Kit Malthouse: 'Don’t punish Andover manufacturers'

Take Stannah Stairlifts. For more than 150 years, the company has been building an excellent business right here in Andover.

It employs local people in skilled jobs. It exports British-made products around the world. And it helps thousands of elderly and disabled people stay independent in their own homes.

This is exactly the kind of company any sensible government should be backing.

Instead, new steel tariff rules, expected to come into force this summer, threaten to land firms like Stannah with a heavy bill.

Here's the problem. Under the new system, if you import steel into the UK to manufacture products here, you could face hefty tariffs.

Yet overseas competitors can manufacture the same finished products abroad, using exactly the same steel, and then ship them into Britain without facing those same costs.

That is ludicrous. It is the opposite of what any industrial policy should look like.

If you make things in Britain, employ British workers and invest in British factories, government policy should not leave you worse off than foreign competitors selling into our market.

I raised this directly with the Prime Minister in Parliament last week, and I hope to see swift action.

The sad reality is that this comes at the worst possible moment.

Across the economy, firms are being clobbered by rising National Insurance costs, punishing business rates and energy prices that remain far too high.

Confidence is falling. Investment is slowing. Vacancies are dropping. Unemployment has risen steadily for two years.

We should be backing job creators, not burdening them with yet more costs and complexity. Businesses do have choices. Once they decide it is easier or cheaper to make things elsewhere, those jobs rarely come back.

Companies like Stannah are part of the backbone of our economy. They are rooted in local communities. They create skilled jobs. They fly the flag for British manufacturing around the world.

The government should be doing everything possible to help them compete, grow and invest for the future. Not the opposite.