§ 11. Mr. DalyellTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what discussions Ministers in his Department have had with the Government of Guyana concerning trade since 1986.
§ Mr. SainsburyMy right hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Clark), when Minister for Trade, met President Hoyte and Mr. Winston Murray, the then Guyanese Minister for Trade and Tourism, in 1987. He met Mr. Murray again in 1988.
§ Mr. DalyellMay I ask the Minister a question of which I have given the Department of Trade and Industry notice? Is it true that a former DTI Minister, who happens to be the current treasurer of the Conservative party—the noble Lord Beaverbrook—in five months made a profit of £50 million by purchasing and then selling a huge tract of the fragile Guyana rain forest? How will that square at the environment conference at Rio de Janeiro as an example of what the British do to try to save the rain forest?
§ Mr. SainsburyThe financial details of the transaction to which the hon. Member referred, and which bear no resemblance to those that he described, took place two years after my noble Friend left the Government. We all know of the hon. Gentleman's concern for environmental protection and for tropical and rain forests, but the article in The Guardian—I stress, The Guardian—drew attention to the fact that the proposal was to take only 20 cu m of wood per hectare, which is only eight trees, every 20 years. That was the first time that there had been a programme for sustainable forestry management in Guyana.
§ Mr. DickensWhen my hon. Friend next meets Ministers from Guyana and other countries, will he explain that they should buy British goods because they are best? He could remind them that since 1981, the volume of manufactured exports from the United Kingdom has outstripped that of France, Germany, Japan and the United States of America. That is why we are a great nation and why my hon. Friend should attack the Opposition, who constantly talk it down. We are not a small nation, but a great nation.
§ Mr. SainsburyI hope that the true and forceful points that my hon. Friend made were heard by Opposition Members and that they will take note of the success of 907 British industry. I assure my hon. Friend that when I meet Guyanese Ministers—or, indeed, Ministers from any country—I take every opportunity to promote British exports.
§ Mrs. FyfeSurely the Minister feels some embarrassment about the fact that a former Minister at his Department bought a Guyanese asset for £9.7 million and sold it a few months later for £62 million worth of shares? How are Guyanese people expected to buy goods from Britain or anywhere else when they are so impoverished? How will they repay their debt when the poorest of the poor are cheated in such a way? Is not it frustrating for aid agencies across the globe to have their efforts swept aside by deals such as this, which cheat the people of Guyana?
§ Mr. SainsburyI have already pointed out that the financial details of the transaction were, as I understand them, nothing like those suggested by the hon. Lady or her hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell). The forest involved in the transaction had been losing substantial sums of money under Guyanese Government management. As a result of the transaction not only will there be substantial investment and sustainable forestry, but 450 jobs that would otherwise have been lost will be preserved.
§ Mr. DalyellOn a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the unsatisfactory answer, I shall seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment.