Tag: John Butcher

Below is the text of the speech made by John Butcher, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, in the House of Commons on 13 March 1986.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, North-West (Sir A. Meyer) for bringing this subject to the attention of the House. Many of my colleagues have observed his healthy fixation with this matter. He is motivated purely by a desire to help Europe produce a truly common market against which our industrial companies can make their marketing plans and, we hope, go on to achieve success on a world scale having taken advantage of that large and burgeoning market.

My hon. Friend has asked two key questions—does Europe face an industrial problem and, if so, what can Governments do to tackle it, acting together in the European Community? In other words, do we need a European industrial policy and, if so, what sort of policy should it be?

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that there is a problem—a problem for Europe as a whole as well as for us in Britain. It is a problem of competitiveness: the global competitiveness of some sectors of European industry. It is manifest in the painful process of adjustment that has been necessary in our industrial structures, which is not yet complete. It is manifest equally in Europe’s relative weakness compared to the United States and Japan. Success is crucial in the new technologies if we are to create the wealth and jobs that our societies need.

The symptoms are well known. The European Community’s share of export markets in some fast-growing sectors has declined. Between 1973 and 1983, for example, the European Commission has estimated that the Community’s share of export markets in electrical and electronic products declined by just under 2 per cent., while the United States and Japanese shares in the same sectors increased.

Import penetration in similar sectors has increased faster in the Community market than in the markets of its major competitors. In information technology and electronics, for example, it has been estimated that penetration rates between 1973 and 1982 rose from 10 per cent. to 17 per cent. in the EEC; from around 6 per cent. to around 10 per cent. in the United States; and from around 4 per cent. to around 5 per cent. in Japan. Europe has been less successful than either the United States or Japan in creating new jobs. Since 1972, an additional 19 million jobs have been created in the United States and 5 million in Japan. In Europe as a whole, with a much larger overall population, employment levels have remained virtually static.

What, then, can Governments usefully do to strengthen Europe’s industrial capability? Two strategies are sometimes suggested which would clearly not help—indeed, they would make matters worse. One is a strategy ​ of generalised protection: Fortress Europe. The other is a strategy of generalised state subsidy and state intervention. Both would be costly to consumers and taxpayers. Both would be anti-competitive, distort the market and blunt the edge of the primary stimulus to commercial success. For these reasons, neither strategy would ultimately work.

As I see it, an effective European industrial policy must have three basic objectives. First, it must open up the internal Community market, making a reality of the single, integrated market envisaged in the treaty of Rome. It must improve the climate for enterprise in Europe, not least by tackling regulatory burdens on business. It must encourage closer market-led collaboration between European businesses, above all in advanced technology.

The first of those objectives is fundamental. The sheer size of their home markets and the economies of scale that they afford offer American and Japanese industry a major competitive advantage. The creation of a similarly integrated domestic market for European business is perhaps the most important single step we can take to strengthen Europe’s industrial performance.

The goal is a genuine European market of 320 million customers, matching the 230 million customers in the domestic market of the United States and the 120 million in the domestic market of Japan. The European Community has been working towards this goal for nearly 30 years. It still eludes us. True, tariff barriers and quotas have been effectively eliminated in intra-Community trade. But the free movement of goods throughout the Community is still obstructed by “non-tariff’ barriers, such as frontier formalities and differing national product standards.

Similarly, the growth of a free and competitive market for services, particularly in sectors such as financial services and transport, which provide essential service infrastructure for manufacturing, is blocked by a range of restrictions in many member states. The efficient functioning of the European market as a whole is distorted by the protective use of public purchasing and other public sector aids. There is a new determination in Europe to tackle these problems.

Last June, the European Council at Milan endorsed the broad thrust of an important White Paper from the Commission that set out a detailed plan for action required to complete the internal Community market by 1992.
Mr. Speaker, it may be because of the early hour, but it is interesting to note that in the copy of my speech, the word “internal” looks disconcertingly like the word “infernal”. It may be something to do with the typewriter.

The United Kingdom and the Netherlands, as the two countries occupying the Community presidency this year, have produced jointly the action programme targeting more than 100 issues for decision by the end of 1986. It will be a central aim of our presidency, in the second half of the year, to maintain maximum impetus behind that programme.

A second aim of European industrial policy should be to improve the framework within which industry operates. That is partly a matter of action at national level on a wide variety of fronts. We in Britain are increasingly aware of the need to promote more positive attitudes to industry and to wealth creation; to make our education system more responsive to industrial needs; and to cut the burden of regulation on business. They are priority concerns for many of our Community partners, too.

The third objective that I identified was to promote European business collaboration in advanced technology. In telecommunications, for example, about 15 European companies are competing for a share of the European market—as compared with the four or five giant American firms which dominate the United States market. The pattern is much the same in other growth sectors. Collaboration within an increasingly integrated European market is inevitable if a competitive European presence in those sectors is to survive.

Collaboration in research and development—spreading risks, spreading costs and exploiting the strength of pooled resources—is one major way forward. The Community has developed some important support schemes to encourage collaborative R and D at the so-called ”pre-competitive” stage. The ESPRIT programme, for example, which is focused on information technology and complementing our Alvey programme, is starting to gather pace. We have the BRITIE programme for industrial technology, and RACE for broad-band communications.

Such programmes reflect a welcome shift of emphasis in Community-funded research. They are directly relevant to industrial needs. They use Community money—public money—to stimulate spending by business. In discussions which are starting in Brussels on a new framework programme for Community R and D in the five years 1987–91 we are determined to encourage this trend towards market-oriented, cost-effective effort.

But action at Community level is not the end of the story. Industrial collaboration in Europe can often usefully extend beyond the 12 member states. The aim must be to develop specific products or services which will be competitive on world markets. Both those elements are central to the EUREKA initiative. EUREKA is giving major impetus to European collaboration in new technology. Eighteen European countries are involved. More than 20 collaborative projects are already at an advanced stage, and British firms are participating in six of them. They are actively pursuing proposals in many other areas. We are currently hosting and chairing the EUREKA discussions. It is fair to say that our thinking has made a major contribution to the shape of the initiative, following its successful launch by President Mitterrand last year.

EUREKA is not, and could not sensibly become, a new financing mechanism. Finance for EUREKA projects is a matter for the participating firms, with support where appropriate from their national Governments under national schemes. I should add in this connection that British firms participating in worthwhile EUREKA projects can qualify for assistance under our existing R and D support schemes.

EUREKA offers two important advantages to industry. First, it will wire British and other European firms into a Europe-wide network for the exchange of information on new collaborative proposals and opportunities. Secondly, and even more important, it will provide a framework in which business and Governments can identify, and put new momentum behind, concrete action in the Community and elsewhere, to open the European market for the benefit of the projects concerned. There could be action, for example, to generate new European technical standards or to liberalise public sector purchasing.

I have outlined what, as we see it, is a co-ordinated European industrial policy and what it can sensibly seek to achieve. I hope that my hon. Friend agrees that no ​ industrial policy vacuum in Europe is crying out to be filled. The reality, rather, is that the Community as a whole is already acting in the areas I have described to strengthen Europe’s industrial base. Progress in those areas is essential for the health and competitiveness of industry in Britain and in other member states. We are throwing our full weight behind the initiatives in hand.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, North-West for bringing this matter to the attention of the House. I noted his endorsement of the need for what he called a Minister responsible for co-ordinating procurement and industrial policies generally, and his suggestion that full weight be given to the European alternative. No doubt those words, which are now on the record, will be noted in the appropriate quarter. In the interests of the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike), who, with great professionalism, has decided to launch his debate at 7.34 am, and those of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, the best thing that I can do now is to thank my hon. Friend once again and to wish you, Mr. Speaker, a very good morning.

Below is the text of the speech made by John Butcher, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, in the House of Commons on 11 December 1985.

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Derbyshire, West (Mr. Parris) and for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim) for raising this subject. This is the fourth time that this issue has been raised on the Floor of the House. Congratulating my hon. Friends on their tenacity and persistence is very much in order.

I shall try to deal with the issues that my hon. Friends have raised in the context of regional policy as amended by our review of 12 months ago. I shall go as far as I can within the bounds of commercial confidentiality. This issue has always posed excruciating dilemmas for successive Governments during the past 25 years. My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, West mentioned the strategic industrial point about what a Government do when they are posed with a choice between losing a facility from the United Kingdom entirely by not giving support and using regional policy lo retain work in the United Kingdom. I would welcome a discussion of that, perhaps on the Floor of the House, depending on what my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House does for us soon. The issue preoccupies the Department of Trade and Industry.

I am grateful to my hon. Friends for providing this opportunity to reply to what they said about assistance to English Sewing Ltd. Perhaps I should start by setting out the facts in so far as I am able within the bounds of commercial confidentiality.

The basis of the company’s application has been that it has made a commercial decision that it must rationalize ​ its activities in England and Scotland and move to a purpose-built factory if it is to retain its operation within the United Kingdom. I listened carefully to my hon. Friend’s explanation of the company’s view that it was a serious proposition. After long deliberation, the company decided that the most efficient solution would be to extend and improve its existing operations at Newton Mearns and Neilston in Scotland.

The net effect of the project on employment would be to safeguard a substantial number of the jobs of the company’s employees. My hon. Friends voiced their concern that we in the Department may not have been fully in tune with the workings of the application vis-a-vis our criteria and the subsequent measures adopted by our colleagues in the Scottish Office in their attempt to safeguard jobs within the United Kingdom — but, of course, meaning within Scotland. I can assure my hon. Friends that my Department was consulted throughout the discussions with the company and it may be helpful if I give some further details of the sequence of events.

The company had approached that Department, having already made a commercial decision that, if it was to retain its operation in the United Kingdom, it would have to rationalise its activities in England and Scotland and move to a purpose-built factory. In fact, at the time when those discussions took place, the United Kingdom’s textile industry as a whole was facing severe difficulties. The British Textile Confederation announced in its annual report for 1982 that the industry’s performance that year, together with that of the previous year, was very depressed. The industry’s production was down by a further 6 per cent. from 1981 levels, and employment fell by 21,000, bringing the cumulative fall in the textile industry alone, excluding clothing, since 1979 to 163,000.

Many options were seriously considered by the company. After long deliberation, it decided that the most efficient solution would be to extend and improve its existing operations at Newton Mearns and Neilston in Scotland, taking advantage of a building already available in the group close to existing facilities and ideally suited to the project. That decision was not taken lightly by the company, which has an excellent industrial relations record in Derbyshire and a low labour turnover.

I agree entirely with my hon. Friends in that, having met their constituents only briefly, they gave a clear impression of a work force that was reasonable and highly motivated to do its best for the company and, therefore, for the well-being of the local community. Like my hon. Friends, I was very impressed by the motivation of the representatives of the company who we met this afternoon.

The company judged it essential, in a fiercely competitive market, to remain cost-competitive if it was to compete effectively with rising imports. The Department of Trade and Industry accepted the company’s view that the project was an industrially and commercially viable solution. To achieve the rationalisation, the company requested financial assistance towards the costs. Without the rationalisation, there was judged to be a very real danger that all the jobs in the company throughout the country would ultimately be lost abroad.

The application — as are all applications for assistance, but especially those where redundancies are involved—was subjected to the closest scrutiny of its merits, including its contribution to regional development ​ and the national economy. Because of the English job losses involved, my Department was consulted at each stage of the proceedings.

An offer was made—not as much as the company had asked for, but was negotiated as the minimum necessary for the project to go ahead. I should stress that the decision to offer assistance was considered by the Scottish Industrial Development Board, an advisory body composed of senior industrialists with wide commercial experience, with the specific task of considering, among other things, whether the assistance proposed was necessary to safeguard jobs.

As my hon. Friends are aware, the Government are committed to maintaining an effective regional policy and a more cost-effective policy to ease the process of change in areas of particularly high unemployment and to encourage new businesses in those areas. In fact, my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley recently argued that his constituency should be designated as an assisted area. It is perhaps to his constituency’s advantage that it does not have high enough long-term unemployment to qualify for that form of assistance. I am sure that he would share my rather mixed feelings if it did.

Unfortunately, and despite my hon. Friend’s admirable advocacy, his representations of that time were not successful. However, I assure him that the most careful consideration went into the decision as to which parts of the country should benefit from regional incentives, the main criterion being the relative annual average unemployment rate.

Inevitably, the existence of special incentives in the assisted areas means that other areas will be at a comparative disadvantage in the availability of Government assistance. But, as I said earlier, we judged that without the assistance which was offered, those same jobs in Derbyshire would still have been lost. In addition, jobs would ultimately have been lost in several other areas, including special development areas. The company believes that the project was in the best long-term interests of its United Kingdom work force, safeguarding a total of 1,400 jobs.

It is not the Government’s policy to use public funds simply to shuffle job opportunities round the country, with one area gaining at another’s expense. But especially in areas such as textiles, which must adjust to new circumstances, multi-plant enterprises will inevitably at times carry out rationalisation programmes to enable them to survive in the longer term. It is the task of regional assistance, if it can, to mitigate the effects of such rationalisations on the assisted areas and the country as a whole. The precise scale of plant rationalistation has been and remains a matter for decision by the company. I assure my hon. Friends that I shall ensure that the points they raised in the debate are brought immediately to the attention of English Sewing Ltd.

It is for the company, having received an offer, to decide whether, if there are new circumstances, it wishes to proceed with the project as originally conceived; but the offer has been made and evaluated. On balance, those who evaluated the offer came to the view that there was a threat that all the jobs available in the company may have been lost to the United Kingdom.

My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, West asked whether the company might have moved anyway. The advice that I have been given is that the Scottish Industrial Development Board accepted the advice of ​ officials in the Industry Department in Scotland that assistance was needed to make the investment proceed in the United Kingdom rather than overseas.

My hon. Friend also asked about the net creation of new jobs. I have done my best to extract as much information as I can within the restraints of commercial confidentiality, but the company has undertaken to provide a substantial number of new jobs at the new plant in Scotland and to safeguard more jobs. I cannot reveal the exact number. It is believed that jobs in England are at risk whether or not the new Scottish jobs are created. The information that is in the public domain was printed in the magazine British Business on 29 November, and that information on the grant and the company is all that I can reveal tonight.

I hope that my hon. Friends, having fulfilled their obligations to their constituents, will at least be reassured that we have considered the matter thoroughly. I repeat my acceptance of their invitation to spend some time in Derbyshire to take a close look at the local economy and to see whether any of the Department’s national schemes can be deployed to tackle some of the economic difficulties of a below average number of unemployed constituents, but which nonetheless are worth an airing in their constituencies.

Below is the text of the speech made by John Butcher, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, in the House of Commons on 15 November 1985.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mr. Heddle), as I know the House will be, for raising this important topic on the Adjournment of the House. I am sure that everything he said reflects the opinion of many people who are bewildered by this apparently mindless phenomenon which goes on in our midst. He has raised a subject of considerable interest. I am aware that he has taken a great interest in public call box services for a long time. I congratulate him on his pursuit of his campaign and his single-minded and highly-motivated approach.

My hon. Friend will be aware that British Telecom operates under a licence issued by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Under the terms of the Telecommunications Act 1984, the licence obliges BT, among many other things, to provide public call box services throughout the country. I should emphasise that monitoring and enforcement of BT’s compliance with the terms of its licence is a matter for the Director-General of Telecommunications. The 1984 Act gives him substantial independent powers in that regard. Enforcement of the licence is not a matter for Ministers, and any remarks that I make in this debate must be said with that clearly in mind.

I know that the Director-General of Telecommunications is keenly interested in the question of public call box services and maintains a close watch on the level and adequacy of the service provided by BT. I shall ensure that what my hon. Friend has had to say in this debate is brought to the Director-General’s attention.

There are about 76,000 public payphones in the country. Those telephones provide a vital public service. That service is not only for the 23 per cent. of households which do not have the use of a telephone of their own, but for all of us when out and about. We all depend on public payphones. When they are out of order, it is always a matter of inconvenience, but sometimes it can be a matter of life and death. That is why the issue is of great public interest.

I know that British Telecom takes its obligations to provide public call box services seriously. The company faces two major problems. One will soon, I hope, be overcome; the other is being tackled vigorously, but is much more deep-seated. I shall return to my hon. Friend’s remarks about that later. The problems are first, old equipment, and secondly, vandalism; or, to put it more bluntly, crime. That, I regret to say, is the fundamental issue. For example, last year in London alone there were 5,000 cases a month of damage to public payphones, affecting almost half the capital’s 10,650 payphones.

Those two problems are being tackled as part of a major investment programme by British Telecom to modernise its telephone services. That will, when complete, make British Telecom’s public payphone service the most modern of its kind in the world. I understand that by March 1987 all existing equipment will have been replaced by new, push-button electronic equipment.

Such installations are already a familiar sight in many places. The new telephones are more reliable and much more versatile. For example, they will all have automatic fault reporting so that if there is any trouble, repairs can be done swiftly. They also take a wider range of coins. There will be no ​ more frustration if we cannot find a 10p piece. That will have a considerable impact on the quality of the service provided.

A key feature of the modernisation programme is the aim to “design out” all those features in the old style boxes which are prone to criminal damage or which make attack by vandals easier. Considerable research has gone into that. As hon. Members will surely have noticed, as well as new telephone equipment, new booths are beginning to be installed. Gradually they will replace the old ones, except where conservation for environmental reasons is necessary. They have many new features designed to minimise their vulnerability to crime and make it harder to put them out of service.

My hon. Friend dealt with some of those features and expressed understandable cynicism. No matter how robust the new installations may be, someone will find some way of attacking and damaging them. I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that it is legitimate for British Telecom to seek to design out some of the more vulnerable features of the installations. However, if a vandal is prepared to apply a manic level of strength with the object of destroying something, of course damage can be done.

The real deterrent to such acts is part and parcel of the wider issues to which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has recently drawn attention so eloquently—the reaffirmation of the traditional values of family, school and church, which teach young people to behave in a civilised manner. We must get the message across that criminal damage to public payphones is thoughtless, stupid behaviour which, at the very least, causes inconvenience to others, and at the worst, real danger. I am sure that my hon. Friend and, indeed, all hon. Members will endorse that.

My hon. Friend has been pursuing his campaign in the northern part of the west midlands, and he mentioned another campaign being pursued by BT. He will agree that the campaign must be for every individual, if we are to get to the root of the problem.

In response to my hon. Friend’s remarks, I wish to make observations, which in part must be questions. Why is this particular form of vandalism apparently unique to Britain? To the best of my knowledge it does not happen on anything like the same scale in the rest of the Western world. Why are British vandals so mindless that they will attack a public facility which they themselves may need one day? Even the most woolly-minded behavioural scientist would not attempt to depict a phone box as a symbol of authority or as an affront to those who suffer from deprivation. This form of behaviour is beyond comprehension. It is as incomprehensible as the physical attacks on St. John Ambulance nurses while they attended injured fans during a soccer riot at Birmingham. City football ground at the end of last Session. People who wish to destroy a public facility, through no other motive than a wish to wreck something, are beneath contempt.

BT and the Director-General of Telecommunications unfortunately have to deal with another symptom of the growth of the propensity for mindless destruction among a small proportion of the population. My hon. Friend and I are agreed that it is up to each individual member of society to accept his or her responsibilities in changing the attitudes and levels of behaviour. In the long run, that is the only way in which to deal with this symptom of a broader and worrying phenomenon.

My hon. Friend has done the House a great service. He has articulated a problem which arouses great anxiety throughout the country. I have noted what he said about the efforts to liaise between post offices, BT, the police force and local authorities, and the advice that he would seek to have handed to magistrates to ensure that fines are levied in a way which reflects the cost of making good the ​ damage inflicted. I assure him that the record will be distributed to the appropriate opinion formers. I have pleasure in congratulating him again on the timeliness of his intervention today.