WHO NEEDS EUROPE? WE CAN TRADE WITH THE WHOLE WORLD

NExT week I’ll be packing a plane full of business people and heading to South East Asia – my first trip outside Europe since the general election. This is a region on the rise, and I’m determined that Britain grabs every opportunity that brings.

By 2030, South East Asia is predicted to be the fourth largest single market in the world. In other words, the wind of economic change is blowing east – and not just to China and India.

For too long, Britain has seen the weathervane pointing to these far-flung lands, but continued to rely on our European neighbours for trade and investment. Under Labour, our share of global trade fell. We’re still selling more to Hungary than to Indonesia – even though Indonesia’s population is 25 times bigger. We still do more trade with Belgium than we do with Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam combined.

With some of our neighbours’ economies stagnating and markets further afield roaring ahead, we need to change our approach. We need to go to the ends of the earth to sell our wares – to recapture the outward-looking, enterprising spirit that made us great. I want us to be nothing less than the modern world’s most open, trade-minded nation. To do that, we must tap into markets outside Europe; to look to the Commonwealth and beyond. There’s plenty of potential. Proportionally, more people in Singapore have smartphones than anywhere else. Indonesia has 55 million internet users. I remember Vietnam in the 1990s, when there were few cars on the road. Today, they buy around 150,000 cars every year.

The EU must do more, too. That is why I’ve put competitiveness and cutting European regulations right at the heart of my plan to renegotiate our relationship with Europe – and will put it to the British people in an in-out referendum.

I’ve taken business delegations like this all around the world; sent Ministers off to emerging economies; turned our embassies into shop windows for Britain. And it’s working. Since 2010, we’ve more than doubled the goods we sell to China and South Korea.

Last year, the value of foreign investment in Britain broke the £1trillion mark for the first time. Countries invest more here than anywhere else in Europe, with Teesside and Coventry snapping up the latest big deals. So my message to South East Asia is simple: when it comes to new markets, Britain means business. Every time we stride into a new market, it’s a good thing for the people of Britain. A quarter of all British jobs are linked to exports.

A third of people in this country work for foreign- owned firms. So this trade mission holds great potential – and I think there are three big arguments we need to take on along the way.

The first argument is that these visits only benefit big firms in London. I’m determined to prove that wrong. Our great northern cities make the cars, design the planes and build the trains the world wants to buy. They have infrastruc- ture plans and regeneration opportunities foreign investors are looking for. That’s why I’ll be hosting Britain’s first-ever Northern Powerhouse delegation in Singapore – in fact, there will be a business from every region in Britain on the visit.

The second argument is that we should avoid doing business with countries with barriers to trade, including corruption. Wrong again. Many in South East Asia have led the battle against corruption, which costs the global economy billions of pounds a year. Britain is joining them in that fight – I’ve put the issue at the top of the global agenda. Given a level playing field, British businesses can out- compete anyone in the world.

The third argument we need to take on is that trade missions are pointless; that foreign ownership of British firms is bad and foreign governments just want to exploit our technology. Again, wrong. Trade missions are successful, leading to huge deals for Britain. That is why I’ve told my Cabinet that by the end of this year, I want at least one of them to have visited the key markets that will help us to achieve our target of doubling UK exports to £1trillion by 2020. In my view, foreign ownership of British firms can be a positive thing – you only have to look at the Indian investment into Jaguar Land Rover and its impact on the West Midlands.

And while we will always guard against the theft of intellectual property, we don’t want to stand in the way of our entrepreneurs selling their ideas to the world.

I think of the Age of Discovery, when our great explorers took to the waves to open up trade routes. No territory was too far. No opportunity was left untapped.

We need to employ some of that Elizabethan endeavour today – to tell the world: “we’ve got the supply; you’ve got the demand; let’s do business”. Modern- day trading shouldn’t just be about the truckers going between Calais and Dover; it should be about the cargo planes landing in Jakarta and the container ships docking in Ho Chi Minh City. That’s how we’ll become the most open, trade- minded nation in the world.

And that’s what will give people right across our country the economic security they need.

‘A quarter of all British jobs are linked to exports’ ‘Not just about trucks between Dover and Calais’