Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: from No 10 Downing Street we have done everything that we can to see that Britain returns to its former reputation of ‘British things are best’ and that we buy them because they are best. This last month, the exports and imports in manufacturing trade for the first time for many, many months—indeed many years—were actually in balance. That was encouraging, but what I am interested in is the enormous potential for us to make in this country more of the things that we use here. We have supported and continue to support all projects to favour good design. I recently opened an exhibition at the design centre of young creators; fascinating lovely things they were doing and were trying to get manufacturers to take up the possibility of producing them here. Had any manufacturer had done it, I would immediately have bought at least three of the things which I was seeing because we looked at them and the design was so good that there were various people who said “Those must have been designed on the continent” and we said “No, they are designed here” ; excellent in function, excellent in appearance and good variety. Because, having been the [end p1] centre of a great empire, people in this country are used to seeing goods from all over the world, used to buying value for money, used to good design, used to good value, and I am constantly saying to them, “That very expertise you exercise when you go into shops to choose what you buy, that quality, that good design, that value you demand as a consumer must be that same quality, that same excellence of design, that value which you put into your work as a producer” . If you look around here, so many of the things which are on offer could just as well, if not better be produced here.
Design, I think, is the first thing, because if you do not like the look of it you will not even get around to examining it. If you do like the look of it, then you will examine it further to see if it is functional and to look at the quality.
But the second thing we need in increasing quantity, I am going just to say three things: design the first, the second thing in increasing quantity is more investment of research and development and the products of the future. We are getting it in some companies who are investing tremendously. I went to one in my own—on the borders of my own constituency the other day—they are beating all competition. But these days so many of the goods which come from the Far East are cheap, not because the labour is cheap, because the labour content is a smaller and smaller proportion. It [end p2] is because they have poured money into the latest investments for their products. Labour content in some of the things I have seen in the Far East is only 6%;. It is the investment that matters and the design. That means that we have a chance of repatriating those goods to be produced in Britain. So good design, more on investment for the future and the third thing—I need hardly tell you:
None of it will work without good management and good cooperation. It is fascinating to me to see how some big conglomerations have been breaking up and they have had quite a number of management buy-outs of the smaller parts of the business and those parts of the business which were not making money. Under a management buy-out, where they know the expertise, where all of a sudden they are working together, they cut their costs and all of a sudden they are succeeding. These things are good. What I am saying to you is we are going in the right direction. But I would like us one day, not very far distant, to have a balance in manufacturing exports, to be exporting more from manufacturing than we are importing. Some of these things are not complicated. Some of them we want to substitute are products which are made in high wage economies. We should be able to do them here and we should be able to beat them on design and be able to beat them on other things as well. It is in that spirit that I open this exhibition and hope that trade will have an enormous [end p3] boost from the effort you have made and that you will have a new determination to invest more and to produce more here because we are the most discriminating buyers the world over; we must equally be the most discriminating—using the word in its best sense—the most discriminating and value-for-money producers. With great pleasure, I open this exhibition, and I have to top out this cake which is a great deal easier than when I opened a new building just a few months ago and was given the job of topping out the last section of a building, thirty or forty storeys high, under the supervision of a crane driver. I do not know whether he was more nervous than me but we did it. This is easier. End of first speech.
(2) Second speech (following introduction by Chairman of NEDO: [end p4]
Chairman
Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen, let me give a very warm welcome to the Prime Minister and to say how pleased we are that she is safely back in Britain after her historic visit to Russia and is here today ready to open our exhibitions. The Russian word ‘glasnost’ has recently enriched our vocabulary. It means openness or to be open, but I think there is too much glasnost in our imports of manufactured goods. They now total in excess of 60 billion pounds per annum, some 35%; of everything we use in industry and in the home. Our organisation was set up in 1983 to try to reduce imports on a commercial and not on a purely patriotic basis. In the two exhibitions, numbers 5 and 6, one of which broadens the concept, companies here today represent many billions of pounds of buying power. So there were tens of thousands of job opportunities for manufacturers here today. If manufacturers tackle the opportunities with professionalism and determination, we can soon leave behind the £100 million of previously imported production that BMIB's have achieved. I want to thank all the exhibitors—many of them have supported us right from the start—for being with us [end p5] today and wish good luck to the 3,000 manufacturers from all over the country who will visit our two exhibitions. I hope that the next two days will help to bring back new large orders to the UK and create thousands of jobs. Prime Minister, thank you for coming and for encouraging us with your support. All of us in ‘Better made in Britain’ are proud that you are here today to open our exhibitions and see how they work in practice. Can I ask you, after you have spoken to please undertake the dangerous task of cutting this ‘Better made in Britain cake’ with this antique Sheffield Clothie (phon) knife. Ladies and Gentlemen, I ask you to greet the Prime Minister. [end p6]
Prime Minister
Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen. First I want to thank Basil Feldman for holding and setting up these exhibitions. Every time we have a conference or an exhibition on ‘Better made in Britain’ we succeed in reclaiming for our country some of the goods and some of the jobs that had hitherto come in from abroad. I have looked round this morning. Every single thing we see here could be produced in Britain, could be every bit as well designed, could be the same quality, could be the same value for money and some of it could be better than what we are seeing here. At No 10 Downing Street, we do our bit to help. We have had a ‘Better made in Britain’ seminar there, we have had two design seminars, I have had receptions for our young designers, for young people in the fashion business when the buyers come to us from the world over. The potential is enormous. Because of the work we have been doing, the last month when the balance of trade figures came in, for the first time for a long time, we had a balance; broke even on our manufacturing exports and imports. That is not good enough, we want also to have a balance in our manufacturing exports. I know that it requires a good deal of foresight. I know that it requires superb design, but you know that we are training very good designers in some of our art colleges. They are excellent. I know that it requires a great deal of investment. Indeed I think investment and product [end p7] development are the things we need very much in this particular sphere as I have seen a number of manufacturers who do invest heavily on one thing, going round and saying “Yes, next year we will invest in this and in that” . The investment is particularly important because so much of what we produce is produced by good machines. The labour content of the actual production is comparatively low and that means that we can repatriate it from Korea, from Taiwan, from Hong Kong and from a number of the far eastern countries to produce it here and above all the entrepreneurial spirit and good management. Business is exciting. We want some of our most able people not always to go into the city, into the banks, although my goodness we need the bankers behind us, yes, we need them behind us very much in order to have the extra investment but we want some of our brightest, most able young people to come into business and to enable us to produce the goods we see here at home, and to produce them better. We are very expert buyers, we in Britain. Having been the centre of an empire we are used to having a lot of stuff to chose from and we chose well. We have got to produce as well as we chose and after the exhibition today I am confident that we shall have a lot more business and a lot more jobs in Britain. We wish you well. If you succeed, we succeed and we think that is important too.