THE Shadow Secretary of State for Industry, Stephen O'Brien, has promised to deregulate business if the Tories win the next General Election.

Mr O'Brien met with some of the leading manufacturers in Worcestershire during a tour of English Braids Ltd, of Malvern Link.

He was introduced to the firm's managing director, Peter Earp, and to Paul Walker, managing director of Malvern Instruments Ltd and chairman of the Hereford & Worcester Chamber of Commerce, and to Bob Michaelson, from the West Midlands Institute of Directors.

A large part of his speech was devoted to cutting back on red tape if the Tories were voted into power.

"I had well over a decade's experience as a FTSE 100 manufacturing industrialist and small business operator," he said.

"I know how fed up and disillusioned businessmen and women have been down the years with politicians making promises, and then breaking them.

"The crushing and dispiriting reality of firms now is that people spend more and more of their week trapped behind your desk, complying with regulations, rather than getting out and winning new business for Britain.

"I know what it's like to work at the 'sharp end', here and abroad, and I know from experience where markets succeed and how regulations fail.

Relationship

"I have seen at first hand how over-regulation slows down business responsiveness, diverts resources away from productive investments, and hampers entry into new markets and reduces innovation.

"The Conservatives propose a new kind of relationship between government and business, based not just on support but on a fundamental trust in free market democracy and trust in the people who are prepared to take the risks and create the profit on which all of us depend.

"It is precisely because I trust business that I am so passionate about deregulating it."

n Peter Earp (left), MD of English Braids Ltd and Shadow Secretary of State for Industry, Stephen O'Brien.