To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will make a statement about the resignation of the chief executive of the Export Credits Guarantee Department, Mr. Malcolm Stephens.

Mr. Stephens will be leaving ECGD later this year to take up the post of chief executive of the London Chamber of Commerce. I should like to record my gratitude for his effective and professional leadership of ECGD over the last four and a half years. I wish him well in his new career in the chamber movement, to which the Government attach great importance.