Business organisations betraying their members

British manufacturing is in a mess, and is issuing steadily more shrill cries for help. On Monday, one of its most prominent trade bodies, Make UK, called for the Government to do something about energy prices, a plea that will surely fall on deaf ears in Ed Miliband’s office.

They really only have themselves to blame though. Make UK has been banging the decarbonisation drum for years. For example, in 2021, it put out a report entitled Demystifying Net Zero. The time was ‘optimal’ for the UK to fulfil its climate ambitions, it declared, before expounding on the ‘effective solutions’ that were available to manufacturers. All that was necessary, it declared, was to implement them. So thrilled was the Government with this stance that Andrew Griffith MP, the Net Zero Business Champion, wrote to thank them, lauding their efforts in ‘inspiring manufacturing businesses’.

The report wasn’t an aberration. Make UK has set up a specialist decarbonisation unit, chaired by Laura Sandys, a famously enviro-minded former Tory MP, and a prominent member of the eco-warrior outfit, the Green Alliance. Its 2024 report on electrifying industry preposterously touted ‘onsite renewables, onsite electricity and thermal storage and flexibility mechanisms’ as the way forward.

It also has a unit devoted to the steel industry, which in the past has urged the government to accelerate decarbonisation efforts. In 2022 it boldly declared, in an announcement with more than a little of Monty Python about it, that the UK was poised ‘to deliver the world’s first Net Zero steel sector’ through conversion from blast furnaces to arc furnaces. Wiser heads might have wondered about the feasibility of this idea since, for most of the previous 15 years, power prices for large users in the UK had been the highest in Europe, or nearly so. Attempting the wholesale electrification of production could therefore politely be described as ‘reckless’. Unsurprisingly, just two years later, UK Steel was complaining that its net-zero transition was being ‘crippled’ by high energy costs.

To be fair, it’s not just Make UK that has been pursuing decarbonisation to the detriment of its members’ interests. Take Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), a trade body that seeks to encompass both the renewables and oil and gas sectors. It is fully signed up to Net Zero, and devotes much of its efforts to promoting the idea of a ‘just transition’, which seems to mean little more than putting oil and gas workers through a retraining scheme before throwing them on the scrapheap.

The Confederation of British Industry is no better, which is not really surprising when you look at the background of its boss. Earlier in her career, she had apparently ‘championed the CBI’s work to support the transition to a low carbon, sustainable economy’. After that, she moved to a brief stint as head of sustainability at Barclays Bank before returning to the CBI as chief executive. Net Zero, she now says, is ‘a strategic necessity’. Incredibly, the CBI website says that Net Zero will ‘create jobs, provide greater energy security, lower energy costs, increase tax receipts, fund public services and help avert a climate emergency’. What hope is there for British industry when its most public prominent voices are so far divorced from empirical reality?

Or what about the Food and Drink Federation? Its CEO, Karen Betts arrived from the Scotch Whisky Association, where her focus had apparently been on increasing diversity in our workforce and achieving net-zero emissions, amongst other more mundane things. Once at the FDF, she promptly set about reproducing her earlier work, trying to get the FDF to drive towards a food system that is ‘net zero, nature positive and circular.’

Talk about taking your eye off the ball! Manufacturing is under the most extraordinary pressure. Costs and regulatory burdens are being piled upon by government after government, and all these industry bodies can do is to demand more of the same, at best making gentle requests for subsidy or exemptions to keep their members’ businesses afloat.

Why any sane business would let these people speak on their behalf beats me.