Labour's Kim McGuinness comments on the Aycliffe Hitachi crisis

When I last visited Hitachi’s Newton Aycliffe factory I was being shown around a soon-to-be-completed train and the fitter told me how she came to work there.

She applied when the factory opened, her and 16000 other people. She was one of only 6 women on the factory floor when she started- there’s a lot more now. She loves her job and talked about how ‘we just don’t get jobs like this in the North East’.

She talked passionately about the need for a contract at Hitachi to secure these jobs, her livelihood. But it really pulled my heart strings when she said that when her son sees a train go by, he asks her ‘Mammy did you build that’ and she proudly says ‘yes son, I did’.Kim McGuiness at Hitachi (Image: Northern Echo)

I’ve been to the factory many times now, and discussed how crucial it is to save jobs with staff, unions and managers. What always comes across first is pride.

These are solid, skilled, good jobs. I know that because fitters and welders tell me they would love to see their children grow up and work at Hitachi.

Making things is in our blood in the North East, it is intrinsically linked to our identity. And I want to be the mayor who creates more of the manufacturing jobs that define our future. But first we need to save the jobs we already have.

We saw in Teesside the historic end of steel production, and now we face the end of train production in the region that gave the world the railway. So painfully ironic as we gear up to celebrate 200 years of rail in Britain starting with the Stockton to Darlington Railway. Do this Government really want to celebrate with a closing train factory and dying industry?

Last week Rishi Sunak visited the North East and was asked about Hitachi’s fate. He gave an oddly cold answer that said new production contracts could come one day.

Had he not read his briefing note? Because the immediate solution the workers at the factory need is not a new contract-bidding process many months from now.

Their jobs could be saved, today. All he has to do is ask his Transport Secretary to use a provision in the existing contract and extend the work at Hitachi.

It’s that simple. It’s legal, it’s an existing contract.

This week I welcomed Labour’s shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves to Hitachi. She told workers the factory could be saved “with the stroke of a pen” and that she’ll practise what she preaches if she is Chancellor after the General Election.

If the conditions are right we can keep train production in Durham, but the truth is we need Government to act now, not pin our hopes on a future rescue package.

750 workers are directly dependent upon ministers, with another 1,400 linked to these.

Make no mistake. This is a political decision.

But the job losses aren’t the only cost if Government inertia closes this factory.

If we lose it, where does the teenager growing up in Newton Aycliffe go if they want a job built on their parents labour, on our shared regional heritage?

Recommended reading: 

• Shadow Chancellor vows to keep up pressure to save Hitachi from becoming 'wreckage'

• Newton Aycliffe Hitachi plant reaches crisis point with orders

• Shadow transport secretary call for action over Hitachi

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Train production has legacy in County Durham. A proud legacy. The fact we all united to bring it back here, to get Hitachi, shows how our unique northern identity runs through so much of who we are and what we do in the North East.

To close this factory would not just be an act of economic sabotage. It would be a direct admission by this Government that they don’t believe our northern identity is worth protecting.

I’m proud to join the Echo in fighting to save these jobs and as mayor, protecting these workers and their crucial skills will be top of the list.