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Government Regulation

No. The hon. Gentleman has had his go. I want to come to the wider issue about sectors in a second, but there is a third fundamental flaw in the right hon. Gentleman’s case. He needed to demonstrate that the UK’s position in relation to regulatory matters was getting worse vis-à-vis our international competitors. In that respect, too, he had a major problem. There is plenty of evidence from this country and abroad that the UK is making good progress on better regulation—evidence that he conveniently failed to mention at all during his contribution to the debate. In fact, he overlooked the views of the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Heritage Foundation and the International Monetary Fund—all of which he is usually keen to pray in aid. Sadly for him, no such succour or support was available to him from those sources tonight and, again, it showed. Finally, the right hon. Gentleman completely failed to present a sensible analysis of European regulatory issues. He was overcome again by his visceral hatred for everything that originates from the European Union. In fact, he got his best cheers when he was ranting at his very best about the evils of the European Union. I got the sense that he wanted to rerun some of the arguments that we had during the recent general election. Of course, I am very happy for him to do so: Labour won that election. In rehearsing all the failed policies that the Conservative party put before the British people in May, he has served only to remind Labour Members why the British people chose to return Labour for a record third term in office.