|
Towards a market-driven, investment led, economic recovery |
|
|
The objectives of the
Conservative Technology Forum are: (a)To
promote the interest of the Party in general and in particular among others
sharing an interest in Technology
both within and without the Party. (b)To
research and indentify those industrial, economic and social benefits of
technology that are available; to provide a forum for discussion and analysis
of those benefits and to contribute to the formation of policy within the
Party and in particular in Technology. (c)To
promote awareness and acceptance of Conservative policies amongst those
working within technology industries; assisting also with their enlistment as
active party members. (d)To
provide information and research support to Conservative Ministers for
Technology – or in Opposition, the Spokesman for Technology. (e)To
play a full role in the campaigning activities of the Party and to encourage
members to be actively engaged in their local constituencies. (f)To
publish and assist in the publication of literature in furtherance of these
Objects. (g)To
raise funds for the achievement of the foregoing Objects. The programme for 2012 is focussed on the
actions necessary to bring about economic recovery. The UK is the last of the “20th
century, steam age, centralised nation states”. Many of the best run members
of the European Union (and nearly two thirds of US states) have smaller populations
than Yorkshire or Scotland. Most larger states have
Federal Constitutions (like Germany), are decentralising (like France or
Spain) or bankrupt (like Greece and California). We have to move debate on economic and
industrial strategy away from macro-economic strategies that cannot work
until we have addressed the systemic reasons that have brought the UK to its
current situation and attempts to pick winners when we should be removing obstacles
from the race track so that all can perform better. We need to: 1. Take the “big society” approach seriously with IT
as the great enabler for efficient devolution, diversity and local democratic
accountability not an excuse for centralisation, standardisation and
bureaucratic regulation. 2. Use technology to help focus public funding on
services that meet local needs. A key objective will be to reduce the risk of
IT-related banana skins during the run-up to the next election 3. Make a reality of partnership in the fight
against cyberfraud and waste before we seek to
encourage the most vulnerable in society to transact with government on-line.
The suffering and expense if their identities are systemically stolen will be
disastrous. 4. Remove the regulatory overheads that are driving
on-line businesses off-shore. We need to support and encourage good practice,
including secure interoperability with trusted partners in other parts of the
world under different legislative and regulatory regimes. 5. Provide local access to world-class, sustainable
education and training infrastructures and remove the current incentives
to employers to recruit rather than retrain, to import skilled staff from
abroad when they cannot recruit locally and to move jobs off-shore if they
cannot get the visas to import them. 6.
Link the communications/broadband,
resilience and green agendas, looking at what infrastructures and
networks can and should be shared, what cannot and the obstacles to drawing
in funding from those investing overseas rather than in the UK 7. Liberate direct investment in the
infrastructures, industries
and jobs of the future by removing the layers of regulation and
distortion that route our savings into government stock and property instead
of equity in new and growing businesses. . at the same time as restoring oting . This is seen to entail
All four groups are now actively recruiting participants able to contribute resource or expertise. New topics will be added as members join with the interest and expertise to run them. |
|
