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British Business (China)

I have only one or two brief points to make, because my colleagues have made their points eloquently about the importance of the visit. I shall not compliment IPT more than to say that the trip was the hardest-working one that I have ever been on, and the most fun, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Derek Wyatt) said, we were properly prepared. That is not always the case with such visits. I thank all those who were involved making the trip work by doing so much advance work with us, so that we understood what we were seeing when we got out there. One of the great benefits of the visit was that Labour Members did not have to be present to hear the result of the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, although it came through with great speed. Conservative Members made no bones about relishing the majority that was secured for the time being in that by-election. I was interested in the question of information technology and its liberalising or restrictive effect. We continue to need to work with the Chinese in that area, or they might go as far as insisting that everyone with a television requires a licence from the Government to watch it. We would not want to go in that direction, would we, Mr. Illsley? My final and more serious point is that we were asked by our hosts whether we would like to see an industrial park. I was up for that because I have an industrial park in my constituency that provides around 1,000 jobs, so I am very proud of it and we work hard to keep it. The industrial park in China had 6 million people living inside it. When we visited the university, I said that it was good to have a university inside the park, and my host said that it was one of 10. I went home to my constituency in Nottingham, where we have 31,000 people on incapacity and related benefits. The experience of being in China and seeing the pace at which things are moving, and comparing that with what was happening in my constituency, before the financial crisis, was sobering. I am not necessarily pessimistic, but all of us and particularly those of us who are in Government or who aspire to Government must learn certain lessons. We need to learn about long-term financial stability and long-term planning and about not looking at the next quarter's results, but the next decade's results. We need to invest for the future. It might be that we do that in a different way, but some of the fundamental lessons are to be learnt from China and we ignore them at our peril. There are tremendous advantages to looking at the long term, and part of that means looking for long-term partnerships with the Chinese Government, so that we can all benefit from a different regime and a different global economy. I thank my colleagues for their tremendous fellowship on the journey and all those responsible for making it such a success. I am certainly one of those whose eyes were opened. I relished visiting a beautiful country and meeting some marvellous people.