To ask the President of the Board of Trade what estimate she has made of the benefit to the United Kingdom to date of the 1994 GATT agreement to liberalise world trade. [11236]

[holding answer 29 July 1997]: Work undertaken by the GATT secretariat suggests that, over the long term, the agreement on trade in goods alone could boost the real income of the EU as a whole by around 1.7 per cent. per annum. By 2005, this could amount to around $160 billion per annum for the EU. No separate estimates are available for the UK.