Defence Diversification Agency

EDM number 783 in 1991-92, proposed by Maria Fyfe on 03/03/1992.

That this House welcomes the end of the cold war and the potential benefits that the peace dividend could bring to manufacturing and the wider community; notes however, that something in the region of 100,000 defence jobs have been lost since the Options for Change programme was announced just over 18 months ago, in addition to the 145,000 jobs which disappeared in the defence industries throughout the 1980s, a period of expansion in defence spending; further notes that this has meant disaster for local economies as well as for individual defence workers and their families and has replaced fear of the bomb with fear of the dole queue; further notes that the defence industry accounts for one in 10 manufacturing jobs and 10 per cent. of manufacturing output and that defence is located in the high technology industries which are essential for industrial regeneration making defence diversification a key issue of industrial policy; believes than an issue of this importance cannot simply be left to the market; notes that the reality of the Government's laissez faire approach is that companies are simply closing down their defence plants with no benefit to defence workers or to the industrial economy as a whole; recognises that Ministers have a responsibility to protect and enhance Britain's manufacturing economy, as well as a direct responsibility for workers employed by the Ministry of Defence, British industry's largest single customer; and calls on the relevant Ministers, as a matter of priority, to establish a Defence Diversification Agency to assist the industry in identifying and exploiting civil markets thus protecting jobs and the manufacturing base.

This motion has been signed by a total of 38 MPs.