(Mr Young) I believe yes. If we could go perhaps just back
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a little to the relationship between the different ministries in this
country, we have heard at this Committee before of the key role which aid
plays in securing contracts. We know that it is in short supply; we
know that it has been made available up to now on a first-come, first-
served basis. The aid, once extended and I am talking about ATP
here from the UK, can have a differing benefit within the UK.
It can, of course, have an enormous perceived benefit in the recipient
country and so far as ODA is concerned and I say here and now I have
a very high respect for that body it was set up originally to deal
with traditional aid, so far as I understand, in the recipient
countries and it does that task extremely well, but if we are looking
for benefits within the UK for the ATP which we make available - and
that is a comparatively new financial weapon in securing contracts
have to ask, I believe, which ministry should plan the use of the trade
aid. We have to say, "Should we, in advance of projects, coming
forward, identify which projects we want to keep, perhaps as the Japanese
would seem to do through MITI, and I think this picks up an earlier
point as well. Should that be a UK trade ministry or should it be
within the Foreign Office or do we need a new control mechanism to plan
where we should be going overall? That raises major questions of what
changes can and should be made but we must remember, I believe, that in
so doing there is great sensitivity on the part of our competitor countries
to any overt subsidy which we give to British exporters to subsidise
export contracts in competition. The fact that they may do it in a
covert way
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and we believe all of us that from time to time they
we
do - does not have the effect of making it any less necessary for us to
be seen to do it within the rules. We may need to look at the way in
which we play the game within the rules.
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