Conference Special from Margot James

Dear Friend,

Welcome to this special edition of my e wire. Along with 11,000 people I attended the Conservative Party conference this week. Manchester was a great venue. It is a smaller, more compact city than Birmingham, with majestic old buildings, some great restaurants and a good night life. Here is my snapshot of what went on. It is but a small microcosm of course, as there is so much to experience and so little time.

Interest groups and lobbyists 

My friend, Andrea Leadsom, parliamentary candidate for Northamptonshire South was followed by Channel 4 News, and I watched the piece last night (Click here). Andrea said she must have been contacted prior to the conference by 200 charities, lobbyists and companies seeking appointments with her and it had been quite overwhelming.  Indeed it was, I declined all but a few such invites as there is so little time and so much to do over the four day period.

I agreed to meet just four: the Royal College of Midwives, the MDs of Toyota Cars and Lilly Pharmaceuticals and the CEO of the Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust (RAPT). In line with three of my main interests, healthcare, business and prison rehab.  We need to do everything possible to protect and rebuild manufacturing and R&D in our country, and in my area of the Black Country particularly.


 

Business and manufacturing news

Ken Clarke and Mark Prisk led the main conference session. Great to hear the following:

• All six of their team in the Commons and the Lords have hands on business experience. That will be a welcome change from Labour.
• Commitments on business rates, apprenticeships, the loan guarantee scheme, reductions in corporation tax.
• A sunset clause on Quangos. Every two years a Quango will have to justify why it is still needed and when it is no longer serving a real value added purpose it will be merged or removed.
• A new programme supporting people who want to start their own business, called ‘Working for yourself’ it will provide support similar to the old Enterprise Allowance Scheme that was so successful under the last Conservative Government.
• Best of all a real commitment to cut regulation, to improve existing regulation and limit the number of new regulations

 



Toyota


I met MD, Graham Smith, to check out Toyota’s state of the art, lean, manufacturing methods that ensure a cost of goods so much less than the big GMs of this world. At the same time pioneering electric and hybrid cars. This must be the future. Toyota employ 4,500 people in the UK and although demand is down at the moment they have not made any redundancies so as to protect their skill base for when the revival comes.  I was pleased to hear that Toyota have decided to manufacture a new global brand, the Auris Hybrid, which will emit less than 100g here in the UK.

Britain’s looming energy crisis – some opportunities

I have only just got in to this subject so the first thing I am pleased to report is that we have an extremely bright and capable shadow energy minister in Greg Clarke MP. As with the economy overall and transport policy this Government’s record on energy is disastrous.  No decision on the replacement of ageing nuclear plants, hardly any gas storage facility (15 days worth compared to over 100 days worth in Germany and France). And over five years the renewable sector has grown by just 0.3%. 

If we can get the market and incentives right there are two excellent opportunities for Britain to lead global markets in Carbon Capture and Storage plus the harnessing of marine power. At the moment fitting carbon capture technology to existing coal fired power stations is expensive. Scottish Power are experimenting with a new system of capture at one of its stations and if that is found to be economic this could spawn many new jobs and exports.

We have more than half of the entire EU potential market for marine power in the UK.  Surely an opportunity to develop global leadership of a new industry. But the incentives have to be right, at the moment the government supports Wind, where we have no manufacturing in Britain, and not Marine where we do.

Fringe meetings

I spoke in some very interesting fringe meetings and you can see my reports of some by clicking on the links below:



"Strategies for Economic Growth" Read more





"Can we afford tomorrow's NHS?" Read more

It’s not all good news at conference of course...

There are always updates from brave groups who are tackling organised crime to bring about social improvements. I attended two such briefings this time, one from the Poppy Project and one from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).



Poppy Project – supporting trafficked women and children Read more






International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) Read more






RAPT – Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust

I met Mike Trace, CEO, and heard at first hand of the failure of government policy in the treatment and management of drug offenders.  Of the 200,000 people treated !60,000 only received Methadone. A very small number indeed received the abstinence based therapy that RAPT offer.  Mike reckons there are £100,000 savings in the National Drug Treatment service -  if only they could make the savings and hang on to them, then they might be able to do more abstinence based work.

And so much more



In brief: I attended a briefing from the Chief Whip, a policy session from the Shadow Housing Minister, the foreign affairs and international security session, and three most informative and enjoyable dinners: with my colleagues and friends from Stourbridge and Halesowen, with journalists and with the think tank ‘Reform’ and Ed Vaizey MP. I also co-hosted the Conference Pride Party which attracted over 600 people including Nick Herbert MP, Theresa May MP, Andrew Mitchell MP and a few other members of the Shadow Cabinet.



 The Dudley Candidates




 Boris being interviewed


 

There is not much I can add to the acres of positive coverage today that greeted David Cameron’s closing speech. It was exciting to be on the stage to greet the man himself as he came out to tumultuous applause to deliver a wonderful and personal speech. The phrase “we must stop treating children like adults and adults like children “struck a chord with me – amongst so many other things he said. 



 Hall filling up for Cameron speech


 

Best wishes



Margot