Mr. Rob Wright:

Again, it is a great luxury for all of us to be able to look back. Members were here for the ride; I was on the other side of the pond. There was a real sense of dynamism in this country about a great decade of growth, catching up with the rest of the European Union and, in early 2000, surpassing it in terms of income and every barometer there was. The revenue kept coming in. Was there a conscious change? Probably not. The early driver of change was enhanced competitiveness. The second dynamic of change was low interest rates from the European Union, massive infrastructure spending by the Union and a focus on sharing the benefits that did not really exist at the time. These factors overwhelmed the situation. It was not just the construction sector that was expanding; the average rate of growth of spending was 11.8% over the ten-year period. That is extraordinary.