SIR – Mr Fieldhouse’s trip down an industrial memory lane (Letters, June 27) is such a sad whine.

No-one was more critical of the Thatcher Government than I was, but to blame the demise of manufacturing in the Eighties on the Government alone without acknowledging the part played by the large trade unions in destroying the competitiveness of British industry under the previous Labour Government is just selective amnesia.

What, of course, Mr. Fieldhouse also conveniently forgets is that the decline in manufacturing continued under the Blair and Brown governments, but I cannot remember Mr Fieldhouse writing to the T&A about that.

The good news is that – in very tough trading conditions – manufacturing has been doing very well in the last 12 months and nearly 500,000 new jobs have been created in all parts of the private sector since the 2010 General Election.

We now need to provide the skills that employers need, and this is where apprenticeships are vital and then to make it pay for people to take jobs – don’t forget that the last Labour Government created three million new jobs, but 80 per cent of those jobs where filled by immigrants.

David Ward MP, Bradford East, Greenfield Lane, Idle