Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Mark Garnier and Vince Cable(7 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
The Minister is assuring his hon. Friend that he is indeed oven ready. That is a new one on me; the hon. Lady has very helpfully added to the collective lexicon of the House of Commons.
Sir Vince Cable (Twickenham) (LD)
Why do the Government not draw a clearer distinction between inward foreign investment, which adds capacity and jobs and is welcome, and inward investment for acquisitions in devalued pounds, which often detracts from our science and technology?
Mark Garnier
The leader of the Liberal Democrats raises a very important point in respect of looking at the statistics. He is absolutely right that fresh investment that comes into this country that creates and safeguards jobs must be disaggregated from, say, stock market transactions, where there is a significant investment in that type of thing. We are looking very carefully at how to disaggregate these two types of investment to get a much clearer picture, but he raises an important point and I assure him that the Department’s economists are looking at this.