Lord Mendelsohn
Main Page: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
As noble Lords will have seen, the Prime Minister has already started to discuss his plans for reform and renegotiation with his EU colleagues and associated analysis. We expect to set out some further details at the European Council meeting at the end of June.
Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)
Does the Minister agree with me that the UK’s long-term performance under successive Governments in attracting foreign direct investment has been vital? Given that the increase in FDI in the last five years has grown faster than the UK economy and GDP per head, does she agree that this recent performance raises questions about the potential contribution of foreign direct investment to UK economic performance? Could she explain why we appear to see very little impact on productivity from rising levels of foreign direct investment and what changes are required to the inward investment strategy?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
The noble Lord is right to congratulate the country on the improvements in foreign direct investment. One should pay tribute to companies such as Nissan, Tata and a whole load of smaller companies for coming to the UK, taking advantage of our flexibilities and low tax rates to do so.
The issue of productivity is a bit of a dilemma, which is why my right honourable friend the Chancellor has said that he will publish a productivity plan to make Britain work better, building on the good start made in education and skills, deregulation and so on that we discussed in the previous Parliament.