EMO Review
Skills and exports are key to competitiveness, say
UK companies as the MTA brings minister to EMO.
By Mike Excell
Heart of europe
MTA president Geoff
LLoyd welcomes
Digby, Lord Jones of
Birmingham, to EMO
Head to head: MWP’s Mike
Excell gets a first hand
briefing from Sir Digby
Jones on his commitment
to promoting UK
manufacturing
“EMO is, for us,
the most
important
exhibition
worldwide.
Here we meet
exactly the kind
of customers
who are so
important for
us.” Iain Exeter,
Webster & Bennett
International
IF you weren’t there, maybe you should have been.
The consensus view from the UK production
engineering sector is that EMO Hannover 2007 was a
success, with both visitor and exhibitor numbers
significantly up on two years ago, and contributing to
the show’s very positive vibe.
The importance of the show to the UK economy was
underlined by the Manufacturing Technologies
Association’s success in attracting Digby, Lord Jones of
Birmingham, to attend the show on the second day.
Significantly, this wasn’t the usual flying visit we’ve
come to associate with the custodians of the
government’s industry portfolio. The newly appointed
Minister for Trade and Investment Promotion took
time to go around the show, talking to UK companies
from the manufacturing sector and getting very handson
with some of the exhibits (for example the bobsleigh
on the Renishaw stand). The exhibitors took full
advantage of the opportunity to make their views
known to him, most raising skills and exports as two of
the key issues that the Government must address.
He also attended a lunch reception hosted by the
MTA where he commented on the high quality valueadded
products being delivered to the automotive and
aerospace sectors, that are at the heart of Britain’s
current industry successes. Afterwards he found time to
comment - exclusively to MWP - on what he’d just
heard and seen, and to explain how he is addressing
what many would view as a lack of consistency in
government support for manufacturing.
‘One of the things I’ve learned just now is that there
are issues which I would not have thought were issues –
and probably the government don’t,’ he said. ‘For
example, if you are a small exporter, there are
16 MWP november 2007
regulatory difficulties; I don’t really understand that,
so I will definitely be taking that message back.
‘Also, I’m pleased to say that I’m the very first
minister in charge of UKTI to actually move into
Kingsgate House; if I’m there to champion it, that’s
where I ought to be sitting. So I’m physically going to
UKTI - and I have no careerist ambitions, I’m not a
politician, don’t want to be. My vision is to make UKTI
the very best in the world – so you’re going to get a bit
of consistency.’
I asked whether although ‘skills’ were no longer -
strictly speaking - part of his brief, he still felt that this
was a critical issue in terms of UK manufacturing’s
success, for example in the context of attracting inward
investment. His response was very encouraging - ‘Skills
are everybody’s brief!’- and he went on to suggest that
there were three levels which need to be addressed. ‘At
the top end, we should never be complacent, but we are
– maybe along with the Americans - the best in the
world, with some of the best universities and the best
research programmes; we are very successful.
‘If you come to the intermediate level, it could be
better but it’s going in the right direction, and there are
more apprenticeships. But we need a big push on
vocational training.’ He went on to explain that he
would like to see more 14 and 15 year olds learning
within the context of the world of work. ‘There are lots
of teenagers for whom the world of school just goes
over their heads. So you go into a classroom
environment, but you don’t go to school, you do it in the
workplace. This is a personal view, not government
policy at all, but I’d love to see that.’
However - and this chimes with his often-expressed
views on the social benefits of productive employment
- he believes the greatest challenge is in literacy and
numeracy. ‘At the bottom end it’s a real worry, and it’s a
big challenge elsewhere, in America, France and
Germany. In the world of twenty or thirty years ago
many people would have gone into the car factory, the
steel mill, the textile mill, the docks, the fields, the pit.
All these jobs have gone, and the people that did them
have got nothing to do in a value-added society.’
He clearly sees a need to include those who’ve become
disenfranchised in this way, and feels that all employers
- including those in the public sector - have apart to
play: ‘The NHS and local authorities for example have
a huge obligation in reskilling people; it’s not just a
private sector issue. We’ve got to get people trained to
gain, get the employers to do it and the government to
pay for it - and we’ve got to make learning “cool”. The
knowledge-based economy is a complete foreign
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