Business: Ethical Values

Lord Tebbit Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

Well, my Lords, greed was of course only one of the seven deadly sins. If I reflect on some of the others, I can see that they can be just as contagious and nasty. However, I shall reflect on the fact that one of my favourite poets, Kipling, wrote a wonderful poem called Norman and Saxon in which he describes how the people of this land will put up with pretty well anything at all, but they will not put up with the fear of unfair dealing. If we look for fair dealing in the relationship between the Government, their people and our business community, we should get somewhere.

[Lord Tebbit]

My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that the best way of asserting the rights of the owners of a business, as opposed to the hired help—men like “Fred the Shred”—would be if some of them were put on trial for falsifying the accounts of the businesses which they ran? They either knew or ought to have known that the accounts and the balance sheets that they brought forward were false.

[Baroness Wilcox]

We know that the shareholders hold the power in this country’s large corporations, and if they will, please, use it to call the people in those companies to account, we should see some movement. That is what we are encouraging.