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
