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23 Jan 2003 : Column 537—continued
Business of the House
- That, at the sitting on Thursday 30th January, proceedings on the Motion in the name of Mr Iain Duncan Smith shall lapse, if not previously concluded, at Six o'clock or three hours after they have been entered upon, whichever is the later; proceedings may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and the Orders of the House of 28th June 2001 and 29th October 2002 relating to deferred Divisions shall not apply to them.—[Mr. Heppell.]
Sittings in Westminster Hall
- That Sir Nicholas Winterton, Mr John McWilliam, Mr Frank Cook and Mr Edward O'Hara be appointed to act as additional Deputy Speakers at sittings in Westminster Hall during this Session.—[Mr. Heppell.]
notices of questions, motions and amendments
- That Standing Order No. 22 (Notices of questions, motions and amendments) be amended, by inserting, after 'Wales' in line 40, the words 'and the Advocate General'.—[Mr. Heppell.]
Scottish Grand Committee
- That the Scottish Grand Committee shall meet at Westminster on Wednesday 12th February at half-past Two o'clock to consider a substantive Motion for the adjournment of the Committee, the proceedings to be interrupted at Five o'clock.—[Mr. Heppell.]
Northern Ireland Grand Committee
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 115(1) (Northern Ireland Grand Committee (delegated legislation)),
- That—
(1) the draft Strategic Investment and Regeneration of Sites (Northern Ireland) Order 2003 be referred to the Northern Ireland Grand Committee;
(2) the Committee shall meet at Westminster on Tuesday 4th February at half-past Two o'clock; and
(3) at that sitting the Committee shall consider the instrument referred to it under paragraph (1) above.—[Mr. Heppell.]
PETITION
Sentences
6.12 pm
Mr. Andrew Rosindell (Romford): It is with great sadness that I rise to present a petition to the House on behalf of no less than 41,000 constituents of mine and of constituencies neighbouring Romford.
On 14 December 2001 a tragic event took place in London road in my constituency, Romford, where Scott Young was punched in the face, fell into the path of a passing car and was tragically killed. His parents, Kim and Ray, their daughter Clare, the entire family and friends from around Romford and Havering have spent the past six months collecting 41,000 signatures from the local community.
The people of my constituency are outraged that the person who perpetrated that wicked crime received only three years in prison. It is said that within a year he will be released on parole. The Home Secretary today met the parents of Scott Young, and I am pleased that he agreed to take up the case and see what else can be done to bring justice.
- The petition of residents of Romford and the surrounding areas declares that the sentence given to Yannick Etutu for the manslaughter of Scott Young is entirely inappropriate and should have been much longer.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Secretary of State for Home Affairs to review this sentence and introduce legislation that will ensure more appropriate sentences for this type of crime in the future.
And the petitioners remain etc.
Garrett (Honeywell International)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Heppell.]
6.15 pm
Mr. Colin Pickthall (West Lancashire): I am extremely grateful for having been given the opportunity to discuss this matter with the Minister this evening. For the sake of the record, I want to correct the Order Paper's spelling of the name of the firm, Garrett, which might otherwise alarm workers in another firm.
Just before Christmas, the parent company of Garrett in my constituency, Honeywell International of New Jersey, announced the factory's closure later this year. That ends the jobs of 350 directly employed and highly skilled workers in Skelmersdale. In the time that is available to me, I want to make clear to the Minister the nature of this economic and social tragedy in my constituency. I also wish briefly to comment on a wider issue that it illustrates all too clearly—the bloodless way in which multinational companies can operate and the part that they seem to be playing in stripping Britain of sizeable chunks of its manufacturing industry.
Garrett manufactures turbochargers for passenger car diesel engines and commercial vehicle diesel engines. The firm is the centre of excellence for the manufacture of commercial vehicle turbochargers in Europe. It has operated in Skelmersdale for almost 30 years. Garrett is profitable and efficient, and it has a market. Some 70 per cent. of its production for passenger car turbochargers supplies the Dagenham engine plant. That amounts to a total of 500,000 turbochargers in 2002.
The high quality of the product and the work force are acknowledged even by Honeywell International. The work force at the factory total 470. All the direct manufacturing jobs are to go, leaving design, testing and development personnel in Skelmersdale. Of course, I am very glad for them, however temporary that arrangement might prove—we do not know yet—but the fact that those jobs will remain scarcely moderates the scale of the disaster.
Skelmersdale is a smallish town of 42,000 people and small and medium-sized firms. Garrett is the largest private sector employer in the town. Indeed, I believe that it is second only to the local authority out of all the employers in the town. It is also one of the highest paying firms, if not the highest paying. It is the firm that most workers and young people in the town have, for as long as I can remember, always aspired to get into. Of course, its reputation for training and skills training only exaggerated that bias among the work force.
While unemployment in Skelmersdale has diminished vastly since 1997, it is still a lot higher than the national average, and the majority of jobs in the town are low paid and low skill.
The end of manufacturing at Garrett is therefore a substantial psychological as well as economic catastrophe for the town. Why has it happened? The simple answer appears to be that Honeywell has made the decision because it can. Its central reason is that work will be moved to Romania because wages there are a fraction—an eighth—of those in the United Kingdom.
Honeywell International has three plants in Europe: Thaon-les-Vosges in France, Atessa in Italy and Garrett in Skelmersdale. Its plan is to move the car turbocharger
work from Skelmersdale to Atessa in the next six months. At the same time, a similar amount of work will move from the Atessa plant to the plant near Bucharest. The manufacture of commercial vehicle turbochargers from Skelmersdale will move straight to Romania later.The company has given other reasons apart from wages. It claims that there is overcapacity in Europe and that there is no sign of an upturn in demand for several years. It says that it therefore needs to reduce the number of plants. However, it is not doing that; it is simply moving the three around a little and opening another in Romania. It claims that the cost of closing the Skem plant is less than that of closing either the French or the Italian plants. Other multinational companies have presented such arguments and they have often been discussed in the Chamber.
However, perhaps most chilling for us in government is the fact that Honeywell tells us that the customer and supply base is moving to eastern Europe. That means that car manufacturing and the manufacture of the appropriate components is moving slowly but surely towards eastern Europe.
I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) is present. She lived in Skelmersdale for many years and was a distinguished representative on the county council and district council. She knows all the arguments from her many years in Skelmersdale.
I have supplied the Minister's office with a copy of a paper that Amicus AEEU prepared. I am grateful to Harry Howard of AEEU and John Jones, the plant manager at Garrett, for the information that they prepared for me, and hence indirectly for the Minister. The company's documentation includes graphic illustration of the apparently inexorable move of car manufacturing and component supply eastwards to the low-pay areas of eastern Europe. I am sorry that I cannot read the map into Hansard, because it is so graphic.
I have nothing against the development of Romania, and I wish that country well. After some years, Romanian wages and conditions of service may improve—I hope that they will—to match ours. Presumably car manufacturing and other branches of engineering will then start moving even further east. To some extent, that is already happening.
In 2001, Ford at Dagenham applied pressure on the component manufacturers, including Garrett, that supplied its engine plant to relocate to the industrial park surrounding the Dagenham plant because of the express need to make the supply lines as short as possible. After the changes that I have described by Honeywell, the supply line will stretch 1,100 miles to Atessa or 1,500 miles to Bucharest.
Garrett workers suspect—I put it no more strongly because they did not—that the apparently illogical move of the work to eastern Europe is part of what Honeywell describes as the migration of the car industry eastward.
I have no knowledge of Ford's view of this development, but I would be very interested to hear it. I have alerted my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham
(Jon Cruddas) to the possible implications of Garrett's move for the Dagenham engine plant. Will Ford tolerate a 1,500-mile supply line for this component? Do not all passenger car manufacturers have a strategy of establishing industrial parks around their assembly plants, in which their component manufacturers will be concentrated? I concede that that makes both economic and environmental sense. I would not suggest for one moment that Ford would follow a component supplier to the other side of Europe. That would be a case of the tail wagging the dog. I suggest, however, that the eastward migration that I have described may eventually involve both.There may be many factors involved in such a migration of engineering and manufacturing, and this is the second engineering firm to move out from Skelmersdale to Romania in the last couple of years in almost precisely the same circumstances. Those factors include the level of the pound, the fact that we are outside the euro—a fact that Honeywell cited—and the comparative ease with which companies can close down plants in the UK, compared with the way in which obstacles are placed in the way of that in many of our European partner countries.
I know that the scenario that I am describing is not uncommon in manufacturing industry across the north-west. Indeed, I am embarrassingly aware that the Minister and his colleagues in the DTI have rather more Adjournment debates, questions and deputations than they would like, and I am sorry to have to add to that number.
In Skelmersdale, I represent a town with a long and painful history of unemployment and economic disadvantage, which crippled it during the Thatcher and Major years. Since 1997, thanks to its own strenuous efforts, substantial help from the Labour Government, and positive proaction from the county council and the district council, Skelmersdale's economy and, therefore, its community life have improved in a marvellous way. I am very proud of the part that the Labour Government and the Labour authorities have played in that.
Through thick and thin—most of it thin, I have to say—Garrett has been a solid rock of skill and success in Skelmersdale. It is, therefore, bitterly ironic that in the generally auspicious circumstances that we now have, faceless men or women sitting in New Jersey should snuff out such a success story in a game of long-distance chess, by
- "seizing the opportunity to take cost out of our European operation",
In summary, I want to put some questions to my hon. Friend the Minister. I am well aware of the restrictions on what he can do about them. First, what advice and help can the DTI offer to the work force and the management at Garrett in relation to combating the
closure and coping with its consequences, if and when it happens? Will he be able to find the time to meet workers and management from the firm, or possibly even to talk to Honeywell? Secondly, what, if any, leverage can the DTI bring to bear on an international company such as Honeywell to make it think again on this export of jobs? Thirdly, what is the scale of the exporting of engineering and manufacturing from the UK to eastern Europe and, indeed, to the EU? Would it be possible to break that figure down for the north-west? Fourthly, will the Minister examine the fact that Garrett's move to Romania could have serious implications for Dagenham?If my hon. Friend cannot reply to, in particular, my third and fourth questions, I hope he will write to me at some point.
As I have said, Garrett is not a weak or a struggling firm; quite the reverse. It is a firm of the highest quality, producing high-quality products, with a first-class work force. Its closure is not just a tragedy for Skelmersdale. It strikes me as a frightening portent of things to come.
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