Jones: Bad business ‘just a reflection of society’

Digby Jones, former head of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), comments to the Today programme ahead of Vince Cable’s speech to the Lib Dem conference:

“There’s a massive difference between saying we need not more, but better, and better enforced regulation – in which I think he’s right – and what he’s intending to say, that there are these dark areas of the boardroom, that business is ‘at it’ basically. Of course you get businesses that are not stepping up to the plate of good quality corporate governance. We are just a reflection of society.

“What I don’t want him to do is create the impression in schools, in colleges and in all parts of society that business is somehow this whipping boy that is always ‘at it’. Because, if we do, we will find that we create an environment where people don’t want to invest here, they don’t want to employ people here, they don’t want to work here, and then of course we won’t trade our way out of the mess.

“He is the business secretary. If he wants to be a Liberal MP, go to a conference and have the whinge that they’ve had every year, fine. Welcome to a free world. You can’t step up to the plate as secretary of state for business and then behave still as a Liberal campaigner, which he always has been.