16:01 Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)

The north-east obviously has considerable economic strengths. My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) pointed out that car production and vehicle manufacture at Nissan is an extremely important facility, and the new Hitachi factory has come to the north-east partly because of Nissan’s success and because of the area’s links with Japanese manufacturers. We have the largest integrated chemical plant in the UK and, up to the last election, we had a very good programme on sustainable energy innovation, offshore wind and renewables. We are consequently the only region in the UK with a trading export surplus on trading goods.

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