Jeremy Hunt

Did you think about this when you were there?

Absolutely.

And it's a kind of big structural reform that you have to do in the first year of a parliament because it's a big upheaval.

And you have to bed these reforms down.

But it was absolutely, I would say it's top of my list.

But, you know, that comparison with France is fascinating because it unlocks a fascinating mystery.

which is that over the last 40 years, you could not have two countries, France and Britain, that have followed more different paths.

I mean, we've been low tax, flexible labor market, light regulation, competitive regime for taxes.

And France has been high tax, big labor market restrictions, quite anti-business.

And yet our GDP and our GDP per head with France have kind of tracked each other over the 40 years.

They've hardly diverged at all.

And why is it?

I think the main reason is because France is just so much easier to build things.

And in the 1970s, we had about the same number of houses, of dwellings as France, similar populations.

Now they have 25% more because they make it easy.

for people to build things in France, and we don't.

Well, they just have a system which aligns the incentives of local authorities.

To give you an example, I mean, in the 1970s, France built six nuclear power stations.

Quite a big achievement, actually, for a decade to get six nuclear power stations off the ground.

And in one part of the Loire Valley, there was so much tax revenue.