Clause 20 - Duty to make references in relation to completed mergers
Enterprise Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire, Conservative)
I commend Professor Crafts's monograph from the Institute of Economic Affairs to the hon. Gentleman. He will read that the trend gains in productivity in the United Kingdom during the 1980s were higher relative to others than during the preceding period. When France and Germany were making substantial gains in productivity after the second world war, the United Kingdom's appropriate response should have been to move towards a more competitive regime through the application of industrial policy.
Before I let the hon. Gentleman intervene again, he might like to consider an important point. The Budget Red Book made specific reference to the productivity issue and referred to the fact–it was about the only glimmer of hope that the Government could grab hold of–that in the past 10 years there had been some narrowing of the gap in productivity with France. Except that, on examining the table in the Red Book, it was plain that that narrowing had occurred during
the first six years of the past 10 years and had widened slightly during the past four.