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The UK Conservative Party must reclaim corporate responsibility for the centre-right, says David Cameron
Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been speaking about responsible business behaviour quite a lot of late. That’s because I feel very much at home with the subject. Corporate responsibility was a key part of my personal values when I worked in business as a director of corporate affairs at the media company Carlton Communications. And now that I’m in politics, it’s a central part of my political values.
In a few years time, I hope that Britain will have a Conservative government, so voters need to know where they stand. How would we approach corporate responsibility and what kind of policy direction should they expect?
The first thing to say is that for too long the Conservative Party has allowed itself to be painted into a corner on this topic. Our instinctive and healthy suspicion of excessive government intervention in business affairs has too easily been turned into a false caricature. For some, we’ve become associated with the view that the only social responsibility of business is to make money for shareholders.
Of course we understand that profits are the lifeblood of capitalism, which is the greatest wealth-creating system known to man. And I have always passionately believed in the dynamism of the free market and its power to do good. But I’ve never felt we can leave everything to market forces. I’m not prepared to turn a blind eye if the system sometimes leaves casualties in its wake. Unless shortcomings are addressed, the entire system risks falling into disrepute.
So I want to reclaim corporate responsibility for the political centre-right. If we leave this agenda to the left, we will end up with left-wing responses that are bad for business and bad for society. The real world alternative to corporate responsibility is not some buccaneering, profit-maximizing utopia. It is the dead hand of state regulation and enforcement. The more that companies voluntarily adopt responsible business practices, the more compelling the case for a lighter touch on regulatory inspection and enforcement.
I want the Conservative Party to develop a distinctive approach to corporate responsibility, which is why I recently formed a working group on the subject. When it comes to getting business to behave responsibly, my bias is for exhortation not regulation. But that doesn’t mean I’m attracted to a value-neutral approach in which those in government and politics are loftily indifferent to ethically suspect business practice, regarding it as an essentially private matter. As well as being morally wrong, that is also foolish in practical terms. For if we choose to remain silent in the face of bad behaviour then we leave the field clear to those whose agenda is profoundly anti-capitalist.
David Cameron is leader of the UK Conservative Party and Her Majesty’s Opposition
Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been speaking about responsible business behaviour quite a lot of late. That’s because I feel very much at home with the subject. Corporate responsibility was a key part of my personal values when I worked in business as a director of corporate affairs at the media company Carlton Communications. And now that I’m in politics, it’s a central part of my political values.
In a few years time, I hope that Britain will have a Conservative government, so voters need to know where they stand. How would we approach corporate responsibility and what kind of policy direction should they expect?
The first thing to say is that for too long the Conservative Party has allowed itself to be painted into a corner on this topic. Our instinctive and healthy suspicion of excessive government intervention in business affairs has too easily been turned into a false caricature. For some, we’ve become associated with the view that the only social responsibility of business is to make money for shareholders.
Of course we understand that profits are the lifeblood of capitalism, which is the greatest wealth-creating system known to man. And I have always passionately believed in the dynamism of the free market and its power to do good. But I’ve never felt we can leave everything to market forces. I’m not prepared to turn a blind eye if the system sometimes leaves casualties in its wake. Unless shortcomings are addressed, the entire system risks falling into disrepute.
So I want to reclaim corporate responsibility for the political centre-right. If we leave this agenda to the left, we will end up with left-wing responses that are bad for business and bad for society. The real world alternative to corporate responsibility is not some buccaneering, profit-maximizing utopia. It is the dead hand of state regulation and enforcement. The more that companies voluntarily adopt responsible business practices, the more compelling the case for a lighter touch on regulatory inspection and enforcement.
I want the Conservative Party to develop a distinctive approach to corporate responsibility, which is why I recently formed a working group on the subject. When it comes to getting business to behave responsibly, my bias is for exhortation not regulation. But that doesn’t mean I’m attracted to a value-neutral approach in which those in government and politics are loftily indifferent to ethically suspect business practice, regarding it as an essentially private matter. As well as being morally wrong, that is also foolish in practical terms. For if we choose to remain silent in the face of bad behaviour then we leave the field clear to those whose agenda is profoundly anti-capitalist.
David Cameron is leader of the UK Conservative Party and Her Majesty’s Opposition
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