Manufacturing Industry

Part of Opposition Day – in the House of Commons at 5:51 pm on 24 January 2001.

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Photo of Kelvin Hopkins Kelvin Hopkins Labour, Luton North 5:51, 24 January 2001

I define strength or weakness by the trading position. If there is a massive trade deficit with a particular country, that might indicate that the currency is overvalued against that country's currency. It is said that our currency is weak against the dollar, but we need to demonstrate the truth of that before I would accept the case. I do not accept that we have a big trade deficit with America.

We could go into details, but I shall mention one country that was condemned during the far east meltdown a couple of years ago—Malaysia. It was said then that one must suspend, or not impose, exchange controls and not devalue; however, Malaysia did the opposite and within a year the country bounced back. It imposed exchange controls and quickly devalued. That upset the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, but Malaysia recovered and everyone said, "How clever". People were astonished that the strategy worked—but I thought it was obvious, basic economics.

Last week, an interesting article in The Guardian referred to a rumour that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State plans to intervene in the steel sector over Corus, to try to help to sustain the industry for the future. I am glad about that. It is important not only electorally—obviously—but for the future of our country. We cannot let the steel industry go, although its volume has declined relative to that in similar economies. We must sustain steel, motor manufacturing and other sectors.

The headline of the article was "Intervene—or kiss goodbye to industry". In the 1970s, I worked for the Trades Union Congress where I was heavily involved with Labour's industrial strategy and with an organisation called NEDDY—the National Economic Development Council. Although NEDDY was not the greatest show in the world and did not achieve much, it focused attention on the problems of particular industries and tried to find solutions. It was extremely useful in exposing the problems of industry.

The Conservative Government—Mrs. Thatcher's Tories—abolished NEDDY at a stroke; they did not believe in even discussing the problems of industry, let alone in trying to solve them. At least the Labour Government are trying seriously to consider industry. I hope that the rumours about intervention are true and that the Government will go much further than the article suggests.