SO THE Party
Conference season is over and though many of the themes in the key speeches
will form the backdrop to the political scene through to the General Election
the individual speeches will soon be forgotten.
Inevitably after a
period of recession 'cost of living' issues figure large; recessions result in
declining living standards so now that the economic indicators are looking up,
we all want to feel the benefits. That's why the Chancellor made clear in his
speech that petrol duty will be frozen and as the deputy-chairman of
Parliament's All-Party Group for Fair Fuel I find this particularly welcome.
The petrol duty
freeze is just one policy that is putting money back into people's pockets,
another is the big increase in the amount that can be earned before being
taxed.
Whether it's the oil
companies, the energy utilities or indeed services provided by local councils,
if they seek to exploit their customers it should be no part of Conservative
policy to support them. Conservatives should always be on the side of the consumer.
Free markets deliver better
services, but as Adam Smith said in his famous work The Wealth of Nations:
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and
diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in
some contrivance to raise prices … But though the law cannot
hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to
do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them
necessary."
Strip away the 18th century
language, and what it amounts to is that you need a certain level of regulation
otherwise the temptation of suppliers to form a cartel could prove
irresistible. A completely free market is not suitable; it needs some
constraints and who better than a Conservative government to recognise that
requirement?
One of the more interesting meetings I went to
at the Party Conference was entitled 'Do Tories get the North?' It's simply a
statement of fact to state that in some of our northern cities there are very
few Tory councillors. Labour, of course, have their own black spots where
support is low and in a few cases almost non-existent. The answer to the
question posed by the Conference meeting is yes – a subject I'll return to next time.
