Stourbridge businesses hear how a Conservative Government will improve the economy

A meeting of Black Country business leaders heard Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Philip Hammond MP, attack the Government’s record on the economy and explain how a Conservative Government, if elected, would turn the economy round over the long term.

Philip Hammond accused the government of making the economy far too dependent on the financial services, house building and public sectors of the economy at the expense of the manufacturing sector. He continued “this government has left the country with no room for manoeuvre now the recession has hit, we have a higher level of personal debt than at any time in our history, savings have crashed from the 10% of GDP level they were at under the last Conservative Government to less than 2% today. Gordon Brown encouraged people and companies to take on unmanageable levels of debt by telling us all that he had abolished boom and bust.”

Peter Mathews, President of the Black Country Chamber of Commerce, attending the meeting, called for more support for manufacturing, he pointed out that manufacturing still accounts for 15% of jobs in the Black Country and that some firms were taking advantage of the weak pound by boosting their export business.

Philip Hammond committed the next Conservative Government to restoring the nations finances, a regime of preferably low but certainly stable and predictable taxation would return and regulatory costs would be cut. A Conservative Government would foster a climate of entrepreneurialism by removing some of the barriers to starting up a company.

Margot James, Conservative Candidate for Stourbridge, who started up a company in her twenties, welcomed this move saying “one of the most exciting things about Stourbridge and the surrounding Black Country towns I seek to represent are the large number of small businesses; people in the past have taken their redundancy cheques and started out in business, very often these businesses have flourished and we can, despite these difficult times, feel optimistic that some people at least will be able to turn the initial shock of redundancy into an opportunity to start a new business, the most important thing the government must do in the short term is to support fledgling companies by restoring the flow of credit”.

Photo: Margot James with Philip Hammond MP