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Mr. Clarke: Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, will that evaluation be published and made available to the House?

Ms Hewitt: All Freedom of Information Act requests are dealt with quite properly under that Act. My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary will, I know, want to return to the point about stamp duty in more detail when he replies, but by offering that support in disadvantaged areas we have helped to bring back into
 
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use some of the old properties, particularly derelict properties, left behind by the demise of some parts of our manufacturing industry, and that has been to the real benefit of people in disadvantaged areas. The new enterprise growth programme will be a better targeted form of help on enterprise in those communities.

Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: The stamp duty relief was available extensively in areas of Liverpool where there has been significant deprivation, and it has made a significant difference to people seeking to buy their first homes, many of which were abandoned properties that have been brought back into use.

Ms Hewitt: My hon. Friend makes an important point, because reviving and strengthening the housing market in disadvantaged areas is essential if we are to get both economic growth and social inclusion in every community in every part of our country. That is perhaps not a point that those on the Opposition Front Bench understand.

Mr. Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con): Will the Secretary of State clarify whether she is saying that the commercial property relief under the stamp duty land tax was a success or a failure? Is it being withdrawn because it was a failure, or is she celebrating its success? Would she also remind the House that the revenue that the Chancellor is gaining by abolishing the relief is said in the Red Book to be £350 million a year, £150 million of which she says she is putting into the new scheme? That is a net increase in the revenue from disadvantaged areas of £200 million.

Ms Hewitt: The stamp duty relief has helped in exactly the ways that I and others have outlined within disadvantaged areas. It has undoubtedly helped, but the new relief will be a better targeted support for disadvantaged areas, which I hope that both sides of the House will welcome.

One of the areas on which we have made real progress but on which there is still more to do is regulation. It is worth reminding the House that in 1990 setting up a company took five working days from receipt of papers until registration, but we have cut that to 24 hours for those filing electronically, and in the EU we have now won the argument about the need to simplify European regulations in order to give business right across the EU an even better basis for growth.

Last week my right hon. Friend the Chancellor published the reports of Sir Philip Hampton and David Arculus, and we have accepted all their recommendations. The Chancellor, the Prime Minister and I had an excellent meeting with representatives of business organisations last week at which we discussed the practical steps that we will take to put those recommendations into effect. By bringing together different regulatory bodies, and by ensuring that all our regulators take a risk-based approach to enforcement and inspection, we estimate that we can cut the number of business inspections by at least a million a year—a significant saving in time for our entrepreneurs and business owner-managers that again will give a further boost to their businesses. That lighter-touch regulation for the vast majority of law-abiding businesses, coupled
 
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with tougher penalties for those who do break the law or who continue wilfully to flout the law, is the right approach.

My hon. Friends and I have already mentioned the whole issue of science, but let me say a little more about that, because it is central to our ability to compete in the future. We are an astonishingly successful nation in terms of our scientific achievements—1 per cent. of the world's population funding 5 per cent. of the world's science, publishing 9 per cent. of scientific papers and receiving 12 per cent. of world citations. We lead the G8 on citations per pound invested in publicly performed research and development. We have three of the world's top universities for biomedicine here in the United Kingdom. As the Budget confirmed, we are now delivering the largest sustained growth in science investment for decades—more than £1 billion of extra investment for the UK science base by 2007–08.

We know however that it is not enough simply to invest in the science base. We must take the new ideas and technologies out of the laboratories and get them into our factories and businesses, so the investment that we are making—for instance, £300 million in the technology programme—will help our universities and research institutes to link up with businesses and spin-off companies. We are seeing the success of those early programmes all around the country—in Lancaster university, for example, where InfoLab 21, a major project backed by £10 million of Government money, is attracting inward investors and will create a world-class centre of excellence in information and communications technology.

That support for science and innovation in our economy is central to the next stage of economic strategy in the United Kingdom, but it is an investment that would be put at risk by the Opposition parties. It is essential to manufacturing in particular, and it builds on the industrial strategy that I put in place four years ago with our industrial leaders and trade unionists, and which my right hon. Friend the Minister for Industry and the Regions is taking forward through the Manufacturing Forum. By ensuring that our manufacturing companies can benefit from the manufacturing advisory service and now from the technology programme, we are giving practical help to thousands of our smaller manufacturing companies and their work forces all around the country.

If we are to succeed in this competitive world, we need to continue investing in our people and raising the standards that working people can enjoy in the workplace. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills has just published a landmark White Paper on adult skills, which shows once again how we in the Government are working successfully with the business community and with trade unions to put in place the investment and reform that are needed to correct a skills deficit in Britain that goes back to the 19th century. However, we need to do more.

We have shown over the past eight years that, contrary to all the fears that were raised by the Opposition eight years ago, it is possible both to raise standards of protection for working people and to raise the growth rate and the employment rate in our economy. That is what we have done through the minimum wage and through the advances that we have made on family-friendly working, trade union
 
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recognition and much else besides. We have set out in the Budget and in the recent consultation document that my Department published how we propose to move forward in the years to come to ensure that we get the best standards for our employees, because that is the way to get the high-performance workplaces that are central to Britain's future as a high value-added, high-wage, knowledge-driven economy.

The Budget reinforces the economic stability that is the essential foundation for business success and employment creation, which we will never put at risk. It also puts in place the measures that are needed to help more of our businesses create the new products and the new production processes that will keep them competitive in the global economy, and which will continue to deliver increased employment, higher living standards and a better quality of life for our people. I commend the Budget to the House.

2.34 pm

Mr. Stephen O'Brien (Eddisbury) (Con): I draw the attention of the House to the entry in the Register of Members' Interests.

I welcome the opportunity to assess the real implications of this vote now, pay later Labour Budget on Britain's wealth creators, risk takers and entrepreneurs. Beginning with the broad economic background to the Budget debate, I am conscious of the tradition on these occasions—at least under the present Chancellor—to include grand historical analyses of the state of the economy. I am more than happy to continue the custom.

The Government and the Chancellor claim credit for 50 consecutive quarters of growth, so when did that start? For the vast majority of businesses and people of this country not brainwashed by the spin to which Labour is addicted, it started in the final quarter of 1992. The solid foundation on which the UK's macro-economic stability was built, and on which British business so vitally depends, was in fact established during the last four and a half years of the previous Conservative Government.

What has Labour done while building on our golden legacy? The Chancellor—[Interruption.]—and in domestic matters his sidekicks, the Prime Minister and a string of Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry, have presided over the largest trade deficit—[Interruption.] since records began in the reign of William and Mary.

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