The Economy

Debate between Lord Mann and Chris Leslie

Thursday 4th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

Of course competition is essential, but so are important public services that support businesses and enable them to optimise the outputs from the inputs to the production process. That is the crucial point that we have to focus on.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the issues with productivity is that we have become obsessed with mergers and acquisitions for short-term profitability, rather than allowing industry to invest for the longer term as economies such as Germany have been doing?

[Chris Leslie]

Long-term investment, especially production process technology and business investment, is crucial, which is why the stop-start approach of recent years from the Treasury has seen us underperform in business investment into the productive economy. It is essential.