Part of Oral Answers to Questions — National Finance – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 28 February 1991.
Does my right hon. Friend accept that, because of the cost of the reunification of Germany, which is costing hundreds of billions of deutschmarks more than the Germans said it would, and the fact that Germany will not allow inflation, German interest rates, which affect us all, are about 2 per cent. higher than they would have been without the reunification costs? May there not come a time when—so that our interest rates can come down—Germany should go in for a system of realignment of its deutschmark rate, not just against the United Kingdom currency, but against Europe's currencies so that fairness prevails and we have proper and sensible lower interest rates, as we would have had without reunification?