HC Deb 13 April 1994 vol 241 cc202-3
17. Mr. Jacques Arnold

To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on current progress with the export promoter initiative.

Mr. Heseltine

Excellent progress has been made with this initiative and 75 high-quality export promoters have now been recruited.

Mr. Arnold

May I welcome the considerable progress now being made? We have long needed an effective link between the high-quality commercial sections in our overseas missions and our high-quality exporters in Britain, especially the potential exporters in our constituencies.

Mr. Heseltine

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I shall take this opportunity to say a word of thanks to the many companies—rather less than 75—that have seconded high-quality staff to my Department. They are having a profound effect and are working extremely well with the 80 officers that the Department has seconded to survey and report on the 80 senior markets to which we export.

Mrs. Clwyd

How many people in the right hon. Gentleman's Department are involved in promoting the export of coal, so that pits such as the Tower colliery in my constituency will not, through sheer vindictiveness, be forced to close on Friday because of the incompetence of both the Government and British Coal?

Mr. Heseltine

The hon. Lady can go on making such remarks for as long as she likes, but the reason why British Coal's pits have been closed is that they could not produce a product for which there was a market at a price that people were prepared to pay. If anyone has the slightest doubt about that, he should reflect on why the private sector is negotiating to take over pits that have been closed by British Coal—it is because the private sector believes that it can make a success of them.

Mr. Dickens

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the greatest export promoter for British industry is for it to design and manufacture products that the rest of the world wants to buy, produce them at competitive prices and of excellent quality, deliver them on time and give good after-sales service? That is the great export promoter for Britain and that is what Britain is doing at the moment.

Mr. Heseltine

My hon. Friend is proving himself a great export promoter, by articulately putting over the only message on which industrial export success can be based.