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Finance Bill

Bringing those allowances into line with depreciation is no good at all. That means we will barely be investing at the replacement level, which was one of the big problems with the old General Electric Company. Tight though Lord Weinstock's controls were, investment often ran at less than the depreciation rate. Manufacturing is a bit more in the spotlight now—rightly so, I think, and not just because I represent a manufacturing constituency in Coventry, in the west midlands—and it is regaining importance, given the imbalance that the collapse in the financial sector has caused, which we need to remove. However, having a target to drive capital investment down to the level of depreciation is a suicidal policy.