Trade Secretary: His top five priorities for trade

Welcome to Lancaster House. What a spectacular setting.

The kind of setting that makes me realise how lucky I am to be doing the job I do. Lancaster House has been the venue for G7 meetings, the backdrop for royal TV adaptations and the venue for many great political speeches. The best of the UK. So it’s fitting that among our audience tonight we have Fever-Tree, now the world’s number one premium blender. Julianne Ponan, CEO of Creative Nature, and Jack Churchill, co-founder of Scanning Pens, both of whom have been awarded for their services to the industry in the New Year’s Honours….. and Nestlé, which has just officially opened its new £30m mineral water distribution centre in Buxton, Derbyshire. I could go on, but if I listed all the achievements of the people in the room, there would be no time left for my speech. Besides, I would rather talk to you than to you. So I will be brief. The first part of my speech is about my priorities for the coming year. The second part is about how I want to work with you to implement them for the country. When I was Secretary of State for the Treasury, my job was to focus on economic growth. And I always thought it needed its own department. That’s why I’m delighted to be leading the DIT, which is really the Government’s flagship department for economic growth. More importantly, this month the Prime Minister set out his five priorities for the government, the second of which is economic growth. Everything the DIT does is aimed at creating economic growth.

GOV.UK

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