Manufacturing is nothing to what it was. Hardly any of the customers we had and I visited exist any more. Mainly heavy engineering, steel production and process manufacturing.

That said, it does still represent over 10% of GDP, and if you allow for the skewing of raw figures by the huge money market income for the treasury, it represents over 35% of all jobs.

Al's memories of British Leyland are a lesson we tried to learn from. Interesting that successful manufacturing processes such as LEAN and other six sigma approaches originated in the vehicle construction industry. When I left "industry" and started interfering in The NHS, it was learning from the likes of Toyota and Unipart that allowed some new thinking and releasing millions from bureaucracy for patient care.

I lament the demise of large employer industry as job creation has to be in any game plan by my thinking, but to dismiss the contribution the sector still delivers is not fair.