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Economic Growth and Employment

It is a pleasure to follow the thoughtful speech by the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller). He and I have a common interest in the supply chains that he ended his comments talking about. The Secretary of State knows that I have been working hard in the north-west region to improve the automotive supply chain. That is one of the solutions because we are now in a position to recapture work from countries to which work in the automotive sector was previously exported as a result of changes in those countries' economies. As labour costs have risen, as they will continue to do inexorably in Poland and China for example, we will be able to start thinking about recapturing that work. There needs to be common ground there. I want to correct one point: for the second time, the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) made a mischievous intervention concerning the previous Government's record on deregulation. I think that the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) will back me up on this point because she attended the Regulatory Reform Committee assiduously when I was its Chair: we could count on one hand the number of times a Conservative Member turned up to the Committee in the last Parliament. Perhaps they are finding their road to Damascus at last.