Britain’s manufacturing output in the first quarter of 2009 was 13.1 per cent lower than the first quarter 2008 – the fastest fall since 1948, when such records began.

But manufacturing still accounts for a significant proportion of the UK economy – about 12%, as I recall. Whilst we’ve lost many if not all of the big steel foundries, woollen mills and heavy industrial manufacturing borne of the industrial revolution, Britain is still apparently strong in advanced manufacturing, speciality components, pharmaceuticals, designed goods.

So what’s going to happen to manufacturing in Britain?

That’s what the R&D Society is going to discuss on Tuesday 26 May at the Royal Society, London, with Manufacturing and Britain: Facts for a Future

Sir Richard Brook of the Leverhulme Trust, and former Chief Executive at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council will give his view. He writes:

Between the short term crisis and the long term disaster scenario, there lies a neglected set of mid-term issues where effort is needed and where rewards are compelling. A key example is the shaping of a sympathetic climate for manufacturing in Britain. Current trends are alarming and current solutions are exhausted. The debates run between the simplistic on the one side and the academically effete on the other. The facts offer a basis for reasoned discussion, for the building of consensus and for remedial action.

What do you think?