---

Global Economy

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for repeating the Chancellor’s Statement. I have a copy of it here. One of the things that stands out is: "““We need an international framework that allows creditor countries like China to increase demand and debtor countries to make the difficult adjustments necessary to repay them””." I should like to ask: what are the chances of this happening? What is the mechanism? Is it the autumn meeting of the IMF and the G20? I come back to my point about what the chances are. There is no question that if we could stimulate China to increase its demand for products from our country and Europe, we would be well on the way to restoring the confidence of our small and medium-sized enterprises to get more involved in that market. Leading directly on from that, my noble friend said that more supporting measures will be produced in the autumn. Can I make a plea on behalf of small and medium-sized enterprises for something to be done to limit the huge burden of regulation, which disproportionately falls on small and medium-sized enterprises? They wish to carry on but find international trade really difficult.