UK needs to ‘want’ to keep manufacturing businesses – Dyson

Manufacturing businesses would stay in the UK if the Government and the country “wanted it”, billionaire Sir James Dyson has said.

The businessman and inventor told the BBC’s Today programme, which he guest edited on Friday, that children’s “enthusiasm for making things” seemed to “get stamped out of them”.

He said: “They see a problem and they go about solving it imaginatively.

“If only society was like that, we had lots of engineers who could develop new technologies, make things work better and create wealth and jobs.”

Sir James, who moved his company’s production operations to east Asia in 2002, has been a long-standing critic of government industrial policies.

He has previously called on both Conservative and Labour governments to do more to protect UK manufacturing.

On Friday, he said he had moved production to east Asia to be nearer suppliers, denying that he had been motivated by lower labour costs.

He said: “When we moved our production to Asia, which I didn’t want to but I was forced to, everyone else was moving their production to Asia.”

Sir James added: “You can’t have a factory where you have no suppliers, you’ve got to be close to your suppliers for quality, for improving the technology, and for quick supply.”

Asked what the UK could do to keep manufacturing in the country in future, he said: “What would keep manufacturing here is if the Government wanted it, and the country wanted it.”

He added: “We talk an awful lot. I mean, politicians obviously talk an awful lot, but I don’t think we get things done. I don’t think we’re keen on making things.

“We’ve lost our interest in engineering and lost our interest in manufacturing, and it’s a great shame, because it is a wealth creator and it creates jobs.”

While Dyson’s production is in Asia, and the company moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2019, it maintains a research and development operation in Britain, employing around three times the number of people it did in its UK factories.

Sir James dismissed the suggestion that manufacturing was something “developing countries” did, while the future of the British economy was in services.

He said: “China makes things, and you would hardly call it a developing country, it’s probably the most powerful and richest country in the world.

“So it’s really, really important to make things, and I think in the end, services will die if you don’t make things.”

While China has the second largest economy in the world, its large population means that its GDP per capita – a key indicator of living standards – is around a quarter that of the UK.