Talking Point - Business begins at home
As a typical managing director of a regional "still fighting for its life’"SME, I was both horrified and delighted to see my friend and neighbour Neville Hall, of H J Hall & Co, the long-established Leicestershire-based sock manufacturer, hone into view over my breakfast cereal recently. Over the fence would be understandable - but not on BBC Breakfast news.
Putting down my cup of instant (yes, cuts are swingeing in our household too, despite a new Waitrose opening in Lutterworth), I heard Neville decry the Ministry of Defence for awarding a £5m contract for military socks to a Northern Ireland company which sources its supplies from China. Losing this long-term contract means redundancies and a serious downturn for the company’s Hinckley-based factory. How can the government bleat about the demise of manufacturing when organisations like the MOD are actually putting the boot in? In Chinese socks, I might add!
But what horrified me more than anything is that it is not standard default policy to award all government department contracts to UK manufacturers. Of course, if the requirement is for something we don’t manufacture in the UK fair enough – but socks? Didn’t we invent socks? Wool? Even sheep? If the new coalition was unaware that this default policy doesn’t exist, they should be – isn’t some bright spark supposed to be looking at how we trade out of this slump? And now they are aware, should they not enforce this policy immediately? How much of the country’s deficit would it diminish in one fell swoop?
It is refreshing then that those enlightened rugby types at Welford Road, seeking to utilise their fantastic facility during the summer months, have commissioned PRIMA Hire to install their unique ground protection system. It will underpin the staging for the James Morrison and Will Young concerts happening at the Tigers' ground this week. PRIMA is not only Leicestershire-based, the portable flooring systems are manufactured in the UK. Hurrah!
Jonathan Vaughan is the managing director of PRIMA Hire
