Lord Bilimoria
Main Page: Lord Bilimoria (Crossbench - Life peer)
Lord Bilimoria
My Lords, when I came to this country from India in the early 1980s, entrepreneurship had the image of Del Boy and second-hand car salesmen. There was a glass ceiling. Today, everything has changed. Entrepreneurship is cool, and I believe that we have a society where anyone can get anywhere, regardless of race, religion or background. Yet business still has such a bad image. We have executive pay. The noble Lord, Lord Sacks, spoke about the noble Lord, Lord Sugar. We have the “Apprentice” image of “You’re fired”. We also have the financial crisis and bankers. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, for initiating this debate.
At an Industry and Parliament Trust event last week, I chaired a dinner where the theme was trust in business and government. I was shocked when statistics were quoted: only 17% of the public trust business. Even worse, a poll was taken after the Olympics in which the question was, “Are you proud of Britain?”. Overwhelmingly the public were proud of Britain. However, when asked, “Are you proud of British business?”, 4% said that they were. That is shocking.
The Zoroastrian community, of which I am proud to be a member, is based on three tenets: good thoughts, good words and good deeds. When Jaguar Land Rover was taken over by Tata, the company headed and founded by Parsis, the workforce was happy because of Tata’s reputation for welfare in the workforce. The motto of the World Zoroastrian Chamber of Commerce is “Industry and Integrity”—industry as in hard work, of course. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, explained that “integrity” comes from the Latin word “integrum”, which means “wholeness”. You cannot practise integrity unless you are whole.
Can the Minister explain what more the Government can do to make sure that our people and the country appreciate business and are proud of business? Regardless of everything, British business is still in every sector one can imagine the best of the best in the world. Therefore, why do people not appreciate that it is business that, on the whole, pays the taxes, creates the jobs and pays for all the public services that we all benefit from?