Business of the House

Andrew Jones Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

Repealing regulation might require a Bill to be introduced, so it would be somewhat perverse if a Bill that introduced deregulation counted as more regulation, but I take my hon. Friend’s point, which he has developed—at some length—during debates on private business. We are determined to reduce the burden of regulation. He mentioned the one-in, one-out policy. There has been a review of regulation, and I hope that we can announce more progress on relieving businesses of the burden of red tape in due course.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

We learned this week that the trade deficit for January was better than expected, one of the factors being strong exports of cars to the United States and to Brazil, Russia, India and China—the BRIC countries. We have also learned some further encouraging news from the automotive sector, with increases in production for Land Rover and Nissan, and data published this morning suggest a sector-wide production increase of almost 20% year on year. Of course, the vast majority of cars made in this country are exported. May we please have a debate on the progress we are making on rebalancing our economy towards manufacturing and exports?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend reminds the House of the encouraging news about the motor industry, particularly our success in export markets. We had the good news about Nissan and about Land Rover providing more jobs in Merseyside. I hope that in the Budget debate he will be able at greater length to give examples of success in regenerating the manufacturing sector and getting a more healthy balance, with less reliance on financial services and more reliance on manufacturing, engineering and industries of that nature.