Robert Sturdy

Euro MP Robert Sturdy, international trade spokesman for the Conservative group in Brussels, is urging world leaders at this week’s crucial G20 summit in London to support free trade and help rescue the recession by encouraging new jobs and increased productivity.

He said: “Global trade has been hit hard over recent months, and it will take the combined commitment of each of the G20 leaders to take real action in making trade freer and fairer by removing barriers of bureaucracy, access to markets and barriers to investment. If they can look outwards, avoid protectionist tendencies, and stick to these commitments over the next 12 months, we will see new jobs and new opportunities that will bring our economies back from the brink.

“Global trade affects us all, from the clothes we wear, to the price of bread in our local supermarkets. Businesses rely on the exchange of goods and services, and we as the workers and the consumers rely on the abilities of those businesses to trade on local, regional and global markets.

“However, we should not forget the real victims of our failed trade and aid policies are the poorer nations’ entrepreneurs who find themselves incapable of developing and sustaining new industries, as creditors shy away, and they cannot afford to make themselves more competitive.

“If developed countries retreat behind the walls of protectionism it is the Less Developed Countries who stand to suffer most. This is a particularly bitter injustice for them considering it was the developed world which created this economic catastrophe, bringing the world’s financial and banking systems to a near meltdown.”