Date: Tue 20th April, 2010
Venue: Manchester Business School West, Booth Street West, Manchester, M15 6PB
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The three main political parties came together at Insider’s Election Special debate at Manchester Business School on 20 April ahead of voters going to the polls in May. Phil Woolas, MP for Oldham East, was joined by Conservative MEP Sajjad Karim and the Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate for Bolton West, Jackie Pearcey, for a panel discussion on the important political issues for businesses across the region. They were joined by local entrepreneur and ANS Group chief Scott Fletcher and Michael Luger, dean of Manchester Business School.
Jon McLeod from Weber Shandwick Public Affairs introduced the debate, reminding the audience of the very real prospect of a hung parliament. And as a lead-in to the first point of discussion, he questioned where regeneration money will go, as “we can’t afford regional development agencies anymore”. Phil Woolas re-iterated Labour’s support for local partnerships, but Sajjad Karim said regional development agencies were “undemocratic and unaccountable”. Jackie Pearcey said that where RDAs performed well, support would continue, but with an emphasis an economic development. Scott Fletcher questioned the value of RDAs, suggesting that “from a small business point of view, they are irrelevant”.
Keith Johnston from law firm Addleshaw Goddard asked the panel whether there would ever be a strong champion for business to balance the power of the Treasury. Woolas responded by saying that “the answer is no”. “It is built into public life that the Treasury will have the final say,” he said, but acknowledged that the Treasury was not as business-focused as he’d like it to be. Pearcey attacked the level of red tape coming out of Whitehall with “two to three pages of regulation coming in and 200 to 300 coming out”. But Karim said that there was little appreciation of the amount of regulation coming into the UK from Brussels.
Todd Holden from Enworks asked what support the parties would provide to North West businesses in order to help them move towards a low-carbon economy. Pearcey said it would be important to help more traditional engineering industries, for example, to adapt their output towards developing low-carbon products. Fletcher acknowledged the need to invest in new technology but outlined a recent example where a company was sold in a pre-pack administration and lost its technology to Germany. “If we don’t sort the fundamentals out, we won’t get anywhere,” he said. Karim said the UK should be at the centre of delivery for new technology such as wind farms.
The rest of the debate was punctuated with questions over each party’s spending plans and the effect of the TV debates on “putting personality before policy”. Luger said it would be very difficult at this stage to predict the impact of spending plans due to the intricacies of each policy, but reminded the audience that it would come down to the philosophy of the size of government related to society, and what the voters wanted. Most agreed the debates were good for democracy, but Woolas said he “despaired” of the idea and Fletcher said the format was “too stale”.
