Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Trade and Industry – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 5 June 1991.
Peter Lilley
Secretary of State for Trade
12:00,
5 June 1991
The hon. Gentleman is clearly brushing up his green credentials by recycling old jokes. I acknowledge that there is concern about the depth of the recession, but I know that industry believes that our first priority must be to get inflation down. In its meetings with me, the CBI has made it clear that it supports the priority that we give to that objective and that it has no intention of urging us to withdraw from the exchange rate mechanism. It is also confident that, as industry recovers from the recession we shall see a renewed, strong growth during the 1990s such as that which it praised us for achieving during the 1980s.