the Government made a commitment to join the single European currency, the
company would retain its commitment--[Hon. Members: "Ah."] That is the truth. The company would retain its commitment to stay in the UK.All those Opposition Members who wear nice, shiny brass pound signs in their lapels should realise that that is a signal to the chairman of Massey Ferguson. It creates the uncertainty that leads him to consider those options. That is the reality; rhetoric about Europe and the single currency is creating uncertainty in the mind of the chairman of Massey Ferguson. A little later in my contribution, I hope that I shall be able to reassure people in his position as to the Government's intentions.
Mr. Jim Cunningham: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, during the past 10 years--especially under the Tory Government--Massey Ferguson shed a large amount of labour, although there were increases in productivity? There has been uncertainty at Massey Ferguson for a long time, as most people are aware. As for the chairman's statement, we all realise that the value of the pound is extremely high and we hope that something can be done about it, but we have not yet heard from the Opposition what they would do about the high pound. The hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) should be careful when she refers to the history of Massey Ferguson.
Mr. Byers: My hon. Friend makes an important point from his personal experience. The chairman's statement was made in the context of the need for certainty about the single European currency.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) rose--
Mr. Byers: I have a difficult choice to make--between the pro and anti-single currency wings of the Conservative party. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman will forgive me, I shall first give way to his Front-Bench colleague, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton.
Mrs. Browning: The Secretary of State is a true gentleman. Given that he has clearly had to make a commitment to Massey Ferguson and to companies like it, will he share with the House the reassurances that he has given them about the Government's commitment to giving up the pound and to joining the euro? What time scale has he set and what does he consider to be the optimum rate of exchange when Britain goes in?
Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington): My right hon. Friend should take the intervention of the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) straight away, so that he can combine the answers.
Mr. Byers: My hon. Friend makes a good suggestion. The right hon. and learned Gentleman may want to intervene after I have given a brief explanation.
The Government's position is absolutely clear: we want to join a successful single European currency. I assure the hon. Lady that we have the five economic tests and that we shall evaluate those five tests early in the next Parliament. That is the Government's policy and we intend to follow it.
Mr. Clarke: The chairman of Massey Ferguson would require a rather better answer than that.
The Secretary of State claimed to have created the conditions that he described, but will he return to the main point? He inherited a circumstance in which we were the fastest-growing major economy in the European Union and we were an extremely attractive base for investment in manufacturing and other industry. He faces the charge that his Government have introduced into that situation higher taxation on business and a much higher level of regulation while doing nothing about the excessive value of the pound. Is he aware how complacent he sounds in the light of all the problems faced by huge numbers of manufacturers across the country?
Mr. Byers: I know that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has a vested interest in talking up this Government's inheritance on the state of the economy. However, he will know that the national debt was increasing, that there were real inflationary pressures and that we did not have sound public finances. Those were the difficulties that we inherited when we took office and we have taken action to address them.
Mr. Byers: I shall give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours).
Mr. Campbell-Savours: The intervention of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, was very interesting. He put through the Transport Act 1985 and that Act, by itself, was responsible for the total destruction of the whole of the British bus manufacturing industry, including the loss of the Leyland national plant in my constituency that produced 2,000 single-decker buses per annum. His deregulation of transport destroyed the industry.
Mr. Byers: My hon. Friend makes an important point. The facts are worth rehearsing for the benefit of the House. In the early 1990s, almost 1 million manufacturing jobs were lost. Some 70,000 of them were in the motor industry, with 13,000 jobs lost in one company alone--GEC in 1991-92--and 20,000 jobs were lost at Ferranti in the first four years of the 1990s. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton talked about the difficulties being experienced by the textile industry. I accept that there are difficulties, but they pale into insignificance when compared with the fact that, in 1992, more than 1,000 textile and clothing manufacturers went bankrupt--three for every single day of the Conservative Government that year. That is the record of the Conservatives.
The hon. Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) raised the issue of international comparisons and it was a point well made. When one considers the levels of manufacturing output or of manufacturing employment in the other major industrialised countries--whether the United States, Japan, Germany or France--all of us, including the United Kingdom, have witnessed a decline in manufacturing employment and in the contribution that it makes to the gross domestic product. We are not alone in the reductions that have taken place. When people argue about levels of employment in manufacturing, we
should remember that it is a decline that has taken place in most industrial countries over the 15 past years or so for reasons that most Members understand.
Mr. Bercow: The Secretary of State simply did not answer the point made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke). Given that the Confederation of British Industry, the Institute of Directors, the Federation of Small Businesses, the Forum of Private Business and the British Chambers of Commerce--to name just five representative business organisations--have all recently attacked the Government for dramatically increasing the regulatory burdens that threaten small business competitiveness, why does the Secretary of State continue to insist that he is right and that they are all wrong?
Mr. Byers: In the debate about regulation and the burden of red tape, a balance needs to be struck between setting minimum standards for genuine entitlements for people in the workplace and red tape and bureaucracy. Of course, Opposition Members confuse the two. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton quoted the cost of regulation as £10 billion, which she took from a survey conducted by the British Chambers of Commerce. However, she did not mention that £6.6 billion of that is the cost of providing an entitlement to four weeks' paid holiday a year. Conservative Members, including the hon. Lady, call that a bureaucratic burden.
More than 3 million people who benefited from that entitlement will note with interest what the hon. Lady said on behalf of the Opposition. For Conservative Members, £6.6 billion means an administrative burden and red tape, but for people in work it is four weeks' paid holiday a year. We call that decency in the workplace, but Conservative Members talk about a bureaucratic burden on business. That is the difference between our two parties: Conservative Members should give some thought to that.
I was interested to learn that the hon. Lady launched the commonsense revolution for small business last week. She spoke about exempting from the whole raft of employment legislation small businesses, which are defined as those with fewer than 10 employees. If I am not right, I stand to be corrected.
Mrs. Browning: That is not right, although it was reported in one newspaper. However, in our "Commonsense Revolution", in which we said that we shall reduce the cost of the burden on business, we said that we shall use the American system, which we have studied carefully, to exempt small businesses. The basis of the exemption will depend on the nature of the legislation. In some cases, it will be based on the number of employees, but in other cases it may be more appropriate to base it on the turnover of the business.
However, the Secretary of State and small business can be sure that we shall follow the American system to which the Prime Minister pays lip service, but does not emulate. We shall make the country competitive and ensure that the Department of Trade and Industry once again stands for enterprise in relation to such regulation.
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