When he plans to meet business leaders in the north-east to discuss export prospects for the region. [55050]

On 9 October, I launched a nationwide "listening to exporters" tour with a meeting in Glasgow and will visit Birmingham, Manchester and the south-east during December. I also intend to hold a similar meeting in the north-east, where I hope to meet a number of leading industrialists and exporters, including Michael Stephenson of Helena Biosciences and Peter Joliffe of Loblite Ltd., who is also chairman of the North East of England Export Club, which has some 600 members.

I predict that the Minister will have an ear bashing when he arrives in the north-east. The exporters will complain that the strong pound, high interest rates, new Labour taxes and new Labour regulations are destroying their businesses. Is he aware of yesterday's report by the Northern Development Company, which showed that, in the north-east, two jobs were being lost for every one created? What does that mean for the promises that Labour made before the election? What sort of new deal is that for the people of the north-east?

I am not exactly astonished that the hon. Gentleman chooses to look on the gloomy side of everything, but I refer him to the fact that, in the past two months alone, 5,000 new jobs have been announced in the north-east, including 1,500 in manufacturing industries. I draw his attention to the success of companies such as Solarsolve Marine in South Shields, which has just won the export award for smaller businesses. If he does not find that company—it will probably be away successfully selling its products—he could go to Immunodiagnostic Systems Ltd. of Bowden, NWC Precision Engineers Ltd. of Stanley or Eclipse Translations Ltd. of Alnwick, which are all major export success stories.

The hon. Gentleman must be well pleased with the fall in unemployment in his Constituency since the General Election. Ear bashings are always welcome, as they are part of the process of dialogue, but most sensible people can see the wider story—they know the world circumstances as well as the success stories in this country that are countering such difficulties.

My hon. Friend should take no lessons from the Conservative party, which, in 1981–82, destroyed a third of the north-east's manufacturing jobs in 18 months. Will he respond positively to the competitiveness agenda recently put forward by business, enterprise and representatives of employees in the north-east, so that the north-east—as the region that exports more per head than any other region of Britain—can continue its splendid exporting record and take its good exporting tradition right down to small and medium enterprises in the way that he has described, with a robust interventionism?

The positive and constructive note struck by my hon. Friend is much more representative of the spirit of the north-east than is the carping of the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson), who I think is the only Tory Member left in the region, which tells its own story about what happened before the General Election. Unemployment has continued to fall, but we face difficult exporting conditions. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman thinks that we can be immune from a world situation in which, for example, exports to the Philippines and Thailand have dropped by three fifths, to South Korea and Malaysia by a half and to Japan, Singapore and Indonesia by more than a fifth. Those figures are not a result of circumstances in the north-east; they are a result of circumstances in Asia, from which we are not immune. We all have to work that much harder and be that much more competitive, and many companies in the north-east are meeting that challenge. The Government will continue to respond to the message of my hon. Friend about constructive dialogue with everyone involved in industry and job creation.

Has the Minister, who has had much to read in his new job, had time to look at the Anglo-Portuguese News, which reported on 1 October that, in the same month as Siemens closed a plant in the north-east, it opened a plant in Evora in Portugal with 400 new jobs, specifically on the grounds of labour costs? The export from the north-east has been jobs.

Will the Minister ask the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, who are both north-eastern Members, how long they intend to sit here like local Neros, fiddling while an estimated 16,000 manufacturing jobs are to be lost in the region in the year to come?

I must confess that I have read only the English version of that report. The lesson that I would draw from it is that it refers to a different product, different jobs and, presumably, a different system of financial support. If the Tory party is still sending out the message that we can attain immunity from world economic circumstances by some mystical process if we cut wages and conditions to the bone, it will receive exactly the same answer from the whole country as it received from the north-east at the General Election.