Motor industry chiefs warn on red tape

Senior motor industry figures have warned the government that there is a near-unanimous belief in the industry that it is not as committed as it should be to manufacturing.

They also say the government's growing burden of legislation is crippling the motor industry's international competitiveness.

Roger Puttnam, president of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders and the soon-to-retire chairman of Ford of Britain, said last night: "Perhaps most worryingly, the industry sees little attempt to address these problems."

He made his remarks when releasing the SMMT's third annual survey of the views of 80 senior industry figures.

Some 95 per cent of executives surveyed said they believed the burden of legislation had increased costs significantly in the past five years, with 93 per cent believing the situation would worsen in the next five years. Only 9 per cent said they felt government support for international business development had improved in the past year.

Given this, most of those surveyed regarded globalisation as more of a threat than an opportunity. They believed a combination of sourcing cheap components from overseas and moving manufacturing to low-cost markets would be crucial to their strategies for the future.

The state of the transport infrastructure also came in for criticism, with 78 per cent of those surveyed saying its inadequacies were making it difficult for companies to remain competitive. But four out of five respondents said they saw no prospect of it improving over the next five years.

Despite these problems, the survey detected slightly rising optimism about the industry's prospects for growth.