He did not even answer whether the one replaces the other or whether we are to have competition in Envoys. Even Labour smiled at that muddle.John Redwood is shadow Trade and Industry Secretary for the Conservative Party Copyright: IOS & Bloomberg. TEN YEARS ago I spent a week in Korea researching a story called "Inside Daewoo". He has not so far answered a single factual question that I have posed on two statements. In a debate I initiated on competitiveness, he failed to answer a series of factual questions that I sent to him in advance.His recommendations in the White Paper were a combination of old hat, the banal and the insignificant. Britain is not going to be revolutionised by a publication called Creating a Great Place to Work or by a review of "Government-supported skills development schemes".

Fortunately, the amounts of money his department are going to spend are, for the most part, tiny compared with the size of the enterprise economy A few weeks ago he announced a Digital Envoy Yesterday he announced an e-Envoy. Yet when I ask what the Government intends to do about these ideas there are no answers. The Opposition would agree with some and not with others; we know our minds on the subject. Why does Mr Mandelson run scared of serious debate on how far we should go in unleashing competition and removing regulation in these and other areas?Listening again yesterday, I heard a man who devotes all his time and talent to media links and general messages and none to the hard work of sorting out policies that could underpin the high-minded intentions of his statements He does not seem to like the democratic process.

This Government has made it too dear to make things in Britain. Businesses are looking elsewhere for their new investment.McKinsey argued that the main cause of Britain's poor productivity was government policy. It urged the abolition or expansion of milk quotas, a planning system free-for-all to build superstores and new hotels, and action to break protected franchise agreements as in car distribution. It is no good the Government claiming to believe in competition, but then failing to introduce it into the most obvious case.Mr Mandelson has used October's report on productivity by the management consultants McKinsey as a smokescreen. He is reluctant to admit that the main reason why British business has a problem competing today is the policy followed by this Government.