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Mr. John Butterfill (Bournemouth, West): Is it not also true that where we make overseas investments, which our Select Committee on Trade and Industry has been anxious to promote, British companies that manufacture overseas source their components and raw materials from here, thereby increasing our exports?

Mr. Lang: My hon. Friend is right. He makes an additional point in support of the general thesis that I am advancing. I am grateful to him.

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Mr. Christopher Gill (Ludlow): Before my right hon. Friend moves off the question of investment, does he agree that there is a danger in always stressing inward investment as if it was the panacea for all ills? Does it not tend to send the wrong message to domestic investors if the Government and politicians talk all the time about inward investment? What the country should be talking about is investment of all sorts. As I hope to have the opportunity of saying later, not all inward investment is as good as it is cracked up to be. So I urge my right hon. Friend in his pronouncements to be even-handed between outward, inward and domestic investment.

Mr. Lang: My hon. Friend is right. That is the point that I have been seeking to make. Inward investment is important, outward investment is important and, of course, domestic investment is important. Indeed, some 60 per cent. of all the regional selective assistance grants that my Department makes go to domestic companies that are expanding or relocating their activities. The point is that investment of whatever kind can be encouraged only by the creation of a stable economic framework such as has been achieved by the Government.

We are negotiating in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to conclude the multilateral agreement on investment. It will be the first multilateral, comprehensive and legally binding investment agreement. It will break down barriers, protect the rights of investors and provide effective dispute settlement procedures.

We are rightly proud of our record in promoting competition. We see that it is necessary to begin looking at competition issues on a global scale. We would welcome exploratory work on trade and competition in the World Trade Organisation. The United Kingdom is also working hard to help clarify the complex relationship between trade and the environment, and wants work to continue.

Another issue for Singapore will be how we give direction to the WTO's work on services. We are working, therefore, for a new financial services agreement to involve all major players. We are also keen to achieve results on professional services.

So overall, we are determined to see a successful outcome from the Singapore WTO ministerial conference, setting in train a comprehensive work programme on the broad front of core liberalisation issues. That programme can then lead into the launch of a new multilateral trade negotiating round, which should be launched before the end of the century, to deliver a further substantial liberalising package before 2010.

The ultimate goal beyond that should be a commitment by WTO members to global free trade by 2020--a plan set out last month in the White Paper on free trade and foreign policy, published jointly by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and myself.

Global free trade will bring huge benefits to the world economy and raise living standards. Those benefits will be, for consumers, lower prices, wider choice and better-quality products; and for producers, open markets to allow our companies to expand their operations and increased competitiveness from access to competitive sources.

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Under the Conservative Government, Britain is riding high in the world. We have record exports; the world is buying our goods. We have record inward investment; the world is choosing to locate in Britain. We are leading the world in the cause of global free trade, just as we led Europe in the cause of the single market. Where once Britain was avoided lest the British disease of strikes and low productivity be contagious, today we set an example to the world.

The policies that we have pursued during the past 17 years have brought about that transformation. We took tough decisions. We reduced taxes and burdens on business. We improved industrial relations. We promised success, and we are delivering success. We are making Britain the enterprise centre of Europe.

The Government promised, and the Government are delivering, and we are the only party that can offer the United Kingdom continuing success, because we are the only party with the track record, the policies and the principles that can deliver it.

10.16 am

Mr. Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough): I am grateful to the President of the Board of Trade for the debate today on trade and inward investment. I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to the President of the Board of Trade and to the House for the absence of my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett). She is unable to be here today, but I shall make some of the points that she would have made and, of course, I shall develop my own themes.

We have two Governments at the moment--a Government in situ and a Government in waiting. We have a Prime Minister who daily reconstructs the chaos theory of politics. We had a clear and precise statement on Tuesday from the Dispatch Box that the Government's policy on the single currency--I am glad to see that the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) is in his place and will seek to speak in the debate--would be unchanged: the Government would fight a general election with the offer of referendum to the British people. We were told that the Prime Minister would not rule out entirely the single currency, but hardly does he make that statement from the Front Bench than Back Benchers in the 1922 Committee meet upstairs and say clearly--

Mr. Stephen: The hon. Gentleman was not there.

Mr. Bell: I did not need to be there because they told me on television this morning what was said. The Prime Minister says one thing from the Dispatch Box and his Back Benchers say something else in the 1922 Committee. We know that prospective Conservative parliamentary candidates are against the single currency. I notice your stern gaze, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will get to the point.

As we have a Government in waiting and a Government in situ, it was charitable and generous of Conservative Central Office to let me have its research document on trade and inward investment. I was glad to see the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) having a good read of it before he seeks to intervene later in the day. We enjoy the feeling of co-operation that exists.

Mr. Tim Smith: Read it out.

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Mr. Bell: We will wait to hear whether Conservative Members read it out and we shall be sure that they stay with the document, with its myths, myths and shibboleths. It is remarkable that this document on trade and inward investment does not mention the single currency. As the President of the Board of Trade is discussing trade and saying that Britain is the enterprise centre of Europe, I should have thought that the single currency would be uppermost in the minds of researchers at Conservative Central Office, but they have not referred to it.

Mr. Skinner: The President of the Board of Trade did not refer to it either.

Mr. Bell: My hon. Friend is right. This will therefore be an interesting debate on inward investment, trade and outward investment, without a great deal of reference to either the single currency or the single market.

Mr. Tim Smith: I am not convinced that the single currency issue is important to Britain's trade. If the hon. Gentleman believes that it is so important, will he say what he and the Labour party think about it?

Mr. Bell: I am always grateful for interventions by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith). I have followed his articles in Accountancy Age over the years and he and I share a common interest in that subject. He will be pleased to know that, in a Friday debate when we all have time on our hands, I should be glad to go through the issue of the single currency and I shall do so as part of my speech. If he sits patiently he will hear the points that I have to make.

Naturally, the President of the Board of Trade spoke highly of the inward investment programme. I was amused at some of his language: he used the word "spectacular" at least three times and I thought that he was writing a Hollywood script when he went through our inward investment record.

I was grateful for the intervention of the hon. Member for Ludlow because he made a pertinent point. Although we welcome inward investment and will welcome the next two projects to which the President of the Board of Trade referred, the massive outward investment from our country has not necessarily been so helpful. The investment in manufacturing that the Chancellor announced in the Budget was some 6 per cent. of domestic investment in our economy. We need a balance, and the intervention of the hon. Member for Ludlow rectified that balance somewhat.

As I have said, we welcome inward investment. Indeed, it would be churlish to stand at this Dispatch Box and say that the Opposition do not welcome inward investment to this country. It is remarkable--the President of the Board of Trade did not refer to this--that massive inward investment coincided with our signing of the Single European Act 1986. The President referred to the fact that many of the manufacturers coming to this country and investing here are doing so to get the benefit of the single market.

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