Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill

I am very grateful for that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Returning to the survey, the proportion of employers that use agency workers is interesting. Some 85 per cent. of manufacturing and production employers use agency workers at some point, as do 85 per cent. of our public services. I mentioned briefly the importance of the manufacturing sector to our economy in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley. Everybody in the House agrees that this country's manufacturing base is in a rather precarious position. It has been going downhill for many years, and we should be doing things to try to protect it. As he said, we face more and more global competition from places such as China and India. We will never be able to compete with them on employment costs and practices, nor should we try to do so, but it must be going in completely the wrong direction to keep piling more and more regulation on our businesses. If Labour Members are so concerned about the working practices of workers across the world, surely it is better to try to retain as many manufacturing jobs as we can in this country, with the high employment obligations that we have, rather than price people out of the market in this country so that they set up a manufacturing plant in Beijing, where health and safety is virtually non-existent and the wages are too. Surely Labour Members concede that it is better that jobs remain in this country, even with slightly less protection than they would want, than to have them farmed out to places such as China and India, where workers will get no protection whatever.