There has to be a drive to make the U.K. competitive in the motorcar industry or in the engineering industry. To do that, you have to give attention to the manufacturing sector.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The U.K. has to keep investing in new technology, skills, and infrastructure to keep pace with international competition.
It's always been hard work for us to manufacture in the U.K. It's not a particularly profitable place for us.
U.K. companies are in very international and very competitive markets. If you look at PC penetration in the U.K., it is very similar to the United States market.
The economic situation, the high cost of undertaking manufacturing, the supply chain - which is, by the way, dying out also as manufacturing undergoes hardship - make the U.K. not the first place you would look at to make a manufacturing investment.
We have the British motor industry as a role model for what happens when you try to save an industrial dinosaur. Britain was the first country to industrialise and the first to de-industrialise. We should learn from this.
It is very important that people see there is a bright future, and we can re-engage that entrepreneurial spirit of the trading nation for which the U.K. has always been known - that dynamic, creative spirit.
Manufacturing doesn't just mean building cars and metal-bashing; it includes making pharmaceuticals and hi-tech electronics. A crucial part of the process is the research and development that allows better and greener products to come to market. Britain has traditionally had a strong science and engineering base.
London has a centrifugal pull on talent, investment and business from the rest of Europe and the world. That brings benefits to the broader U.K. economy.
We have to be extremely strict on the implementation of Brexit so there is a common approach between member states. We must avoid a sector-by-sector or country-by-country approach, and ask the U.K. to be clear.
The U.K. is outward-looking, trade-oriented, growth-oriented, and we do not have enough of that storyline, that tradition, that culture within the European Union.
No opposing quotes found.