According to David Cameron enterprise is our ‘last hope’. Though it may sound like a line from Star Wars, the reality is that it is the revival of lots of old Thatcherite policies or, as Ed Balls states, ‘reheated rhetoric and warmed-up policies of 30 years ago – a VAT rise, deep spending cuts, kneejerk deregulation and enterprise zones which didn’t work when they were tried in the 1980s.’ With the public service health and education cuts the rising poverty on our streets it feels more like ‘Return of the Sith’ than that of the Jedi. All the world’s problems are laid at the door of the last Labour government, but the solution is not in the government’s hands. It seems they are just hoping for an economic miracle will just emerge … somehow. George Osbourne will soon be announcing the creation of 10 new enterprise zones in the most deprived areas of the country. Nothing wrong with it in principle, Labour itself moved public sector administration out from the southeast to the rest of country to help generate growth and employment. But Labour didn’t cut support for business like the capital allowances scheme.

Meanwhile David Cameron is on the offensive identifying and denouncing the ‘enemies of enterprise’. He has identified town hall officials and government bureaucrats as these wreckers and saboteurs of Britain’s enterprise economy. I am looking forward to a Soviet style show trial, like that of Rykov and Bukharin. I can imagine the town clerk of Little Wyvernton Valley at the tribunal saying ‘I confess that I and my parish councillors on the planning committee opposed the plan by Sir William to build the new incineration plant on the village green and both blocked and impeded this and the compulsory purchase of back gardens. We were part of a socialist and democratic plot to undermine enterprise by giving local people a say in their community’.

Next up would be a DWP official who would say ‘…we thought that by giving employees rights at work, extending paternity and maternity leave, introducing the right to paid holiday and equalising employment rights with those in Europe (by adopting the working-time directive) we would provide a level playing field for firms to operate under. We were told that it would encourage fairness and help bring about social justice. I realise now that I was misled and that all those reforms were strictly unnecessary and part of a socialist plot.’ For good measure they would be put on trial alongside the MoD official who paid £16 each for light bulbs. The judge will sum up lecturing us about how beneficial the trickle-down effect of wealth is.

The third point raised by David Cameron was all warm words about giving small businesses a chance to participate in government contracts. I support that, who wouldn’t? Where do we sign up? How is it going to be done? I ask because Labour made efforts on this and I want it to succeed. I think it is the Holy Grail for public procurement. A good place to start will be the government’s own IT projects which have a tendency to not only fail to deliver, but deliver late and over budget. Their only success is in sustaining the revenues of the big four accountancy firms and the other large IT providers. Smaller firms should be used and government should work to build up frameworks to help small firms and freelancers and others collaborate to bid for work.

The other problem is, at present, as deadlines fly by and costs spiral out of control as the supplier loses their grip, the solution reached for is outsourcing offshore – missing out the small business sector altogether. For example, our local hospital spent tens of thousands with a big consultancy, only to be told they should offshore their patient records to India to save money (less than they had spent on getting the advice, I should add).

It is a basic rule for parish and town councils that services should be sourced as locally as possible. After all, it is local ratepayers’ money that is being spent and, if possible, it should be ‘recycled’ through the local community so that money is spent locally again providing a virtuous circle. The use of small firms is a good way of achieving this. In these hard times there should be a similar commitment from government and the public sector to do the same and give small business a chance to bid for such contracts.

I was asked after my last article what is wrong with enterprise zones? Nothing in principle other than that they weren’t proven to have worked last time either. But what does worry me is what could come with them is that great Thatcherite super-quango, the Development Corporation. Designed to override and overcome local issues and accountability – by ignoring or silencing them. What you do is create a new unaccountable, unelected quango, populated with your supporters, pumped full of public money and set it to work ignoring and bullying local councils and populations to get those enterprise projects under way. (You have the resources to easily drag councils or objectors through the high court). In reality these great enterprise projects are simply the building of a new supermarket on a park or an ex-green field site. For a good example look at the now-defunct Leeds Development Corporation which was stuffed full of local Conservatives and supporters as they pushed through the building of a supermarket in the Kirstall Valley.

I don’t think you can have a ‘big society’ without representation, without rights and without public accountability. Unless, of course, you believe that the people don’t know what’s good for them and the system should be one based on those timeless Tory values of paternalism and charity administered by deference, fear and respect. That is their vision of the Big Society and it is threatening to take shape.

Photo: Emily Webber