Amendment of the law

That is a good point. I do not want to go off on a big excursion on the issue, but I shall say this to the hon. Gentleman. The Government have been unimaginative on broadband development. The BBC is spending £5 billion on digitising the broadcast network—another issue that affects rural areas. If that money went into providing an optical-fibre link to all the rural areas, we would not need to digitise the broadcast network because there would effectively be a physical broadcast network. A lot of things need to be done. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: rural areas would benefit most from what an optical-fibre network could provide. It would save money, encourage high levels of localised industry and cut back on the unnecessary use of cars and other vehicles. There are benefits, but we have to be incredibly careful. The truth is that four of five Government investments will fail. We are also up against another delusion. In the past decade or so, the new Labour Government have insisted on calling every item of public expenditure an "investment". They are not all investments—there are some items of expenditure and some of investment. It is perfectly proper for there to be welfare expenditure, for example, to save people from misery; that is part of the purpose of the Government. However, to call it investment is to confuse things. The important thing to understand in a downturn is that the marginal extra money should be investment. We should be building for the future. If the money is not being spent on investment, we should think twice about spending it, bearing in mind that in any event the largest changes in the public expenditure accounts are in respect of the so-called automatic stabilisers—namely, the cut in taxes raised and the increase in welfare paid.