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Government Regulation

First, I should like to declare my interests, which are in the register. The hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Gordon Banks) is obviously a worthy successor to his predecessor, who was a superb Chairman of the Trade and Industry Committee. The hon. Gentleman’s business interests and experience will obviously stand him in good stead in following in the footsteps of his predecessor, who is now a Member of the other place. We look forward to hearing from the hon. Gentleman again on matters to do with industry, business and regulation. I concluded, as I am sure many of my hon. colleagues did, that the speech made by the Minister of Communities and Local Government was extremely complacent. He flagged up the areas in which the economy was doing well—yes, we do have low unemployment and reasonable economic growth—but he said nothing about the loss of manufacturing jobs when he was challenged to do so by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood). He did not say anything about the balance of payments, the record UK trade deficit, or the fall in our productivity. Nor did he say anything about the offshoring of manufacturing jobs. He did not mention, for example, the fact that Sony has recently announced that it is to move a lot of its jobs in Bridgend offshore from this country. The Minister did not say very much about our loss of competitive position, which is very serious indeed. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham mentioned the fact that we have fallen in the World Economic Forum’s league rankings from fourth position in 1998 to 14th position today. That is very worrying indeed. The Minister said that we were doing better than countries such as France, Spain and Italy, but they are not even in the first 20 in those rankings. The point is that we are way behind the USA, Singapore, Australia, Norway, Japan and some of the smaller European countries.