THEWELDOF PARLIAMENT
Political and Business observations from Stephen McPartland, Member of Parliament for Stevenage and advisor to the AWD board.
THE FUNERAL of the first female Prime Minister of the UK reminded us all of how divisive politics and government can be. How difficult it is to make decisions everyday that affect the lives of millions of people and how hard it is to get the facts into the public domain and communicate what you are actually doing rather than what the media and special interest groups think you should be doing. It has almost become fashionable to complain that the manufacturing sector in the UK has disappeared and we never make anything anymore. This is wrong, we make some of the most advanced and complex products available in the world and are at the forefront of the highly skilled, value added manufacturing sector. Welders in the UK help build complex weapons systems that are the most advanced on this planet and ensure our armed forces have the ability to strike any threat with overwhelming force. We are building over a quarter of the world's telecommunication satellites, many of them in my constituency of Stevenage. We have become a net exporter of cars once again and everyone is aware of the technical brilliance of JCB and Rolls-Royce. Britain is manufacturing – we are making the most advanced products on the planet and designing the next generation products that other countries have not even realised they need, which always gives us a competitive edge in the market place. Exports to countries outside the Eurozone are growing rapidly as the British economy rebalances and times have been tough, as we have to learn to pay our way in the world and compete in a global race, but we are slowly winning that race. Manufacturing is being relocated in some sectors back from Asia to the UK as the technical skills required to make the increasingly complex products are increasingly available here in the UK at a sustainably higher level, reducing errors in the manufacturing process and increasing customer
satisfaction. There are much better times ahead, order books are being restocked and the next generation of
welders is being trained
as we need highly skilled and motivated individuals who are going to build the next generation of nuclear power stations to quite literally power the economy through the next hundred years of our evolution.
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