In fact nominal interest rates have been as low as most of us can ever remember; the overall economy has grown consistently for 40 successive quarters without interruption at an average annual rate of some 2¾%, which is comfortably above its long-term trend; and the number of people in employment has risen fairly steadily to close to an all-time high, while the rate of unemployment has fallen to a more than 25-year low. The overall picture is much the same for the West Midlands region. I don't have regional data for real economic growth, but using the deflator for the UK economy, your region grew from 1992 to 1999, at an annual average rate of 2.7% - very close to the rate for the UK as a whole. The number of people in employment in the region has also increased, with the employment rate now close to a 10 year high and in line with - in fact marginally above - the average for the UK of 74.6%. And the rate of unemployment - on the claimant count basis - at 3.5% is very close to its 25 year low. That's still a bit above the UK average rate, of 3.1% but it's very much better than the 10% rate of a decade ago.
The business opinion survey conducted here in the West Midlands earlier this year by the Institute of Chartered Accountants and the IOD - which had over 85% of respondents agreeing that red tape and bureaucracy are stifling business - suggests that some of you have noticed! But for the most part such regulation doesn't tell us what activities we can and cannot undertake, rather it sets the criteria we must meet and the standards we must observe in doing whatever it is we choose to do. It leaves more room for both consumer and producer choice, and more room, and more incentive, therefore for competition and innovation. Our experience in the UK is, of course, just part of a very much broader and continuing evolution internationally - often associated with increasing political democracy - from varying degree of centralised administration to an increasingly open, market-based, approach in all parts of the world reflected also in increasingly free international trade and investment. At the macro-economic level the economic advantages of freer market competition are familiar. No one could claim that it's perfect - especially in the light of the current volatility! But profitability is the best means that we have so far discovered for directing resources - whether human or material or financial resources - into those activities in which they can be most productively employed.