Sez report

1.2.4.2. Business and the market 
Within the market economy, the role of corporations will need clearly to be defined. Corporations 
wield significant power, and that power can sometimes be misused. It is government’s job to minimise 
this without stultifying business’s ability to create material wealth. It is arguable that financial 
regulators and the legal structure in the US have failed to strike that essential balance in the fallout 
from Enron. It is also true that simply blaming corporations for our ills is a convenient way of ignoring 
the fact that we are all – as consumers and as citizens – responsible for the decisions we make about 
the impacts of the products and services these companies provide. Nonetheless, in the UK, it is clear 
that New Labour has often made the opposite mistake and been charmed by the siren song of the least 
progressive in the CBI. They have yet to learn that being business friendly means encouraging the 
best not pandering to the worst.
This becomes the more important as we recognise that corporations have a responsibility to reduce 
their carbon footprint as well as to ensure that their activities do not have other negative social or 
environmental impacts. Corporations should expect government to set a fair and workable framework 
for business. In this Report we have suggested ways in which government and business can work 
together to produce the environment which is most conducive to achieving these ends.
1.2.4.3. The individual and communities 
As with Conservatism’s enduring interest in a stable environment, this passion for a society that 
functions fully at all levels, is part of a long held Conservative philosophy. It celebrates community, 
relationships, culture and tradition and all that is which is conducive to the sustainability of human and 
environmental wellbeing. As David Cameron said to the National Council of Voluntary Organisations 
in 2006: 
‘I want my Party to be one that says, loudly and proudly, that there is such a thing as 
society – it's just not the same thing as the state. That there's a 'we' in our politics as 
well as a 'me.' I want us to bring to the fore the Conservative insight that we're 
stronger, more successful and more fulfilled as individuals, families and communities 
when we do things together, not separately. And so in the years ahead, when developing 
approaches to the big social, economic and environmental challenges our country and 
our world faces, my instinct will not just be to say: 'what can government do about 
this?' But to ask: 'what can we all do together?’’ 
The Conservative approach therefore emphasises the importance of community and social justice but it 
also involves a healthy scepticism about the state’s ability to deliver these goods. Instead it has an 
attitude based on trusting people and a belief that relationships between people and within 
communities are crucial. It is this strand of Conservatism that led Nick Hurd to propose the 
Sustainable Communities Bill whose principles underlie much of the work of this Report. As a Bill, it 
is an excellent example of the kind of responsive community politics which the Conservative party 
needs to promote. It seeks to give local people the power to drive the sustainable, community-based, 
recreation of Britain.
 

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