Making The UK Fit For Purpose In The 21st Century

By Lord Digby Jones

It is at a time of enormous domestic & international geopolitical fux that I refect on how the UK might become ft for purpose in the 21st Century.

One has to be careful distinguishing between what is hoped for & what is likely to happen. For example, wouldn’t it be marvellous if the Korean Peninsula was one united & nuclear-free country again?

Likelihood: zilch. But then, who’d have thought Potus & Kim would have had three meetings in as many years already?

A United Kingdom, unshackled from the EU & its competitiveness-destroying regulation, the Germany-favouring (especially economic) policies & its tolerance to rule-ignoring (some would call it cheating) by France, Italy, Greece et al, can really pick the pearl out of the oyster of the globalised economy.

This is Asia’s Century; we bossed the 19th, the USA made the 20th their own, but this one belongs to Asia. The UK was made for International Trade; it’s in our DNA. From Financial Services to Universities, from design & culture to cars & planes we export & invest like no other. We make good partners. We are an excellent home for inward investment (provided our international reputation isn’t fatally damaged by the share confscation, exchange controls & a rapacious fscal regime threatened by some politicians).

Obviously, we need to become more productive as a population; abolishing adult illiteracy & innumeracy by 2030 (to address at school the issue in the new scholastic generation as well) would go a long way to dealing with this & also help reduce crime & health issues.

Imagine what could be achieved if crafted onto these foundations was a regime of less stifing regulation & lower taxes!! What on Earth is wrong with delivering more & better-paid jobs, more economic stability, fatter tax receipts & better schools & hospitals through a regime that stimulates investment, rewards risk-taking, removes reliance on the State & advertises the UK as THE place to come (or stay!) & build a future? The top 5% of UK taxpayers pay 56% of all income tax. We want them to stay & pay more by volume even if the rate is reduced. A growing economy enables that to happen. I look forward to a 21st Century UK that will have reduced tax rates in order to deliver more actual cash for public services.

Whatever Marxists might spout from their ideology, it is (to them) an inconvenient truth that the lower the rates at the top end the more tax cash is collected.

A bonfre of regulation in the next ten years would be so useful in the battle to get (especially) SMEs to be globally competitive.

Whether they’ve come from the unaccountable & unelected Eurocrats in Brussels (whose diktats are followed by some countries & ignored by many others) or gold-plated by The Sales Prevention Team aka the UK Civil Service, a Brexited UK can forge a new regulatory road forward in the 21st Century.

It is typical of an EU marching valiantly towards 1970 that in the Brexit negotiations they were far more concerned about the UK being able to create its own regulatory framework & thus becoming more globally competitive than looking into their own backyard & putting right their own regime.

“The broken leg theory” in the EU is alive & well in the 21st Century. Q: Does Member State A have an advantage over Member State B due to being ftter & better equipped for the race that is globalisation? A: Yes, Conclusion: Don’t try & mend the broken legs of the other competitors in the team; just break the leg of the winning member. Then everyone can be the same… & mediocre!

I also want to see Great Britain & Northern Ireland by the midpoint of this Century free of the internal combustion engine. More charging points & a fscal regime to encourage, but also a changed mindset in all of us. And that goes for the abolition of single-use plastic as well. Pressure on Business (& the Public Sector as well, please) is important but the real change will come when every one of us makes the change in our hearts. This is our problem!

But my last two refections on what would my 21st Century UK would look like touch on the body politic. Sadly they might be more in the “wish” than the “will happen” category.

Let us do away with safe seats at General Elections. Constituencies where you could put a sheep up in blue or red & get it in.

Where the winning number of ballot papers are weighed not counted. Rotten boroughs that allow an MP who keeps her or his nose clean to have a job for life & as a bag-carrier of the brand, be lobby fodder for the Party Elite for .....er.....ever! The time has come for some kind of Proportional Representation.

The stultifying omnipotence of two parties, the hijacking of the proud brand of one of them by wealth-destroying Marxists with anti-Semites in their ranks, the growth of smaller parties tapping into a vein of people with frustration & the feeling of being distanced from those who make decisions about their lives .......all this has rendered the way we elect those who govern us not ft for purpose in the 21st Century. Oh! & while the whiff of reform becomes a gale of change, let’s reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 300.

Technology, communication & mobility enable an MP to serve larger constituencies; getting round on a horse to address people from a stage in the Town Square is as anachronistic as the Commons is fast becoming.

Finally, talking of reducing the numbers in Parliament, let this Century, indeed the next decade, be the one when “Reform” & “House of Lords” go together effectively & quickly.

A democratically elected Second Chamber will not enable the place to be full of experts who can advise, revise & speak truth to the Power of the Commons. The Lords should be the Conscience of the Nation, not a place where Party hacks are rewarded, MPs past their sell-by-date are put out to pasture & arcane procedure assumes a disproportionate importance over holding a proper debate about the real issues of the day. With a number of over 800 (!!) there are also far too many!

Here are a few suggestions how to change things quickly (& there’s no special pleading here; I might well be one of the Peers who fail the test on attendance & I would therefore have to go; so be it. The urgent need for reform is more important than any single one of us):-

- No one over 80 should be a Member - Those who don’t attend according to an agreed set of rules would never have to attend again; they’d be gone

- Those convicted of an indictable offence would be disqualifed

- The 92 remaining Hereditary Peers would have to go

- The power of patronage in the Party Leaders would be removed & appointments would emerge from an Independent Board, thus over time depoliticising the Chamber tribally.

We’d probably reduce the numbers to some 350 overnight; all it requires is Political Will in the Other Place, & given that they are currently busy in the self-obsession of letting down the voters left, right & centre I guess there’s a slim chance of that.

Getting our Country ft for purpose in Asia’s Century is vital; letting Business & democratic capitalism thrive so as to generate the wealth which creates the jobs, delivers the tax which pays for the public sector & allows the Fifth largest economy on Earth to fulfl its huge potential; that’s the task in hand. If only…

About Digby Jones Digby Jones was born into business. Some of his earliest memories are of life in a busy corner shop where he lived with his Mother and Father and older Sister. The shop was, he says, “within a spanner’s throw of the Austin” in Alvechurch, just outside Birmingham, He remembers fondly pressing his nose against the shop window watching the new Minis as they left the factory, destined for showrooms across the UK and the world. It was here he learnt the frst rudiments of business and its role in society – important values that were never to leave him. Digby discovered the importance of good customer care at an early age and the concept of cash fow and proft and loss – the very essence of good business management became an everyday reality for the young boy. And, when the supermarkets began to move into the area in the mid-sixties, he also learned about the vulnerability of business.

When he was 10 his parents sold the shop and his Father became a full-time student. The family lived off a grant while he studied, before he fnally qualifed as a Probation Offcer. His Mother worked as an Assistant Physiotherapist at the local hospital.

It was at this period of his life when Digby frst became aware of two very different aspects of the public sector.

The young Digby showed early promise. He attended Alvechurch Primary School from where he won a scholarship to Bromsgrove School, a Public School for boys.

He enjoyed his school life and worked hard. He played rugby and hockey for the school and ultimately became Head Boy. Ambitious and full of life, he was not averse to the occasional prank, but this cost him dearly a few days before he was due to leave school when he was expelled for “streaking around the quadrangle for a bet”.

For much of his childhood money was scarce, but the Jones children had a good life with “much love and lots of laughter and fun”. This, he says, made him appreciate the importance of family values as well as good money management.

Life in the corner shop had also made him very aware of community as where he lived almost everyone relied on “The Austin” in some way or other. On payday, families would come into the shop and spend their hard-earned cash.

When times were hard they spent less, which taught him how this affected everyone, not least his own family.

Digby’s graduation with an Upper Second Honours Degree in Law from University College London was followed by 20 years with Edge & Ellison, a Birmingham-based Corporate Law frm, where he worked his way up from Articled Clerk to Senior Partner. During these years, not only was he involved in many major corporate transactions, but he was intimately involved in all aspects of business from “running the frm as a business” to recruiting and managing several hundred employees. It was here that he developed a vision of business and its role in society, and began to believe frmly in socially inclusive wealth creation.

In 2000 Digby was appointed Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry, the UK’s ‘Voice of Business’, and was able to put some of his ideas and beliefs into action. During his six and a half years as DG of the CBI, he became well-known in the public arena, particularly for his candid, forthright attitude in his many media appearances.

He campaigned relentlessly on a range of issues including the move from traditional manufacturing of commodities to value-added, innovative products and the development of globally competitive services.

He also lobbied against protectionism protesting that “it is a scourge which may well fnd short term popularity but inhibits growth, reduces tax-producing wealth-creation, deters productivity-enhancing competition, prevents social advancement through upskilling and oppresses the weak”.

Digby’s views on the Public Sector remain a subject of great debate. He has stressed that, “if fundamental reform does not take place, from working practices right through to pension provision, we will end up with an ever-diminishing private sector trying to pay for, and provide pensions for, an ever-increasing and ineffcient, unproductive, self-interested public sector.

As a getting older population puts a greater strain on the NHS just giving it more money is not the answer. Reform is overdue but sadly politically impossible”.

Digby is married to Pat and they live in Warwickshire from where they enjoy the theatre (he is a member of the Artists’ Circle at the Royal Shakespeare Company), The Birmingham Royal Ballet and The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (where he is a major patron). Digby skis and has more than a passing interest in military history. He is an avid Leicester Tigers and Aston Villa supporter.