FULL SPEECH BY CHRIS HUHNE MP TO THE CBI ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2007

There is no doubting that the last decade has been a good time for business. For a while it even seemed as if Labour understood business.

Not any more. It takes real talent and determination to engineer the first full-scale banking panic since the Victorian age. To lose not one, but two disks with banking details of seven million families.

I know about the importance of consultation, and I don't want to discourage growing business built up over many years by raising Capital Gains Tax on a whim.

Gordon Brown's record is appalling. The broken pension system that was once the pride of Europe. The collapsed PFI schemes that boomerang back liabilities to the public sector. The increase in the sheer deadweight in kilograms of the tax code by a half.

Gordon's epitaph? Here lies the patron saint of tax accountants.

But is it any surprise that the government does not understand business? Look at the current Treasury ministers to see why.

There is not a single person with business or markets experience among them. A lawyer. Two Trade Union organisers. One lobby group economist. And a football administrator. In the past, even Labour put business savvy people like Joel Barnett and my old friend and mentor Harold Lever into government.

No wonder the credit crunch has caused a credibility crisis. Ministers don't listen, and they don't learn.

But Cameron and Osborne are no better. Osborne has never had a job outside the Westminster bubble. Cameron's only real world experience was four years as a public relations man for a television company. Never met a monthly payroll. Never run a business. Never created a job.

MY EXPERIENCE

Under my leadership the Liberal Democrats would be different.

I spent 19 years writing about business and the economy. Then I did what I had watched. For five years I built up a business, analysing risk and markets around the world.

I know the burdens of regulation, and I want to minimise them. I know they hurt little companies trying to break into markets, and benefit the big companies trying to dominate markets.

I believe in competition - and lots more of it. That's why regulations should be independently assessed by an agency to see whether the goals can be achieved at lower compliance costs.

And why we should use sunset clauses to set time limits on regulatory powers, as I pioneered on European financial services law.

It is time to cut the kilos off Brown's tax codes. Let's have a standing Tax commission like the Law commission to simplify tax.

CBI AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Don't get me wrong. Regulation is sometimes necessary. Business needs a framework of law. And for too long some business people have seen environmental regulation as a threat, rather than an opportunity.

That is why I am so pleased that you have asked Ben Verwaeyen to report on climate change, and devoted a session to the subject.

Climate change is the greatest challenge of our time. We are literally stealing the future from our children and our grandchildren.

It is ridiculous and patronising to say that business leaders do not care about the future. As parents, we all have a stake in the future and it matters enormously to all of us.

There's no point in worrying about our children's inheritance of wealth if they do not inherit a planet worth living on as well.

But climate change is not just a moral issue. It is an economic issue too.

The transition to a low carbon economy will be as momentous as previous industrial revolutions. As the shift from coal to oil. From gaslight to electric light. It has the potential to give us the competitive edge in the new global economy.

DYNAMOS OR DINOSAURS

So we have a choice. Do we want to be the dynamos that drive change, or the dinosaurs destroyed by it? Do we want to be Microsoft or IBM?

That is why I find it so worrying that many of the clean technologies are not being developed here in Europe, despite taking the global lead on Kyoto and emissions trading.

Many of the most creative developments are taking place in the USA. The same entrepreneurs who recognised the potential in the IT and software industry are now putting their money into innovative clean technologies.

Like the Tesla, an electric sports car. Jeremy Clarkson eat your heart out - this car has a top speed of 125 miles per hour, and does nought to sixty in less than four seconds.

Or Altairnano, producing environmentally safe batteries capable of powering a car for 250 miles on a single fifteen minute charge.

EUROPE'S CHALLENGE

The challenge for Europe is to put in place a stable framework that encourages investment in low carbon economies. With investor certainty. Friendly to business. And savvy about markets.

The uncertainty of the carbon price post-2012 will have worried many of you. Politicians need to be more aware of the long planning periods in business. And we still have work to do in Europe boosting venture capital, university-business links and start-ups.

We must hold our government and the European Union to the pledge made in March that we must negotiate the successor to Kyoto and extend the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Under my leadership the Liberal Democrats will push regulation that works for business. And it can. Clear standard setting across the European Union can help grow new business.

Just look at the success of European mobile telephony, where regulation enabled Europe to have one system of global roaming when the US had 16 incompatible systems. Result? We took the global lead with successes like Nokia, Ericsson and Vodafone.

Let's work on tough new EU-wide standards on energy efficiency for all appliances, and aiming for zero carbon emission cars by 2040. Let's use environmental regulation to give Europe the same business edge we won in mobile telephony.

TRANSFORMATION

We are on the cusp of a transformation of British business. We can and must become the drivers of the low carbon revolution.

If we do not, we risk missing an historic opportunity for the British economy. And we risk devastating our children's world.

Under my leadership, the Liberal Democrats will inject our energy and our ideas into the political system. We will look to the future with optimism, and help our economy to lead global change.

26 November, 2007