Made in Britain BBC TWO

For years, both optimists and pessimists in Britain have shared a powerful myth – that we are no longer an industrial nation. But they’re wrong, argues economist and presenter Evan Davies in a new series which reveals Britain today is still a manufacturing powerhouse, the seventh biggest in the world.

Although we can't compete with China in low-cost production, and haven’t attempted to, we can’t live without manufacturing. Made in Britain shows that manufacturing accounts for around 12 per cent of our modern economy, and is bigger than our financial services sector. Two and a half million people work in manufacturing. Almost half of our exports are manufactured goods – and not just whisky and tweed: but bikes, software, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, cars and jet engines.

Evan explains that as we become more productive, manufacturing inevitably employs fewer people. He shows where value is created in the modern economy: sometimes in factories; sometimes in the research and development of ideas; sometimes through the sale of services; and sometimes in ways that combine the three.

Made In Britain, from the Money Programme stable, will be broadcast to mark 100 years since the Empire Exhibition of 1911, 160 years since the Great Exhibition of 1851 and 60 years since the Festival of Britain in 1951, all of which celebrated Britain’s achievements as the ‘workshop of the world’.

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