Economy: Growth

Baroness Wilcox Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for allowing me to speak for a moment from personal experience in support of the call from my noble friend Lord Heseltine for empowering the chambers of commerce. In the 1990s, I went to France to take over the largest fish-canning factory in France, on the docks of the port of Boulogne. I took a new landing and processing method from Britain, and some of our people to work with us. I also took a small fleet to add to the very large fleet that there was already in Boulogne-sur-Mer.

As many noble Lords will know, it is a very busy port for ferries. I was catching pelagic fish that had to be processed within hours. In docks such as those there is a high-pressure atmosphere. When I got there, I was amazed to see that the most important building in the docks was the chamber of commerce, because the chamber there has statutory power. It ran—and runs—the docks. It made an enormous difference. It meant that we could go somewhere to fight our cause. The smallest voices tended to get the biggest listen, because the port was always looking for new businesses to come forward in case it lost control of the movement of any of the cargo that it was dealing with.

When I came back to London, Plymouth and Cornwall, I saw our chambers of commerce struggling with volunteer members in that lovely amateur way in which we like to run the world. It made me realise that we cannot do this any longer. Our chambers of commerce must be empowered to promote British business. We must be able to take our place in continental Europe. It would love us to do so. It cannot believe that our chambers of commerce have no power—and neither should we.