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Shadow Chancellor speaks of support for the regions
Shadow chancellor George Osbourne has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons. However he's also been in Chorley recently to speak to business people from the town and nearby South Ribble. Editor Chris Maguire spoke to him
SSittig within a short pitching wedge of the clubhouse green at Chorley's Shaw Hill Golf Club, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne couldn't see the hidden dangers that lay ahead.
The politican, nicknamed Boy George for his youthful appearance, was confident if lacking the same polish as his leader David Cameron, as he answered questions from a handful of local journalists.
Watched on by his assistant Poppy, he said more needed to be done for small businesses and the country's economy had to be less reliant on London and spread evenly in places such as Lancashire.
It was then that I bowled him a googly.
"We are at a golf course, how would you describe the state of the nation?" I asked. "Are we on par, one under?"
Admittedly it wasn't the same as: "So George, did you try and solicit a 50,000 donation for the Tories from Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska?" but he was backpeddling.
For a split-second Osborne was hacking around in the rough like a novice.
"Oh ... ummmm ...," he said. "I do not know what the answer is. I watch golf, I do not really play golf.
"Well, I'd say we've missed a couple of shots recently as a country, but I have every confidence we can come up to par ... but we need a different team captain."
It was a decent recovery shot and I can confirm that at no stage did the ambitious politician try and tap me up for 50,000 - which is just as well because my net worth is about 50p!
That question aside Osborne gave a solid performance and said he had a two-fold message for business.
"One is that it is going to be a very difficult time and I want to do anything I can to help businesses through that period," he said.
"You can do that by getting the headline rate for business tax down and I would like to cut that headline rate for big companies from 28p to 25p in the pound and for small companies from 22p to 20p.
"You could also change the insolvency bankruptcy laws, so if a company is struggling because they cannot get credit, just as we rescued the big banks, we should do something to help businesses through these difficult times, so they can keep people in work."
Watching an experienced politican is a bit like watching a robot - you know what answers you are going to get.
"I want to be able to help families in this part of Lancashire by working with the local councils to get a council tax freeze," he said.
"We would have to get some of the money centrally and I think a council tax freeze would mean there was one bill in Lancashire which was not going up. My message for Lancashire and I am a North West MP, albeit in Cheshire, is that we need a more balanced economy, you just cannot build the success of a British economy on the back of the City of London.
"We have got to bring in other parts of the country, build up manufacturing businesses, the pharmaceutical, aerospace, chemical businesses, and create a more balanced economy."
During the interview Osborne was flanked by two hopeful MPs in waiting, Lorraine Fulbrook who is tackling South Ribble's David Borrow, and Chorley's Alan Cullens, who will go head-to-head with Labour veteran Lindsay Hoyle.
Both Chorley and South Ribble are Conservative administrations, which is one of the reasons why the North West has been identified as a key battleground in the general election.
Osborne said: "If there was a Conservative government we would provide some of the money to help local councils freeze council tax.
"The proposal I make is that the Conservative government would provide half the money to freeze council tax, and we have set out where we would find the savings in Whitehall to do that and then the local council would provide the other half and we would freeze the bill for two years."
Ask the Shadow Chancellor what he thinks of his candidates locally and he gets off the fence.
"In Lorraine (Fulbrook) we have one of our best candidates in the whole country," he said. "I have known her a number of years and she is an absolute star and she would be a really strong voice for South Ribble, which I do not think it currently has in Parliament.
"And, Alan (Cullens) has only just been selected for Chorley and from the discussions I have had with him he strikes me as a very level-headed and sensible man who knows the area extremely well and so Chorley too would have strong representation in Parliament.
"I am not going to be rude about Lindsay Hoyle, but I think it is the case that Chorley like the rest of the country has not benefited from a Labour government.
"If you asked yourself 10 years ago, after 10 years of a Labour government with all these North West MPs, would we be in this situation where boom has turned to bust. There has not been the kind of investment in the transport infrastructure and skills which are needed to make Lancashire the successful economy that we want to see, I think you would be surprised by how little Labour has done.
"People can see with Conservative administrations in local government what a difference we can make and I think having these two people representing South Ribble and Chorley in Parliament would be good."
It's clearly an answer he's given before and here's another one.
"I would argue that if you look at what the Conservatives have been saying over a number of years, we have been saying you cannot build an economy on debt alone," he enthuses.
"You have to set aside money for a rainy day and we were not doing enough to support our regions and our manufacturing businesses.
"I fought a general election saying the Government was borrowing too much and we had proposals to do something about it and I think that message is still valid.
"The big priority now is not just pinning the blame on Gordon Brown, even though he has been the Chancellor for 10 years so he was in charge, everyone will remember he said there will be 'no more boom and bust' and now we have had gigantic boom and now we are in the bust.
"People do not just want the blame game, they want to know how are we going to help people through this difficult time and we have spoken about some of the things we are going to do for families and businesses. But we also need to discuss how we are going to have a more balanced economy, so that Lancashire and the rest of the country is linked into a national economy.
"I am not saying it can be built overnight but our proposal for a high-speed rail link between Manchester-Birmingham and Leeds-London would transform the public transport infrastructure of this country."
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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