PLANNING, TRANSPORT, SKILLS AND IMPROVING PUBLIC SECTOR EFFICIENCY – TOPICS DISCUSSED BY THE STOURBRIDGE CONSERVATIVE BUSINESS G

	Peter Luff MP, Margot James, Simon Wolfson and Chris Kelly (Conservative candidate for Dudley South)		Listening to Peter Luff and Simon Wolfson
	Tony Billingham with Cllr. Les Jones and Cllr. Pat Martin

The meeting was held at Himley Hall on March 6th. Chaired by parliamentary candidate Margot James the meeting heard from two speakers:

• Simon Wolfson, Chief Executive of Next and Joint Chairman of the Conservative Party’s policy review group on Economic Competitiveness
• Peter Luff MP, Chairman Select Committee on Business and Enterprise

Select Committee Priorities

Peter Luff opened the meeting with a rundown on the enquiries presently underway in the Select Committee. “Maintaining a higher value in the UK Economy “ is a key review this year. An enquiry into energy policy is also underway.

Business in the Black Country has a keen interest in building a higher value economy. The group agreed with Peter Luff that there was a poverty of aspiration. Leader of Dudley Council, David Caunt, believes that parents in the area need to be more ambitious for their children. Margot James agrees, she has visited Further Education Colleges and schools in Stourbridge and has been surprised. Take an excellent school like King Edward’s, why is it that with their performance at A level they only send five or six children to Oxford or Cambridge she asked the head? His reply was that despite his best efforts there was a family influence in favour of Wolverhampton University. Perhaps student debt is to blame for this. It is cheaper to live at home obviously.

Peter Luff went on to discuss skills, another key topic for the Black Country. Less than half of the British workforce is trained up to National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ) level three. But in Slovakia almost 90% of school leavers have the equivalent NVQ level three or higher. In addition to skills the select committee is looking at marketing, how swiftly do British firms commercialise their product development? And, how do they protect their intellectual property.

Conservative Priorities

Peter Luff concluded by saying that Conservative Party policy in this area was to take the bureaurocracy out of further education. There was, he said, a skills industry growing up in the West Midlands, led by Advantage West Midlands, which was in danger of strangling the very thing it was trying to promote. Conservatives would devolve a great deal more money and power to the Colleges and local business. On the environment the Party is keen to develop tax neutral incentives and disincentives that enable the interests of business and a cleaner environment to converge. Finally taxation, it is important to simplify taxes and regulations on business.

A Smart Dresser

The first thing Margot noticed about Simon Wolfson was the very nice cut of his suit. Simon announced that it was a Next special, a bargain at £230.00. Indeed it was. It looked like the best Richard James but 25% of the price. The story behind it though was a lesson for the Black Country economy. A fabric made in Italy, shipped to China for production and back to Merry Hill for sale.

Simon stressed the need for a new attitude. Britain has done well but needs to rediscover a positive, can do work ethic. This government has stifled such a spirit with its interference, micro management and failure to do its own job properly. Especially in the areas of transport and planning.

Wolfson on Transport

The most precious asset is our people. So why are we wasting hours of their time every day stuck in traffic? Road users yield £30 billion on road tax and fuel duty yet only receive £10 billion investment back in roads. Meanwhile huge subsidies are paid out to other forms of transport. Who is going to pay for improvements to the railways? What is obvious is that we need more roads. We should let the private sector organise the building of them and then charge for use at peak periods. Road charging should replace vehicle tax. Regarding environmental impact the priority must be to make cars and other vehicles cleaner. Not ration road usage through congestion and queuing. Good transport links are indeed fundamental to the competitiveness of the Black Country economy and Simon Wolfson’s views were well received. Except that we are reluctant to back yet another tax, this time on road usage, before we see that a rebate on vehicle tax really would offset the cost of such a tax to the long suffering road user.

And on Planning

More radical still were Simon Wolfson’s views on planning. The problem is so much of our national wealth is tied up in inflated house prices. A non wealth creating asset. Planning law is biased towards the building of small units in already crowded towns and cities. It is difficult to get spacious new homes, of the type most people want to live in, past the planning infrastructure. Yet such a small proportion of the country is built on. We have to free this market up and get more homes built of the type people want otherwise this huge inflated housing market will continue to drag the economy down. Government’s bid to control prices of housing has been an abject failure. Let developers be free to develop new towns of 20,000 dwellings several miles from other conurbations. Anyone affected should simply receive generous compensation; there is more than enough money in the development model to fund such compensation.

Margot James and Peter Luff could just imagine how this idea would go down in Worcestershire and any other part of semi rural England. Not well at all is the answer. This statistic of so much of the UK not built upon is all well and good, but if you measure it in terms of the % of the land most Britons want to live and work in you would get a far higher percentage already built on. The urban sprawl around Birmingham, Coventry, Walsall and Dudley being a case in point.

Public Services

The lack of trust and pessimism of the government is at the heart of it’s mismanagement of public services. All employees are tied up in myriad of controls on employment. Managers must be free to innovate, free to hire and fire, build winning teams. Yet these powers have all been removed and in their place an ever growing set of rules from the centre tries to control the manager’s every move. The assumption that most of us are potentially racist, sexist and against people with disabilities pervades all employment policy. This has to change. Government should show more courage and let go of these controls.

Discussion

A lively debate followed. About politicians, what qualified them to be MPs, and surely we needed a Chancellor who really understands banking and finance. Not an ex solicitor. People wanted to know how we could possible restore trust in politics. Recent scandals had sent trust in politicians plummeting. Peter Luff pointed out that much of this had been whipped up by the media. He himself had been the victim of libellous reporting by the Mail on Sunday. Most politicians were decent, hardworking and paid a lot less than they would be in alternative employment. Simon Wolfson reckoned that it was time politicians were treated with more respect otherwise no one of merit would want to go in to public service.

There was much discussion about skills and the work ethic. Chris Kelly, Conservative Party Candidate for the constituency of Dudley South pointed out that his firm would employ more young British people but by and large the problem was one of inadequate skills and a lack of ambition. The benefits culture did not help.

Simon Wolfson concluded the meeting by calling for a change in the ethos of schools. We need better teachers, more discipline and a situation where parents once again respected teachers. Too often parents sided with children against decisions made by teachers. Too right. That has to change. Academic standards need to be more rigorous and disruptive pupils removed from mainstream education. Parents need to back up the authority of teachers, not undermine them.