I am now rather embarrassed that I gave way to the hon. Gentleman.
Hon. Members should make no mistake: our economy faces huge challenges. We have a current account deficit made up primarily of the country’s deficit of imports in relation to exports. That now stands at 5.1% of GDP, which is higher than at any point in peacetime since 1830. We also have an export target that the Government are set to miss by a third. Rather than taking action in the Bill, the Government are moving to get their excuses in early, with the Trade Minister recently describing that target as a “big stretch”.
We see no sign of the rebalancing the Chancellor promised six years ago, let alone of the march of the makers that he promised would be carrying us all aloft by now. British manufacturing has been in recession since last year, and output is still falling short of where it was in 2008. A complacent attitude to the UK steel industry is just one symptom of the Government’s neglect of manufacturing and our industrial base.
Just six weeks after presenting an optimistic comprehensive spending review, the Chancellor abruptly changed his mind. He turned up in Cardiff, warning ominously that our economy was suddenly facing a “cocktail” of threats in January that he had apparently failed to perceive in November. Instead of presenting radical action to deal with those threats, the Bill bears all the hallmarks of a frantic search by officials around the far-flung recesses of Whitehall for things to put in it. As a result, it has nine parts—mostly unrelated—dealing with issues ranging from the creation of a small business commissioner with little statutory power to the requirement that insurance pay-outs are made in a timely fashion and that regulators should be mindful of their effect on small business.
There is a welcome extension of the primary authority scheme, which was introduced by the last Labour Government, and which has been a great success. The Bill allows Ministers to set targets for apprenticeship numbers in the public sector, but without explaining where the money to pay for that will come from. It also puts a cap on exit payments, which may have unintended consequences for public sector reform.