Drive reindustrialisation from No 10 North or risk failure, MPs tell Burnham
More than 90 backbench Labour MPs have warned that Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s pledge to reindustrialise Britain is doomed to fail unless it is driven decisively from his new No 10 North outpost in Manchester.
The warning comes as Chancellor John Healey prepares to deliver his first budget on Wednesday, having used a speech at Labour’s conference last month to promise a 'new age of industrialisation'.
The group’s briefing paper, seen by the Guardian, argues that decades of deindustrialisation and deregulation have left the state with a worrying set of behaviours that will inhibit reindustrialisation.
It claims the government has become less knowledgeable about the state of the economy and businesses, and is unable to comprehensively plan or make decisions quickly.
The state has lost capacity and has acquired a worrying set of behaviours which will inhibit reindustrialisation. The state has become less knowledgable about the state of the economy and our businesses, unable to comprehensively plan and slow to make decisions.
The MPs are calling on Burnham to pass a new Reindustrialisation Act to set clear targets for creating jobs by rebuilding the country’s manufacturing capacity.
They also want to ensure ministers are held to account against these targets.
Shift to No 10 North
The group is urging the prime minister to give the job of overseeing reindustrialisation to First Secretary Louise Haigh and base it at No 10 North.
This Manchester outpost, established by Burnham in July, has already taken on some responsibility for growth policy.
I’ve got absolutely no doubt about Andy or John’s commitment to this, but there is a kind of inertia in government, within the civil service, within economic orthodoxy, that still says that growth policy is about cities – it’s about the places that are already doing well.
MacNae argues that reindustrialisation must be about 'delivering jobs to the places that need them most' and making things again to provide national resilience.
He cited the government’s recent decision to nationalise British Steel as an example of the kind of industrial policy needed.
The group also wants the National Wealth Fund, the arm’s-length body that invests in promising businesses, to be transformed into a Reindustrialisation Development Corporation.
This new body would have the primary job of providing capital for rebuilding UK industry.
Whitehall must act
Steve Yemm, MP for the former mining constituency of Mansfield, said countries around the world are reindustrialising, yet too many in Whitehall still treat industrial policy as dangerous nostalgia.
We need the prime minister’s full backing to challenge those outdated assumptions.
Lorraine Beavers, MP for Blackpool North and Fleetwood, said she was enthusiastic about the promise of reindustrialisation for constituencies like hers.
If I have learned anything since becoming an MP two years ago, it’s that Whitehall doesn’t fix a problem unless it is told to.
In its industrial strategy, published while Keir Starmer was prime minister, Labour identified eight sectors ripe for growth, including advanced manufacturing, clean energy and defence.
Burnham’s conference speech, to which Healey had invited a young apprentice who had worked on building a new Mersey ferry, said Labour would 'get Britain growing. With hope for our young people. With good work, good jobs and a new age of industrialisation.'
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