Industry (Government Support)

I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. The whole issue of accountability and transparency in the public sector is key. One phrase that I love to say is that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and that can be applied to the spending of central Government, local authorities or these unelected, unaccountable quangos, which in many cases are not even consolidated into departmental accounts. It is very easy to pay for junkets to the south of France if one knows that nobody is looking at the books. He raises an incredibly important point on an issue that we have pledged to improve with a far more rigorous and accessible system of transparency in public spending, which I wholeheartedly support. Let me return briefly to the other schemes that were meant to make such a difference. Do hon. Members remember the £2.3 billion automotive assistance programme—the former Government's flagship scheme that was going to support the entire vehicle manufacturing system and supply chain? It made only three offers of loan guarantee schemes and only two companies decided to go ahead with them. Then we had the other enormous underpinning of the British export industry—the £5 billion trade credit insurance scheme, which sought to underwrite firms doing the incredibly valuable job of earning pounds by exporting. Well, it underwrote 109 policies. That sounds reasonable, but they were worth £18.5 million. That sort of micro-meddling and initiative-itis bedevilled the former Government, and as a business person, I feel they do not get what British business needs. But we do. British business needs three things. First, it needs transport and broadband infrastructure. If my memory serves me right, Labour Members only recently started to get to grips with the concept of high-speed rail, which will do so much to rebalance economic growth across the regions. As for broadband infrastructure, in rural Britain we are extremely deficient in what will give us a living and working countryside. Instead of grinding through additional taxes, more changes and a digital switchover fee, the Government have a plan to get the broadband network in place. That is incredibly important. Secondly, British business needs a decent low-taxation environment. On corporate competitiveness, we have gone from 10th in the world to 26th over the last 10 years. We can all give examples from our constituencies of companies that have left the country to move to more benign taxation environments. I am talking just about the headline rate, not the taxation complexity to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) referred earlier. Have Members seen the size of our tax code list? The list reaches my waist and I am 6 feet 1 inch. It is a lot of paper and we have developed a whole industry employing lots of people to interpret tax codes for small businesses. The Conservatives' aspiration is to have the lowest tax rate in the G20 and that is what British business needs. Thirdly, we need to get regulation out of the way. My hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) described the health and safety madness that bedevils businesses of all sizes. Indeed, we have gone from fourth in the world for business regulation benignness to 86th over the last 10 years. We have become a country where people have to wade through acres of red tape to do what they need to do every day. Over the last 13 years, Labour Members did not get, and still do not get, what British business needs. We are the party that will deliver our promises, which is why I am pleased to speak in support of the amendment for which I shall vote tonight.