POLITICS
The Chamber, alongside 30 other Chamber members of all sizes and sectors, recently took the demands of East Midlands Businesses down to Westminster, launching the Chamber’s Delivering a Great Future: A Business Manifesto for Growth in the process. The Chamber’s Director of Policy and External Affairs, Chris Hobson (pictured), reflects on the day, looks at what was achieved and highlights what needs to happen moving forward to ensure the East Midlands realises its fantastic potential.
‘Whatever happens over the next few months and years, there is a massive opportunity across the East Midlands’
the Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Local Enterprise Partnership (D2N2 LEP) and also as Chair of the Metro Strategy between Derby and Nottingham. Finally, we heard from Karen Smart, Managing
Director of East Midlands Airport. The airport plays such a central role in these discussions and underpins so much of what we’re looking to create and achieve. East Midlands Airport also sponsored the event and we’re indebted to its support, which allowed the Westminster delegation to take place.
What is the process for developing the Chamber’s asks of Government and how do we ensure these asks are reflective of members and the wider East Midlands business community as a whole? It’s really important that we draw a solid line
and demonstrate to members that this isn’t a case of just talking via strategy and influence groups, forums and conferences and getting their insights through our Quarterly Economic Surveys (QES), for example. That is all very important but crucially it’s
about us taking that information, collating it, pulling it all together and then going back to members again to make sure we’ve received their messages loud and clear; it’s a comprehensive process. Delivering a Great Future: A Business
Manifesto has been produced over a nine-month
period through multiple consultations and the priority is making sure that our members are happy that we’ve got our asks of decision- makers right. Only at that point were we in a position to go
down to Westminster to get these key messages across. The loop then needs to be closed and we need to feed the results and actions of these meetings back to members and demonstrate that, by engaging with the Chamber and sharing their priorities, aims and concerns, they are really a part of something. It’s about listening, talking and using that information to affect positive change.
How will domestic matters remain on the agenda in the months and years to come amid a backdrop of Brexit uncertainty? Brexit is the prism that everything has got to
be viewed from at the moment. When we’re talking about our asks - such as supporting supply chain businesses to innovate or diversify, ensuring we get educational reform right and investing in our roads and rail – those asks don’t exist in isolation from the fact that the UK is currently on course to leave the EU. This is the backdrop and context behind it all
and it is really important that the politicians realise that they can’t separate the two out to the detriment of getting the domestic agenda right and I think that’s where we’ve gone wrong over the past couple of years.
What does the future look like for the East Midlands and how can we realise our ambitions? Whatever happens over the next few months
and years, there is a massive opportunity across the East Midlands. We’re starting from a strong base. We know
businesses are doing well compared to counterparts elsewhere in the country. There’s a huge amount of scope for businesses to succeed in the East Midlands, and we talk about that at the end of our manifesto. We must aspire to, and deliver, an area of
ultra-high growth that hinges around areas such as East Midlands Airport and the Strategic Rail Freight interchange, the Toton station for HS2, Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station, for example. We can do some really amazing things there
and the private sector has a vision and we would ask for support from politicians both locally and nationally to help us deliver on that.
business network December 2018/January 2019 43
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