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December 2004
A missed opportunity
Hats off to Colin Harding, chairman of George and Harding Construction. Why? Well, this is the fellow who did precisely what every self-respecting business person would love to do - he gave Gordon Brown a good run for his money.
The occasion was the CBI's annual conference in Birmingham earlier this month where Mr Harding harangued the Chancellor over his Pensions Bill and particularly the Pensions Protection Fund (PPF), which Harding claimed would "paralyse SMEs, making them impossible to sell, restructure or rescue".
Harding may not have got the answer he wanted (Brown mounted a vigorous defence of the PPF) but that's not the point. The point is that he got the chance to quiz the Chancellor in the first place.
The fact that ministers such as Gordon Brown were happy to take questions from the floor after their speeches (incoming European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson gave the impression he could have chatted with the audience all morning) was the biggest single improvement of this year's conference.
Sadly, the vast majority of directors of Midlands businesses were not there to see it, too busy to possibly consider the prospect of a two-day jamboree, even though it was virtually on their doorstep. It's a point that was widely picked up on by the Press after the conference. As one national paper rather poignantly remarked, conference attendees weren't so much the captains of industry but "lance corporals maybe".
The great shame for this region is that this could be the last time the conference is held in Birmingham, which means our directors are even more unlikely to attend future shows. The biggest reason it has been held in this region is of course down to CBI director general Digby Jones who played a major role in securing such prominent speakers this year.
The show is moving to London next year (where it will also be held over just one day) while after that Digby will probably have moved on.
In my view the value of such conferences can never be underestimated. As one adviser always tells me, a director should always spend at least a third of their time "thinking about their business" rather than just running it. The chances are that if they had bothered to attend this year and hear the thoughts of the bosses of BT, the BBC, M15, French finance minister Nicolas Sarkozy or our own Cabinet, they would at least have been given some serious food for thought about areas such as offshoring, risk or European economic reform, which no MBA will ever teach them.
Jim Pendrill, editor
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