checkSURE CEO Backs Ruth Lea

In a letter to the Financial Times Gary Ling, CEO of checkSURE, supports the Institute of Directors Head of Policy Ruth Lea.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: We need Ruth Lea and her prescriptions now as never before By Gary Ling

Financial Times; Oct 21, 2003

From Mr Gary Ling.

Sir, I do not know what evidence your correspondent has for his claim that the views of Ruth Lea, the Institute of Directors' head of policy, "often seemed at odds with the IoD's more moderate rank-and-file members" ("IoD reviews future of policy unit chief", October 18). She certainly has not upset me or the members I know toiling away in businesses outside the gossip cauldron of the IoD's Pall Mall headquarters.

What is of concern is that the IoD bigwigs appear to be frightened that the organisation is "marginalised and less influential" than more corporatist business lobby groups (such as the CBI) in affecting government policy. However, when the present government is both eroding Britain's competitiveness through burgeoning regulation and destroying entrepreneurial spirit through increased taxation, it is precisely the wrong time for the IoD to take an accommodating policy line.

It is said Baroness Thatcher's greatest attribute was that, as a woman, she was not "clubbable". Ruth Lea's defence of free-market principles certainly puts her outside the broad tent that supposedly characterised the New Labour project. In fact, there has never been a more important time for the prescriptions she advocated to be heard.

Gary Ling, Chief Executive, checkSURE.com, Northampton NN1 4EP