Lucy Care backs aid for manufacturing

4.00.27pm GMT Tue 16th Mar 2010

The Liberal Democrats candidate for Derby North Cllr Lucy Care is backing more support for manufacturing.

At the recent Liberal Democrat conference in Birmingham the party agreed a policy position "Supporting manufacturing" an action plan to maintain and develop manufacturing jobs and UK industry

Lucy Care said "Like many other people in Derby I started my working life in a manufacturing job. In my case as an engineer at British Celanese (as was) in Spondon. Manufacturing remains a key economic sector in Derby.

"But thousands of people in Derby understand the damage that Conservative and Labour policies have done to UK manufacturing over the last 30 years. It won't be quick to turn this around, but this newly approved Lib Dem policy will begin the work.

"The Lib Dems conference also again demonstrated the party's commitment to democracy as members voted to amend the motion to include the final point on co-operatives."

The motion called for

1. The creation of Local Enterprise Funds and Regional Stock Exchanges to provide equity finance and facilitate development of ideas from concept into commercial products.

2. The focus of government support and investment on markets of the future such as those arising from the transition to a low carbon, green economy.

3. Formulation of an integrated approach to the deployment of new technologies, combining academic research and practical knowledge to create real-world products and processes, generating global competitive advantage for the sector.

4. Alignment of the educational system with the needs of business to ensure the supply of the relevant skills including facilitating co-operation between universities, businesses and entrepreneurs.

5. Encouragement and enabling of young people to learn employment and business skills by removing unnecessary institutional and bureaucratic barriers to them taking part-time paying jobs.

6. Empowerment of local authorities to co-operate in regional or sub-regional economic groups to create business support systems appropriate to the sectoral and local business needs of their area.

7. The revival of the Co-operative Development Agency to generate, with other relevant bodies, the customer and/or employee ownership of viable businesses in the mutual sector especially manufacturing.