Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
120-139)
LORD MALLOCH-BROWN
KCMG AND STEPHEN
LILLIE
2 JULY 2008
Q120 Ms Stuart: But there are
no attempts to link up universities to have students coming over.
You are just talking about two Chevening scholars?
Lord Malloch-Brown: I do not think
that there is the political will on their side for that kind of
opening up.
Stephen Lillie: The focus so far
has been on the English language programmes. Two teachers were
there to teach the Koreans to teach English.
Q121 Mr Purchase: May I ask you
about our priorities with regard to North Korea? When replying,
will you refer to its labour relations and workers' rights? We
visited the Kaesong industrial complex and I was appalled—as
I think were my colleagues—to learn that wages were not
paid to the workers. They were given to the Government and they
sliced them off, for their purposes or the purposes of their family,
before giving anything to the workers. That seemed to be against
everything that we know about in International Labour Organisation
work. Such practice was outlawed in most advanced capitalist western
countries in the early part of the last century. Given our adherence
to ILO organisations, what are Britain's top priorities?
Lord Malloch-Brown: I shall respond
first to that point. The DPRK is not a member of the ILO, so while
the working conditions for North Korean workers, as you will have
seen at Kaesong, are better than those for workers in the rest
of the country, it is a bit of a Faustian pact. They work there
under the conditions that you describe. They are not really getting
the full amount of their already rather modest wage. The hope
was that it would start opening things up. There will be issues.
For example, South Korea is pushing for goods that are produced
at Kaesong to be covered by the EU-Korea free trade agreement,
which is currently under negotiation. Well, if that were to happen,
I imagine that we would want human rights issues to be incorporated
into the agreement. More broadly, the absence of workers' rights
is part of our whole effort to advance the broader human rights
agenda—again, getting the UN special rapporteur involved
and pressing on our own bilateral contacts to expand rights. That
is the key. Kaesong is what it is. It is better than the average
€1 a month that workers get elsewhere, but it is a classic
situation of people operating in conditions where they have no
rights and are not getting their full salary. It is unacceptable,
even if a little better than the rest.
Q122 Mr Purchase: So what can
we do? Are there opportunities to get more younger Koreans here
to study and to start to understand different ways? The absence
of a free trade union in any country is one to be deplored, especially
in circumstances such as those in North Korea. You are right.
The technology is that of the 1950s. It is pretty well behind
the times. The use of cheap labour—not quite slave, but
very cheap—to make the thing go is an absolute affront to
any decent human being. Can we do something? Is there scope for
North Koreans to study in the UK? Are any systems or schemes set
up?
Lord Malloch-Brown: No. As we
said earlier, before you came back, not really. That is not through
a lack of willingness on our part, but because of a paranoid regime
that really does not want people to go abroad. We are trying to
identify two Chevening scholars to come here from North Korea,
but that is the tiniest of toes in the door. I know from when
I was head of the United Nations Development Programme, and we
had a much larger programme whereby we were trying to bring people
out to train them in economic planning, that ultimately the only
country the regime would let us take them to was China. It would
not let us bring anybody to the West for fear that in addition
to getting economic training, some political free thinking would
rub off on them, too. We are in the situation of demandeur. We
have very little direct influence. It is a closed regime, which
does not thank us for the generous food aid we provide and does
not allow us to use it as a lever because of its lack of humanity
towards its own people.
Q123 Mr Purchase: So what would
be the British top priority for North Korea?
Lord Malloch-Brown: It is to bring
North Korea more fully into the global community through things
such as the Six-Party Talks so that the range of more normal pressures
starts to have effect and the regime engages, gets a little richer,
gets a glimpse of a better future for itself and its people in
the world, and becomes amenable to pressure and dialogue as it
engages.
Q124 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: When
we were in Korea, we were told that many North Koreans cross into
China and that several hundred a week are forcibly sent back to
North Korea, where they have committed a criminal offence in trying
to leave. They are then punished, or worse. China is a signatory
to the UN refugee convention and its 1967 protocol, which requires
it to look into the refugee status of each of those escapees,
instead of which it treats them all as a group, as illegal immigrants
or economic migrants. Do you believe that China is in breach of
its international human rights obligations?
Lord Malloch-Brown: You are right:
China is a signatory to the UN refugee conventions. It insists,
however, that those defectors are economic migrants and, as you
say, on those grounds returns them to the DPRK. We have raised
that both in the most recent UK-China human rights dialogue and
as part of the EU-China human rights dialogue, and the Foreign
Secretary covered that point in a letter to your Committee following
his appearance here. We have sought to raise the issue in every
way we can. Whether China is in breach or not is something for
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to have a view
on, rather than us, and I am not sure that it does, does it?
Stephen Lillie: I am not aware
that it has expressed that view, but it has expressed concerns
about how it works with the Chinese.
Q125 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: I do
not think that is good enough. North Korea may be a slave state
that has opted out of the world system, but China is a member
of the Security Council. It is therefore part of that international
network of obligations and law. It is hosting the Olympics. I
know the issue has been raised with China, but why do we not get
the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate? This is
not a handful of abductees we are talking about; it is hundreds
of people every week, on a routine and continuing basis, trying
to leave one country and go to another. They are leaving a country
where they are persecuted and if they get sent back, they are
punished. It is no good raising the issue with China; we want
a row with China. This is a request from me and, I hope, this
Committee: can you formally raise it with the United Nations so
that it starts to do something about a convention that China has
voluntarily signed up to and which it pretends to abide by?
Lord Malloch-Brown: I am happy
to go back and look at this again. I would just say that in every
country, including this one, clear differences are made between
economic migrants and refugees, and we get criticised, too, for
whom we put in the economic migrant category. Just the fact that
you are punished for illegally leaving your own country is not
in itself grounds for being able to claim refugee status. In other
words, when we return economic migrants to countries, they may
well be subject to legal procedures, so it really is a matter
for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to determine
whether this case load can lay sufficient claim to refugee status
to enable it to try to persuade and force China, through its obligations
to the convention, to put in place procedures to test the claims
of individuals. We will take a look at it, but I do not think
it is quite as straightforward as it seems. As I say, we do raise
it. We have been very clear in two different sessions with the
Chinese this year that we do not accept their position that all
the people concerned are economic migrants.
Q126 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: I know
these things are never completely straightforward, but the evidence
we have is that there is a breach of the convention going on here,
on a systematic basis, and people who are sent back are not just
punished, they sometimes face torture. I do not know whether that
is true, but I think someone ought to find out. If that is not
a breach I do not know what is. Would you undertake to look into
this again and engage with the United Nations about this—about
its own convention?
Lord Malloch-Brown: I certainly
undertake to look into it, and we will find out where the UNHCR
is on this—yes.
Chairman: Perhaps we can have a note.[1]
Minister, as you are aware, the Korean war never ended. There
is an armistice, but not an end to the war, and there is still
a United Nations command. We would like to ask some questions
about that.
Q127 Ms Stuart: The two areas
on which I want to probe a little further are what the UK security
commitment is and how we see the situation post-2012. Let me begin
by asking how we see the security commitment and, more importantly,
raising the question of the Military Armistice Commission and
Britain's current role in it, and how we see the future of Britain's
participation in that.
Lord Malloch-Brown: On the latter
point, our participation in the Armistice Commission has evolved
a little recently: we have involved military staff—the defence
attaché, who is the senior Commonwealth member of the United
Nations Command Military Armistice Commission and a brigadier
in Seoul—and a liaison officer, who is an official and our
political counsellor, so that we have both military and political
representation, if you like, on UNCMAC and its issues. As to the
issue going forward, we obviously, through the military committee,
have participated in this at the staff officer level since the
war. There is the prospect now, in 2012, of the transfer of the
wartime command from the US to the Republic of Korea, but that
function does not get in the way of the UNC, as it is called,
which will retain responsibility for maintaining the armistice.
That will remain under US control. We think that that is vital
because it allows the transit of reinforcements and equipment
through Japan if they are needed. There is a question going forward—if
a peace agreement replaces the armistice—of whether there
would be a UK role in that. Again, primary responsibility devolves
on to the membership of the Six-Party Talks—the DPRK itself,
the Republic of Korea, the USA, China and obviously Japan. Whether
we become formally involved or not, we will continue to take a
close interest because, obviously, the economic and political
stability of north-east Asia remains crucial to us.
Q128 Ms Stuart: May I probe you
a little further on the UK's representation? The naval attaché
was withdrawn, and we have some rather short-term postings of
junior officers in Tokyo. There is a hint that the UK is even
considering withdrawing its rather minimal commitment. Can we
have an assurance that we will not give up our seat at the table,
however minimal that seat may be?
Lord Malloch-Brown: I will leave
the assurance to Mr Lillie—officials are around a lot longer
than Ministers, so it is worth more. As I understand it, however,
we do not accept the proposition that it is a downgrading. The
naval attaché has been replaced by the political counsellor,
and by having both the defence attaché and the political
counsellor, we have a broader array of talents on the committee,
because we have both the military and the political foreign policy
side. We remain committed, but I am not quite sure what longer-term
plans there are.
Stephen Lillie: I do not feel
empowered to give a long-term commitment.
Lord Malloch-Brown: I am not asking
you to give a commitment. I am thinking in terms of our planning.
Stephen Lillie: There are no papers
being prepared for the Minister at the moment to suggest that
we should in any way change our representation. The switch from
the naval attaché to the political counsellor reflected
changes to the whole defence attaché network worldwide.
The provision of junior officers has happened before, but that
is very much an additional supporting role to help the Japanese
self-defence forces in the rear command and the South Korean forces
in South Korea. But no consideration is being given—in the
Foreign Office at least—to changing that basic headline
representation by the defence attaché and the political
counsellor.
Q129 Ms Stuart: We may return
to that subject in the recommendations in our report. May I now
take you to 2012, when we will essentially see the withdrawal
of the US, and things will be completely under South Korean control?
There is a clear mismatch in terms of who will have responsibility
and who will have control. Are the Government satisfied that the
arrangements are working?
Stephen Lillie: On the handing-over
of wartime command in 2012, we need to keep it in mind that the
basis for the security of South Korea is not the UN command, but
the US-ROK mutual defence treaty. It has always been our assumption
and understanding that in the case of a war, it would be the US
and ROK combined forces that would be activated, at least in the
first instance. Although command will be handed over to the ROK
in 2012, the US is still part of the combined forces there, and
we would accept the judgment of the United States forces that
that is an acceptable arrangement, which fully meets their security
requirements.
Q130 Ms Stuart: In 2007, General
Bell said that this would create a "military authority-to-responsibility
mismatch for the United Nations Command", so I am not even
sure whether the Americans are terribly satisfied that this works,
but you may want to write to us. In that context—this is
a specific question of UN command—do you think that they
will be able to provide an international officer back in the headquarters
in Japan by the end of the year? Again, we got the impression
that that was rather important, but I accept that these are rather
specific and detailed questions, so I am happy for you to write
to us.[2]
Chairman: Thank you. May we move on to
questions about Japan?
Q131 Mr Illsley: First, may I
go back to my colleague's comment regarding the handful of abductees?
It is worth stressing again that that is a really important issue
in Japan; indeed, I was surprised just how important it was, until
I met the families. However, my question to you, Lord Malloch-Brown,
relates to Japan's chairmanship of the G8. What is our assessment
of how effective that chairmanship has been? Have any issues been
identified or highlighted on which we and the Japanese do not
see eye to eye? My impression from our visit was that there are
few, if any, issues on which we have a problem in our relationships
with the Japanese.
Lord Malloch-Brown: Again, as
I said about South Korea, although it is even truer of Japan,
our relationship is so good that I sometimes detect frustration
among diplomats on both sides that there is not enough to work
on, because we agree on things. They were therefore quite pleased
to have a summit. To be honest, there was some despair on our
side earlier in the year because Japan has deep domestic difficulties
and a Prime Minister who has faced a lot of problems. There was
a worry in terms of the Japanese leadership of the G8 that the
ambitions would fall short because people were distracted. In
fact, as we get close to the G8, the agenda has shaped up as pretty
good. The Japanese have surprised people by their leadership on
climate change. They were in the slow lane on climate change for
a long time, but under Prime Minister Fukuda, they have really
stepped up and made some pretty bold initiatives in terms of their
own domestic target of a 60 to 80% cut by 2050 and their commitment
to funding a low-carbon revolution. They have also become partners
with us in contributing to the new World Bank climate investment
funds. So, on that issue, we have seen significant progress. The
Japanese have also done pretty well on development. They had the
Tokyo international conference on African aid, which discussed
Japan-Africa development. It was quite a success, and that has
given new momentum to development issues as we come into the G8
meeting. They have also been quite receptive to incorporating
food and oil into the conference at a very late stage. We just
had the G8 Foreign Ministers meeting last week, and we were pretty
pleased because there were statements on issues such as Zimbabwe
and Burma. You can never take it for granted that such things
will be in a Japanese-hosted meeting, because of Japan's general
reticence about taking politically provocative positions. They
will also have an Africa session and a major non-G8 powers session
at the G8 next week, and they will bring in some of the major
Asian regionals at one point. So it will be a fairly imaginative
G8 session, and we can all feel that it looks promising.
Q132 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: You mentioned
climate change, and the Japanese have moved on that, but we detected
a reluctance to go for a binding national emissions reduction
target. They are keen on research and technology transfer, which
you mentioned, but do you think that Japan will bind its future
industrial capacity in the way that a binding target implies?
Lord Malloch-Brown: Fukuda gave
a very important speech on 9 June. You were there earlier, right?
In that speech, he set the domestic long-term target of a 60 to
80% reduction in emissions by 2050 and, critically, said that
a trial emissions trading scheme would be initiated later this
year. All the signals are that the Japanese are preparing to enter
into an international scheme. It is right that there is some continuing
reticence. I suspect that they are probably under quite a lot
of pressure from the Bush Administration not to commit to an international
scheme yet, but I would expect, with the change in the US Administration
and both candidates committed to a global emissions system, that
Japan will not hold out against it.
Q133 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: Are the
British Government alert to the danger of the world dividing into
developed countries with targets that may be difficult to meet—that
is certainly what is happening here with the Climate Change Bill—and
other industrial countries, which may benefit if businesses shift
to them to avoid the targets? Although I am sure that Japan will
do a lot to develop technology to counter climate change, do you
think that it will finally wriggle out of the sort of target that
we will be obliged to pursue? It is not impressed by whatever
leadership or pioneer role we are taking. The moral lead does
not impress the far east terribly, in my experience. How concerned
are the British Government about that?
Lord Malloch-Brown: We have got
to make sure that the process that began in Bali and will conclude
in Copenhagen is a global one. There are all sorts of groups of
countries that could be free riders: industrialised countries
that do not buy into the scheme or large developing countries
that declare that they do not want to join the scheme until they
have climbed the industrialisation ladder as well. There are all
sorts of anomalies. We have stopped talking at this point about
South Korea, but it has one of the bigger emissions footprints
around, yet it counts as a developing country, so it fell outside
Kyoto. We have got to solve the free-rider problem and create
a global scheme that is seen as fair in how responsibilities are
differentiated, to use the word of the negotiators, and that everybody
is in.
Q134 Mr Illsley: Just to follow
on from what David said, in one of our meetings—I think
that it was with Mr Tsuruoka—he said that Japan had led
on the issue of climate change. He made an interesting comment.
He said, "I don't think we've achieved very much by taking
that leadership role. It hasn't brought the developing countries
into taking the action that we want." Is there any sign that
Japan may be moving away from a leadership role on climate change?
Lord Malloch-Brown: They may think
that they were leaders, but for a long time they were not. For
a long time, they said the right things but were real back markers,
along with the US. It is really only since Prime Minister Fukuda
took office a year ago that we have seen it. The prospect of chairing
the G8 came together with that to move Japan very dramatically
on that. I actually think that it is a huge commercial opportunity
for the Japanese, because Japan is exactly the kind of country
likely to benefit from opening up a technological lead in terms
of low-carbon energy technologies. If the whole world chooses
to retool itself with low-carbon energy, I bet that a lot of the
technology that we use will have a "Made in Japan" label.
I think that they have great opportunities.
Q135 Ms Stuart: Japan seems to
have discovered Africa as well, not just climate change. It seems
incredibly proud of its international development commitment.
What is your assessment of that? Is it something that could, in
the long term, create a new dynamic as to who the donors are for
somewhere such as Africa, or is it just part of a kind of awakening
on Japan's side to the fact that if it wants UN reform, space
at the top table and to be an international player, with that
comes certain obligations, and giving aid to Africa is just one
of them?
Lord Malloch-Brown: In fairness
to the Japanese, they have not just discovered Africa. The TICAD
IV conference—Tokyo international conference on African
Development—at the end of May was, as its name implies,
the fourth, and they take place at three or four-year intervals,
so the Japanese have been pushing the issue for a dozen years
or so. I was the co-chair of TICAD III with the Japanese and they
have done a lot. I think they are, to be honest, quite aggravated.
I would apply the last question to this issue. This is somewhere
where they feel they have done a lot and it has not been recognised.
There are some competitive juices flowing now at the way China
has swooped in and very quickly created, frankly, a larger programme
and a lot more African buzz and attention around it. What the
Japanese have promised to do now is double their official development
assistance to Africa, excluding debt relief, by 2012. That means
they will have a target of $1.4 billion by 2012, but one should
observe that, important and generous though that is, it will be
less than the UK is giving to Africa at that time, despite the
fact that Japan is a considerably larger economy. It will also
come from re-allocating aid from other regions to Africa, because
unlike the UK, Japan is not on track to reach 0.7 per cent. of
its gross domestic product being given as ODA by 2012. They will
do some important things and it might be worth pulling out several,
because some are being done very much in partnership with the
UK. The Japanese have a long history of being very good on food
issues in Africa, and not just food aid, whereby they are giving
$100 million at the moment, which is mainly targeted at Africa.
They have been incredibly important in improving African rice
production by the development of the so-called Nerica—new
rice for Africa—crop, which is an African-Asian hybrid that
does well in African drought conditions but has the productivity
of an Asian rice. It has dramatically transformed west African
rice production. Over the next five years, the Japanese will train
100,000 health workers in Africa. They also made a significant
contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and
Malaria. Very much encouraged by us, they are trying to do a lot
on education in Africa. They have committed to construction of
1,000 primary schools, the training of 100,000 teachers in maths
and science and so on. Those are important initiatives, but they
are still within a financing framework that is significantly less
than what, for example, we are doing.
Q136 Sir Menzies Campbell: Minister,
in a minute I shall ask you to make an assessment of Japan's current
international role, and your last answer and the answer before
are both quite important factors in making such an assessment.
However, there is another component that you are probably uniquely
qualified to help us with, which is the issue of Japanese permanent
membership of the Security Council. Could you briefly cast your
mind back to your days on the East River? Just how important do
you think Japan regards the possibility of permanent membership
of the Security Council, and to what extent are the objections
of China, for example, capable of being overtaken?
Lord Malloch-Brown: On that last
point, an extraordinarily high priority for Japan's foreign policy
is to achieve membership of the Security Council. Some of the
setbacks that it has suffered over the past few years—it
seemed to be enticingly close, and has now receded—have
been a deep blow to Japanese self-esteem in the foreign policy
area. We are very clear that we strongly support its membership
of the council. Because it is the second largest economy in the
world, it is the second largest contributor to peacekeeping operations.
On the simple Boston tea party principle of no taxation without
representation, it seems inherently unfair that Japan is being
asked to pay ever larger portions of a growing global peacekeeping
bill but has no direct say over it. It has made Japan rather recalcitrant
on the expansion of peacekeeping, and grumpy about it. It has
turned Japan into budget cutters and all the rest of it. We are
losing its support in the same way that we are, on a smaller scale,
losing Germany's, and that has a real cost, because I think that
we all assume that the multilateral portion of global peacekeeping
is likely to increase. I hope that we will come back. Part of
the Prime Minister's initiative of international institution reform
is to get the Security Council issue resolved. Just yesterday
at the African Union summit, I was pressing a number of African
Governments to get their act together and decide what form they
want African representation to take, so that we can resume an
effort to resolve it. More broadly, Japan sees itself as a little
bit taken for granted in its foreign policy everywhere. It is
still, as I said, the second largest economy in the world, yet
one would never know it, as western Ministers and leaders all
beat their way to the doors of Beijing or Delhi, but less frequently
to Tokyo. The Japanese are publicly gracious about that, but I
think that they scratch their heads a bit about how they have
been so eclipsed, given how important they remain. It is very
much in our interest to stay extremely close with the Japanese,
find them a forum as a permanent member of the Security Council
and encourage them, within the limitations of article 9 of their
post-war constitution, to become active in peacekeeping missions
such as Afghanistan and now, with staff officers, even in Sudan.
We do not want Japan to skulk back into itself, disappointed by
its lack of a global role or recognition of that global role,
or to be thrown off balance by its increasingly competitive relationship
with China.
Q137 Sir Menzies Campbell: You
have managed very comprehensively to answer the question I had
not yet asked, but no matter. On the issue of willingness to spend
money but not capital on military contribution, is there anything
that the British Government can do to persuade the debate internally
in Japan? As we all know, it is locked into the history and the
events of the 1930s and 1940s. I am not talking about sticks or
carrots, but is there anything that we can do to foster an understanding
that a military contribution of the kind that they could well
make, both in peacekeeping and in the more civilian aspects of
military activity, would enhance their claim for membership of
the Security Council as well as being a good thing in itself?
Lord Malloch-Brown: In a way,
you answered the question with that last observation. The way
to do it is through as multilateralised a direction as possible.
Even Afghanistan was difficult for Japanese public opinion, because
the military side of Afghanistan is not a fully fledged UN operation.
Afghanistan and Iraq are difficult places for Japanese public
opinion to see Japan immersing itself in. It is much easier for
Japan, as it is for Germany, to accept that within internationally
endorsed UN-mandated peacekeeping activities. I see a kind of
convergence between these objectives of trying to get Japan permanently
on to the Security Council and getting Japanese public opinion
to accept that with membership of the Security Council come broader
multilateral obligations and responsibilities. I think we need
to drive those two things together.
Q138 Sir Menzies Campbell: We
are at one on that. I have one last question. I deduce from what
you said about the Prime Minister's commitment, and from your
own eloquence, if I may say so, in support of the topic, that
the Government place a high priority on this, and will take every
opportunity to push a solution that we, I think, agree would be
ideal.
Lord Malloch-Brown: Absolutely,
yes.
Chairman: Thank you. Can
we move on to some questions about the economy?
Q139 Mr Hamilton: Minister, you
mentioned earlier the revolution in green energy, the move away
from fossil fuels, and how Japan would likely benefit and produce
many of those new technologies. However, I wondered whether you
could give us your assessment of Japan's current economic position.
We all know, and we have stressed this afternoon, that it is the
second largest economy in the world, still; and while people beat
their way towards the doors of the Foreign Ministry in Beijing
they seem reluctant to go to Tokyo, yet Tokyo has considerably
more economic muscle. What do you think is Japan's vulnerability,
given its recent history in terms of banking and credit, to the
current credit squeeze worldwide? Is it going to suffer more or
less than other developed economies, in your opinion?
Lord Malloch-Brown: This is one
of those cases where the failure of Japan fully to liberalise
its international financial system and to allow as large a foothold
in its banking sector for multinational banks as others have done
is perversely rewarded at this point by the markets; in a sense
the most liberalised international financial model—the allegedly
Anglo-Saxon model of fully liberalised financial markets—has
taken a bit of a knock from them recently. Japan is protected
against that. It has a low level of foreign investment in its
economy compared with other economies of a similar situation,
and not only does it have relatively low exposure of its own banking
sector to overseas banks but equally Japan itself has not got
a high degree of exposure to sub-prime in the US or housing bubbles
elsewhere. Its own housing bubble was a long while ago and while
housing prices have come back in Tokyo they are nothing like the
problem we have. Japan is actually growing again; part of the
business of everybody overlooking the fact that it is still the
world's second largest economy is that along with that goes a
five-year-old view of what is happening to the Japanese economy.
It is growing again quite nicely thank you. They have brought
down, I think, their estimate from 2.1% to 1.5%, but that still
is pretty respectable compared with where the other G8 economies
for the most part are. I think it is looking fine, and we also
need to acknowledge the relationship between the health of the
Japanese economy and our own, because while I have said that foreign
direct investment in Japan is only 2.5% of its GDP, which is very
low by global standards, nevertheless within that group are some
very prominent UK investors—GKN, Astra Zeneca, GlaxoSmithKline,
Unilever, Virgin, British Airways, HSBC, Standard Chartered and
Dyson. Also, in areas such as legal services we now have a lot
of British law firms there. Correspondingly we, who are much more
open to FDI in our economy, have 1,450 Japanese companies that
have FDI here and which employ more than 100,000 people, and that
process continues. Just in the past year, Sony and Fujitsu have
set up European headquarters here. Over the past 20 years, Nissan,
Toyota and Honda have transformed the automotive supply chain
with their investments in the UK; indeed, they account for more
than half the cars made in the UK. All three, by the way, have
made substantial new investments in the sector over the past year.
So we have strong two-way economic links, and the health of Japan's
economy matters a lot to us.
1 Ev 106, Ev 108 Back
2
Ev 106 Back
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