Free Enterprise Group Tories Urge Osborne And Cameron To Be Bolder

The Huffington Post UK   First Posted: 27/02/2012 14:30 GMT Updated: 27/02/2012 14:51 GMT

Tories from the radical "Free Enterprise Group" wing of the party have been outlining what they would like to see ministers do to accelerate the reduction of Britain's deficit.

The group, set up by Tory MP Elizabeth Truss in October 2011, is concerned chiefly with the UK's plummeting performance on league tables on regulation, education performance and competitiveness.

They broadly support the coalition's policies but think they should go even further. Most of them believe that they have been watered down to appease the Liberal Democrats.

Their meeting on Monday came as tensions within the coalition on a range of issues were rising, particularly on the NHS reforms opposed by many Lib Dem peers.

Speaking at a gathering at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London on generating growth, several young Tory MPs, most of whom were elected in 2010, offered their wish-list of things they'd like to see Downing Street and the Treasury do in the coming months.

They are hoping that George Osborne will announce a raft of tax cuts in his 2012 budget next month, although the chancellor appeared to pour cold water on that pipe-dream during an interview with Dermot Murnahgan on Sunday.

Most of them accept that the Tories would become unpopular in the short term, but feel there is no choice but to take bold action to avoid economic stagnation in the longer term. All of these Tories are in safe seats - they can afford to offer grandiose ideas in a way many other Tories can't because they're worried about what will happen to them at the next election.

Sajid Javid, the parliamentary aide to George Osborne, warned that the Tories would have no choice but to go into the 2015 general election "saying we're going to have to have some more cuts," warning that Britain would come under sustained pressure from a double whammy of rising oil prices and ongoing eurozone uncertainty.

Witham MP Priti Patel went even further, suggesting "we're all dancing around handbags", arguing that countries like India were engaging with industrialists and businesses at every stage in their government's policy. Britain needed to "wake up and smell the coffee" and follow that example, she said, claiming that the UK was "desperately behind the curve."

For Truss, the South West Norfolk MP, the biggest concern is Britain's plummeting place in the global league tables for education, particularly maths.

She admitted that any changes to education would take ten years, but said it was vital for children to carry on studying maths until the age of 18. She urged ministers to pull funding further for degree courses which offered "no real value" - although she didn't pick out any particular subjects for criticism.

Truss also called for a radical reform of the maternity and paternity pay in the UK, arguing it should be more flexible and not geared automatically towards the mother getting the longer pay period.

She argued that Germany was the model Britain should look to, not just because the country introduced more flexible maternity leave - in which parents could still work part-time if they wanted to.

Truss claimed that 10 years ago Germany removed regulations on small businesses, essentially making it much easier for them to sack staff. She claimed this had a dramatic effect on cutting youth unemployment because it encouraged business confidence.

MP for Spelthorne Kwasi Karteng called for tolls to be put on Britain's five busiest motorways and for Network Rail to be dismantled, with the various train operating companies to manage the tracks their trains run on.

"There will always be an element of subsidy," Kateng said, but told the audience that the current level of subsidy was too high. He also called for the "medieval" system of licensing and regulating taxis to be dismantled.

East Surrey MP Sam Gyimah touched on radical ways of encouraging investment without borrowing; most controversial of which was a plan to use the £800bn sitting around in pension funds to invest in infastructure and business growth.

He claimed this was a low-risk investment, and was something "the Treasury are starting to look at," because it had worked in Australia and Canada.

As the session went on, the language became increasingly radical. Bury St. Edmunds MP David Ruffley urged Cameron to "call the Liberal Democrats' bluff" and opt for ever greater spending cuts. He called for the Department for Business Innovation and Skills to be abolished, saying: "If it didn't exist, you'd never seek to invent it."

"The cuts programme hasn't even begun properly," Ruffley concluded.

Last to speak was perhaps the most influential economist on the Tory backbenches, Andrew Tyrie, who chairs the Commons treasury committee.

He called on the Chancellor to accelerate the deficit reduction programme. "Don't worry too much about the short term polls. Get the job done and reap the rewards later in the Parlament," he said. "We will be giving people greater control over their own lives."

Attacking what he called a "global salvationist" policy towards green energy investment, Tyrie suggested that High Speed 2 and the wind farms rollout didn't make economic sense in the long run.

But Tyrie urged caution on tax cuts, saying: "You never know in advance what the behavioural effect of a tax cut will be. Tread carefully. Change the language from the language we are using now, to demonstrate a clear sense of direction."

George Osborne will hold his 2012 Budget on the 21st of March. Expect plenty more calls from Tories like these between now and then.

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21:21 on 29/02/2012
They look like fascists to me in the above picture. yuk spit.
21:18 on 29/02/2012
Between the cuts, the destruction of the NHS, Slave Labour of our youth, tuition fee and on an on the robbing goes..... this lot of worse than Thatcher tories are ensuring that our youth will never vote them in again....thank god never could stand the pesky tories.
Richard Britton
British Socialist Global Realist
14:56 on 29/02/2012
foul horrible extremists the lot of these money grabbing devisive loons
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14:14 on 28/02/2012
These M.Ps, and their supporters, are the people that need to be cut back.
They believe in the mantra 'government by capital and business', and thus, reduce of all things, including people and life, to the mechanisms of money and markets.
Blair and Brown brought into a tempered version of Alan Greenspans vision of 'free markets' - a vision which collapsed in 2008 - this lot of Tory/Lib M.Ps want the full blown version of 'Atlas Shrugged', be weary, be very weary.
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Allyb999
13:04 on 28/02/2012
Think maybe the cuts should be in all the loopholes left in the tax policies, that would save the country a fortune. But the MP's are in no rush to do this, as most of them are abusing the above loopholes.
12:09 on 28/02/2012
Radicalisation is not the best response in the face of the continuing failure of Tories to get things right... Vince Cable offers a much more relevant and balanced analysis of the situation. I watched him talk at HowTheLightGetsIn last year and it weas a great talk. You can watch the talk onm the iai.tv website: http://iai.tv/video/howthelightgetsin-2011
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dsole1948
It is our duty to speak out against injustice
09:26 on 28/02/2012
The main course of drought is lack of rain and too much water extracted from the rivers where as its difficult to force rain from the sky’s it’s possible to slow the extraction and run off. Recession is not a lack of money but too much money in too few pockets an unbalanced take from the money supply by the few has stalled the flow of cash. The maths are simple if you have ten wealthy families shopping and one hundred families earning minimum wage the ten will spend less of their income in less establishments than the hundred who will have to spend all their income in more establishments. Not because those on minimum wage are not fiscally aware more that they make what little they have go further and business supplying them more competitive. Minimum wage gives them little opportunity to save because they have nothing left to save; those that take the wealth are not necessarily the ones to create it. When you have a limited number taking a large percentage of wealth from the pool then the flow stalls eventually stopping altogether, the fear that paralyses out politicians is redistribution sounds anti-business. There fear prevents any thought of an alternative such as overnight currency change where anyone with more than a million will have to explain to the tax man where it came from. Or any business not based in this country will be taxed as if they were, ‘other ideas no space left’.
katertaif
My wife thinks I have one fault. Everything I do!
07:35 on 28/02/2012
From some of the ideas that seem to have been bandied about, they should perhaps have done better standing for the raving loony monster party.
03:04 on 28/02/2012
Free enterprise: making people work for nothing.
01:17 on 28/02/2012
For the economy to grow money must circulate, that is a fundamental fact, that all agree on.

Money is circulated by the public shopping, holidaying, eating out, cinema, new car etc.
If you are like me and what I am able to do with my little money, then you shop for essential foodstuffs and pay essential bills.

Therefore the economy cannot never grow as thing are.
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03:05 on 28/02/2012
tikeli - the problem is just paying the interest on our National Debt costs every household in the land £1800 a year - that is £1800 they could otherwise be spending on gods and services creating growth and jobs .

And if we lose our Triple A rating we could be paying treble that amout in interest - after Social Services the NHS interest is the largest thing the Government spend money on - we as taxpayers spend more on interest on the National Debt than the State spends on defence - so cuts are simply essential
03:42 on 28/02/2012
Ronnie..... with little money actually circulating it's like water it stagnates. Just imagine if NO money circulated, in shops, restaurants, filling stations, bars, cinemas, garages, etc... The government would get no VAT. Businesses would not have the money to pay staff and the knock on effect would simply kill the country. It's all rudimentary economics.
01:06 on 28/02/2012
Why don't they do something humane and popular for a change....
...cut the Conservative party.
02:35 on 28/02/2012
And the labour party, oh, and the Liberal Democrats as well !!!
03:13 on 28/02/2012
Why do people vote Conservative?
Millions do.
03:47 on 28/02/2012
Because some people still believe honesty and integrity exists among our politicians.
They are mislead by false and broken promises.
23:19 on 27/02/2012
well they seem to be destroying the arts, removal of funding for music tuition in school in uk....i am sorry to say i voted of this government, i am glad to say i do not have long left to put that right again, you can not go round doing things under hand and think you can get away with it, we will always find you out and then rat you out to the press...

so thats the removal of all tuition of music to schools in the uk by 2015, including free places, any tuition in schools must be done through sponsorship or by parental payment to self-employed teachers...sounds like privatisation to me chaps....
02:37 on 28/02/2012
You wait till we can't afford to import food into this country, and will have to queue for bread rations as they did in Russia during the Cold War.

Then you will have more to worry about than music funding.

Wake up and smell the coffee
22:33 on 27/02/2012
The only way to stop all of this is by removing the politicians totally like the French did , Guillotine anyone ???
03:17 on 28/02/2012
The French taught the Cambodians to do it better.The Khmer Rouge anyone?
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rabidrightwatch
Green lefty & active environmentalist
09:24 on 28/02/2012
...errr, the French revolution removed the the monarchy and aristrocracy, and introduced politicians...
12:46 on 28/02/2012
thank you i stand corrected , but you know what i mean
22:28 on 27/02/2012
"...Reap the rewards later in the Parliament"... There's a little too much 'reaping of rewards' going on by MPs already I reckon. They're all so flipping quick to offer up various groups of public servants for the chop, when the frik is it going to be the turn of the MPs to go over the top of the trenches and perhaps suggest a pay cut for themselves?
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dsole1948
It is our duty to speak out against injustice
09:34 on 28/02/2012
Don’t hold your breath
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Allyb999
13:03 on 28/02/2012
They will not even stop the subsidies for food and drink at Westminster that costs the tax payers 5.9 million a year, then of course the fig trees at portcullis house at almost 30k a year, all the MP's expenses and of course staff costs.

No the MP's will be the very last ones to fall on their swords to help save the country.
22:02 on 27/02/2012
As long as we don't end up like Greece - on the slippery slope!
02:38 on 28/02/2012
Yep, that's next for us !!