Editing Michael Heseltine (section)

====Industrial policy====
Following the [[1992 United Kingdom general election|1992 general election]] he was appointed Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, choosing to be known by the title, dormant since 1974, of [[Secretary of State for Business and Trade|"President of the Board of Trade"]]. He insisted on being addressed as "President" (''not'' "Mr President") and being referred to as "the President". The Board had not met since 1850, but it did not need to as it had a [[quorum]] of one.<ref name=crick380-381>Crick 1997, pp. 380–1.</ref>

On the backbenches Heseltine had praised the Japanese [[Ministry of International Trade and Industry|MITI]], and had been planning a book on the subject. He promised to intervene "before breakfast, dinner and tea" to help British companies, but had little opportunity for intervention as the DTI budget had dropped from over £3bn in the early 1980s to £1bn in 1992–1993, a fifth the budget of the Welsh Office. [[National Economic Development Council|NEDO]], which had been set up to coordinate industrial policy in the early 1960s, was abolished by Chancellor [[Norman Lamont]] in June 1992, although Heseltine was able to absorb some of the staff into the DTI to set up working parties to shadow specific industries. His junior ministers were [[Neil Hamilton (politician)|Neil Hamilton]] and [[Edward Leigh]], both Thatcherites. [[Gordon Brown]] mocked him (6 July 1992) as having "absolute power over a department which has become absolutely powerless" and "the tiger that was once the king of the jungle is now just the fireside rug – decorative and ostentatious, but essentially there to be walked all over".<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 381–4.</ref>

Heseltine was seen as more interested in large than in small and medium-sized companies, and in 1992 was only with difficulty persuaded to refer [[Lloyds Bank]]'s takeover bid for [[Midland Bank]] to the [[Office of Fair Trading]].<ref name=crick406-408>Crick 1997, pp. 406–8.</ref>