§ Mr. VazTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what plans he has to bring about increased investment in the machine tools industry and to prevent further redundancies.
§ Mr. Leigh[holding answer 11 November 1991]: The Government can best help the machine tool industry by providing a stable economic framework based on low inflation. In the past year inflation has fallen from 11 per cent. to about 4 per cent., allowing interest rates to fall by 4.5 percentage points. Output is set to rise in the second half of this year and to rise still faster in 1992, with manufacturing growing faster than the economy as a whole.