Our manifesto sets out our plans to change Britain:
·         Our school reform plan will raise standards and improve discipline.
·         Our welfare reform plan will make sure that everyone who can work does work.
·         Strong families are the bedrock of a strong society, so we are setting out plans to help make Britain the most family-friendly country in Europe.
·         We will cut government waste to stop Labour’s jobs tax, which will kill the recovery.
·         It reaffirms our support for the NHS.
·         It includes the boldest and most ambitious set of green measures ever put before the electorate by a mainstream party.
 
Our manifesto brings together all the work we’ve done over the last five years as we’ve changed into a modern, progressive Conservative Party. The central idea is that we’re all in this together, that working together we can change the country for the better. We’re saying that no government on its own can solve the big problems we face – everyone’s going to have to get involved. That’s why we’ve called it Invitation to join the Government of Britain.

Of course he’s come into a load of stick from the usual crowd but read here about how he responds to them in the Derby Evening Telegraph.

A Conservative Derby will be a better value, more flexible and safer Derby.

Something has to be done.  Under Conservative proposals it will be easier for communities to form Community Land Trusts so that local people can come together to stop this kind of decay from setting in.  

We need to do somethign together but first we need to change this failing government.

David Cameron has launched the Conservative Party’s draft health manifesto, and is asking for your questions about it online.

To read more on the Conservative approach to government IT and to provide us with your input just Click Here.

I’ve included a copy below and would be interested in your thoughts.

Jack Perschke: Blue Greens can triumph after Red Greens were defeated in Copenhagen

Jack Perschke is the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Derby South. He is a former Captain in the army and spent three years as an aid worker after leaving the army. He now advises businesses and government departments on implementing complex and high value change programmes.

I’ve written before about the distinctions between “Red Greens” and “Blue Greens”.  In my view the environmental agenda has for too long been owned by big-state pseudo socialists who believe that targets, state-centric action and legally binding agreements are the answer to the myriad of environmental challenges we face in the next few years.  It’s this camp that I’ve nicknamed Red-Greens.

For Red Greens the saviour is the state or, in the case of climate negotiations, it’s that unfailing deliverer of expensive inaction – the UN.   It sets legally binding targets, we all dutifully strive to meet them, manfully fail in the process (or find a more immediate worry to spend our money on) and then engage in meaningless court battles to prove whose fault all this failure was as the world around us burns.  In a typical bit of self-depreciating understatement Gordon Brown said that we have 50 days to save the world and, “no Plan B”.  Fortunately, he’s wrong.  Not only do we not need Gordon Brown to save the world, not only is it utterly beyond his ability to do so but there is also a perfectly feasible “Plan B”, it just involves no targets, no laws, no rhetoric, no complex government plans – just action.  We need to stop looking around for a state-sponsored saviour and realise that the answer resides in our homes, our local businesses, our universities and our neglected industry.

Blue Greens, like their centre-right economic cousins, are suspicious of targets, central schemes and actions that run counter to the logic of human nature and the market.  However, we do believe in addressing market failure, we do believe climate change to be one of those market failures and we do want to see the world address it as a matter of the highest urgency.  We just don’t buy solutions that sound a lot like the sorts of measures that have, over the last 12 years, failed our schools, our hospitals, and our workless population.  Making a big plan with ambitious targets that sound good, creating agencies to oversee it, throwing plenty of money into the mix, and sitting back to watch the results doesn’t work.  Domestically it has resulted in waste, missed targets, crippling intra-governmental litigation and has suffocated innovation and individual action.  It is the view of Blue Greens that we’ll see all of this and more if we adopt this approach to solving an international problem like carbon emissions.

So how does this all tie-in to Copenhagen?  Well it was the ultimate Red Green fantasy – 193 countries all trying to negotiate.  Sudan at the same table as the US, the Maldives shaping the same agreement as China.  A great example of inclusiveness and global cooperation, so by that measure, it was a success.  Sadly, in carbon emission terms, there are only 20 countries that matter.  Those 20 major emitters need to emit less greenhouse gases, they need to take responsibility for the damage they’ve already caused and they need to accept that everyone’s energy profiles are going to have to change.  Fine, that’s worth a summit and probably worth a couple of pages of paper to codify.  However, beyond that, it’s all talk, it’s all cost and, beyond being decent PR, it was never going to lead directly a cooler, safer, more stable world.   So with the limitations of processes like Copenhagen now manifestly proven what should we do now?  Without targets and agreements – is there no hope of saving the world?

The answer is that we’ll save the world in the same way that we’ve gone about achieving anything worthwhile, we’ll mobilise the power and variety of human ingenuity.  There may be investment to be made, a few billions for our research institutions and our surviving industrial powerhouses, there may also be agreements among the 20 emitter countries as to what a successful path looks like – targets, milestones, signs of success, it doesn’t matter what they’re called but they’re little flags that show you where you are, where you’re succeeding and where you should reinforce or cut your losses.  They’re not the perverse behaviour-changing millstones that Red Greens want them to be.  The answer is that, like the old energy infrastructure, the new energy infrastructure will be created bit by bit, according to local needs and without Gordon Brown or anyone else looking over a detailed set of plans to make sure that it’s happening in the “right” way.

The reason I believe that this is the way forward is because that’s how it’s happening already.  In the toughest investment climate since the depression, it is estimated that $120-130bn was invested in clean energy in 2009.  Investment in 2010 and 2011 looks set to blow that figure away.  Indeed we should be more worried about a bubble growing as the $177bn fiscal stimulus package comes online.  As this investment is made, the returns have transformed too.  According to the CEO of New Energy Finance, “analysis estimates that the cost of electricity from most renewable power technologies will have fallen by 10% or more during 2009, with solar power costs down by an astonishing 50%.”  With this rate of growth and technological advance – who needs Copenhagen?

So in the future we’ll probably see more chatter and noise from UN conference halls but that’s not where we’ll see the solution born.  The solution will be found in gradually improved efficiencies, increased market confidence and a couple of wonderful leaps in technology that none of us can predict today.  So I believe the silver lining of Copenhagen is that this truth is clearer than ever and that will help the grandstanding stop and the action move up a gear.

The visit last week of Ken Clarke (pictured left hosting a meeting with me), George Osborne and Lord Freud highlighted just how important my party think this City will be as we set about rescuing our country from the mess it has been landed in by Labour incompetence and profligacy.

The article below was published in The Derby Evening Telegraph on Sat 12 Dec.

Tories’ Osborne and Clarke hail Derby’s key role in ‘renaissance’

Saturday, December 12, 2009, 07:30

SHADOW Chancellor George Osborne believes Derby has a key role to play in helping the economy recover following the recession.

And he has pledged that if the Conservatives are elected to office next May, he will do more to help the city’s key manufacturers such as Rolls-Royce, Toyota and Bombardier, along with their suppliers, to improve their productivity and raise the skills of their workers.

Mr Osborne and Shadow Business Secretary Ken Clarke are currently touring the country to explain their plan for getting the country back on its feet.

In October, the Conservative Party launched its Get Britain Working manifesto, which aims to get more long-term unemployed people back into jobs and raise the number of apprenticeships.

Yesterday, they were in Derby to spread that message. At an event hosted by the Confederation of British Industry and Derby College, around 100 business leaders listened to Mr Osborne’s plans.

And before that event at the college’s Roundhouse campus on Pride Park, Mr Osborne and Mr Clarke paid a visit to Derby’s biggest employers, aero engine-maker Rolls-Royce.

They were there to find out more about the company’s highly-successful apprenticeship scheme.

Mr Osborne said: “One of our key aims is to create more apprenticeships. We are looking to create around 1,000 extra places in Derby alone.

“Rolls-Royce already has an excellent apprenticeship scheme. Being in power is our goal, but one of the advantages of being in opposition is that we have the time to get out there and consult with leading companies such as Rolls-Royce.

“That is why we chose to come to Derby in the first place, because it is home to many of our leading manufacturers.”

In the past, Rolls-Royce has received state aid from other countries to build factories. One example is a new test facility which received funding from the German government.

Mr Clarke said: “Companies like Rolls-Royce are not just vital to Derby, they are vital to this country.

“High-value, high-tech businesses are this country’s future. They make things which other countries want.

“We should not let these companies face the challenge on their own.”

Mr Osborne and Mr Clarke said that backing manufacturing would help restore balance to the UK economy.

Mr Clarke said: “For more than a decade, manufacturing has been neglected and too much reliance has been put on our financial services sector in London.

“We have seen the implications of doing that with the downturn. There needs to be a renaissance in manufacturing.

“We have the companies and we have the capability.

“In Derby, companies have been successfully manufacturing for years. What we want to do is help them to be more successful.

“And it is not just about the Rolls-Royces, Toyotas and Bombardiers. It is also about helping the supply chain who have encountered their own difficulties with issues such as credit.”

A major Derby employer which is waiting to see if the Government will back its expertise is train-maker Bombardier.

Earlier this year, the Government announced Japanese firm Hitachi as the preferred bidder for the £7.5bn Intercity Express Programme, which will replace the UK’s ageing high-speed train fleet.

Although Hitachi has pledged to build a new factory in the UK, much of the high-value research and development work will be carried out in Japan.

Bombardier bid unsuccessfully for that contract, which would have filled a big gap in its order book. The company, which employs 2,400 people, recently laid off 140 people and is still awaiting the Government’s decision on another multi-billion pound deal, Thameslink.

The Derby Telegraph launched a campaign calling on the Government to reconsider its decision on IEP, which received support from Shadow Transport Secretary Theresa Villiers.

Yesterday, Mr Osborne and Mr Clarke were asked whether they would have another look at IEP if they were voted into power.

Mr Osborne said: “I would be willing to look into it. I think this issue exposes other underlying problems in our economy.”

Among the audience at the Roundhouse was Colin S Walton, chairman of Bombardier UK.

Following the speeches by Mr Clarke, Mr Osborne and the Shadow Minister for Welfare Reform, David Freud, they took part in a question and answer session.

Mr Walton explained to the panel the problems faced by his suppliers in securing credit from banks and asked what a Conservative government would do about it.

Mr Osborne said: “Creating a better banking system is the biggest challenge a new government will face. I’m very aware of the frustrations that many businesspeople in this room feel.

“The current government has made attempts to free up credit. One or two ideas have worked, but the majority have been a failure.

“We are currently working on a strategy that would help get credit going. It will be an absolutely crucial part of our overall economic strategy.”

Mr Clarke and Mr Osborne also said they would push for a simpler tax system and cut the burden of over-regulation on business.

Mr Clarke said: “Large companies have large human resources departments to deal with all the regulation.

“Small businesses do not have this luxury and they don’t have the time to wade through the latest changes in regulation. It costs them time and money.

“We want to encourage the spirit of entrepreneurship. One of our policies will be to make new businesses exempt from paying national insurance on the first 10 employees they take on over a two-year period.”

Mr Osborne said: “In this week’s Pre-budget report, the Chancellor announced a 0.5% increase on national insurance. A tax on jobs at a time when businesses are trying to recover does not make sense.

“This increase is due in 2011 and if we are in power, it will be something I will look at.”

One of the most telling questions came from one of the students at Derby College, who asked him whether he and the Conservatives could be trusted to deliver on its promises.

He said: “I was in charge of David Cameron’s campaign when he was elected leader of the party and he is delivering. Many of our policies are being stolen by the Labour administration.

“At the end of the day, it is up to the voter if they want change. What I will say is that I am committed to Derby and the East Midlands region.”