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AMENDMENT OF THE LAW

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase), who rightly reminded us of the importance of manufacturing industry. When I was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, my mantra was that we could not have a healthy economy without a strong manufacturing sector, which, as he emphasised, is increasingly higher value-added and high tech. Of course, Governments cannot always decide the proportion of economic activity in manufacturing and in services—they want both to be strong and good. As an economy, we have benefited from a strong service sector and a strong financial services sector over the past couple of decades because the relative demand for those services has risen. I fear that in a period of economic difficulty focused on the financial services sector we will have greater difficulties than some countries that rely less on that sector than we do. We need to be careful about that and we are jolly glad that we have a manufacturing sector such as that described by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East. My right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) described this Budget as a Chinese meal—soon eaten and even sooner forgotten. That is a fair description of the Budget, but a very unfair description of a Chinese meal. I invite him to join me for a meal in the Oriental Garden in the village of Offley, from which I come. He will have a very memorable meal.