The letter, published on Substack, requests a meeting with the Prime Minister before the details of the "Number 10 North" initiative are finalised. It argues that procurement is the fastest and most practical way to deliver on commitments the Prime Minister made around decentralisation, reindustrialisation and rebalancing power away from Whitehall towards the regions.
Fashion Roundtable is calling on the UK government to act on two specific measures: the introduction of onshoring requirements in public contracts for textile goods, beginning with defence and NHS uniforms, and the establishment of a dedicated manufacturing and textiles task force to unify fragmented policy across DCMS, DBT, Defra, MOD, DHSC and the Cabinet Office.
The letter highlights that the UK fashion and textile industry contributes £62bn to UK GDP and supports 1.3 million jobs. It argues that UK fashion's full economic potential in relation to public procurement "has not been fully realised".
It draws on Fashion Roundtable's recent report Policy Fragmentation and Place-Based Opportunity in UK Fashion and Textiles, published in April 2026 in partnership with the University of Birmingham's Local Policy Innovation Partnership (LPIP) Hub.
The report found that the barrier to keeping UK factories open is not a lack of skills or capability, but that fashion and textiles fall into a policy gap between creative industries and manufacturing, leaving the sector exposed to short-term policy interventions and weak coordination across national, devolved and local levels.
The letter cites the Covid-19 PPE procurement scandal as a case study in the cost of this fragmentation, pointing to the July 2026 Covid Inquiry Report finding that £10bn of public money was wasted on substandard or over-ordered PPE sourced from overseas, despite UK manufacturers having mapped their capacity to produce PPE domestically.
Fashion Roundtable also points to France as a comparative example, citing a Union des Industries Textiles study which found that "Made in France" products capture up to 84% of the value created, compared to approximately 35% for imported goods.
The letter follows a decade of work by Fashion Roundtable on decentralisation, reindustrialisation and public procurement, and references comments made by Chris Bryant, now Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, during a February 2026 Westminster Hall debate on onshoring fashion and textiles, in which he said "it would be good if more of our British servicemen and women were dressed in British uniforms."
"We are writing at the forefront of the UK fashion and textile industry," the letter states, adding that a change in government leadership "offers promising opportunities" aligned with the organisation's work.
