Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012: Trade and Investment

Lord Hughes of Woodside Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland]

I am just trying to keep the sun tan up. My noble friend Lord Green is in Europe as we speak, and everything that the Prime Minister does when he goes abroad is with the aim of incentivising trade.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

My Lords, is there not a case for a coherent policy? Much has been done in terms of the Olympics and the follow-up to them, yet we are now closing the office in Basra. Surely the Minister must realise that it is ease and quickness of access that gets business, not waiting for somebody to phone the office in Baghdad and say, “Can you get on a plane and come and see us?”. The Chinese are not going to do that.

[Lord Marland]

The noble Lord provokes a couple of questions. The first is: what did the Olympics do for British business? I believe it is true that it showed Britain to be safe and secure, it showed us to be an engaging nation and it showed us to be a nation capable of delivery, of which we should be proud. Having been in business all my life, I can say that those are three criteria that are attractive for businesses. If we add to that the rule of law, transparency, our place in the global world and the fact that we speak English, to my mind that makes Britain an absolute global centre. How will we benefit from it? In relation to the noble Lord’s question about the office in Basra being closed, we have announced that a new visa entry programme will be enhanced out there to allow Iraqi people to come to Britain, whereas before they would have had to get their visas from places such as Jordan. A lot of prosperity initiatives are going on and that is just one of them.