:00:25. > :00:45.Good morning. My name is Asi Ahmed. At the last election I stood for
:00:46. > :00:50.Parliament for the Conservatives. Today I joined the Liberal
:00:51. > :00:59.Democrats. APPLAUSE
:01:00. > :01:02.Last autumn I stood on a stage of the Conservative Party and
:01:03. > :01:07.introduced the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon. Told them of my
:01:08. > :01:14.journey from growing up in a close-knit Muslim family in Oldham
:01:15. > :01:17.where I ran a kebab shop was my mother to serving in the Kirk Royal
:01:18. > :01:23.Army and the opportunities it brought me. Like I'm testing in
:01:24. > :01:30.Rochdale fully Conservatives in 2015. I talked my belief that the
:01:31. > :01:35.party would allow Britain to stand tall as a proud and forward-looking
:01:36. > :01:42.nation. Get a translator I have decided to leave the party. That's
:01:43. > :01:49.back to eight months later. I returned to resign my party
:01:50. > :01:52.membership. I'm joining the Liberal Democrats and awe campaign for Tim
:01:53. > :01:59.Farron and a final days of the election campaign.
:02:00. > :02:06.APPLAUSE It is because I believe Britain
:02:07. > :02:12.should be an outward looking country in Europe trading with the world's
:02:13. > :02:16.largest single market. The Conservatives are risking our
:02:17. > :02:23.prosperity with an extreme Brexit. Inspired more than the nastiness of
:02:24. > :02:28.Nigel Farage than the needs of 21st-century British economy. The
:02:29. > :02:33.Liberal Democrats are committed to our European future. And that is why
:02:34. > :02:40.I am delighted to have joined the party. And that is why I am so much
:02:41. > :02:45.happier to introduce a leading political figure who understands
:02:46. > :02:49.that the jobs, prosperity and the future of our children we need to
:02:50. > :02:56.stay in Europe. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in
:02:57. > :03:07.welcoming Sir Vince Cable. APPLAUSE
:03:08. > :03:15.Thank you very much. Welcome to the party. I think injecting a note so
:03:16. > :03:22.has been completely missing so far from the selection, which is trying
:03:23. > :03:24.to understand the viewpoint of the entrepreneur, of business and the
:03:25. > :03:30.fact that it has been horribly neglected. There is somebody I have
:03:31. > :03:38.great admiration for, not a Lib Dem, a Tory MP called Kenneth Clarke, who
:03:39. > :03:44.had an adage that is good economics is good politics. And in the
:03:45. > :03:50.selection that has all been thrown to the winds. -- this election. I
:03:51. > :03:52.was still secretaries of State business at the last election and I
:03:53. > :04:00.was competing with my opposite numbers the Tory side and the Labour
:04:01. > :04:04.side and we all understood we had different politics and understood
:04:05. > :04:08.why it was important to have the support and endorsement of business
:04:09. > :04:14.and we would compete to get the support of the CBI, the FSB, the
:04:15. > :04:19.IOD, actually not just them but the trade union Congress as well,
:04:20. > :04:24.understanding the economic dimension and importance of business. In this
:04:25. > :04:30.election in a strange kind of way you have one side seems to regard
:04:31. > :04:34.business as an embarrassing lobbyist group and of no great prevalence and
:04:35. > :04:39.on the other side as capitalist exploiters. This is not healthy.
:04:40. > :04:45.Business wealth creation is absolutely fundamental to offer
:04:46. > :04:54.should be trying achieve. You have got a similar cavalier approach to
:04:55. > :04:57.basic budget economics. I was in the coalition government for five years
:04:58. > :05:02.which was dominated by the need to merge with some fiscal credibility
:05:03. > :05:08.from that little economic crisis. We had fiscal targets. It wasn't just
:05:09. > :05:11.us. Alistair Darling beforehand and Gordon Brown understood the
:05:12. > :05:16.importance of that, Ed Balls as well. We went into the last election
:05:17. > :05:24.competing to be financially littoral. In this election law that
:05:25. > :05:29.has gone. One party is saying two plus two equals seven and another
:05:30. > :05:32.party says two plus two equals 22 and we are supposed to take these
:05:33. > :05:42.propositions seriously and debate them. Not just lack of engagement
:05:43. > :05:44.with business concerns, but racing budgetary and fiscal literacy has
:05:45. > :05:50.gone completely out the window. I think it is very welcome albeit at
:05:51. > :05:55.this late stage that we are getting a proper engagement with these
:05:56. > :06:01.questions. And I was delighted that only yesterday the Economist
:06:02. > :06:04.magazine and no doubt Theresa May would regard them as all part of
:06:05. > :06:11.these ruthless cosmopolitans who don't live here, but nonetheless a
:06:12. > :06:17.serious analytical magazine, addressed the issue as follows, it
:06:18. > :06:22.said no party passes with flying colours a test of being economically
:06:23. > :06:27.literate and understanding business, but it said the closest is the
:06:28. > :06:31.Liberal Democrats. A few days earlier the Institute for Fiscal
:06:32. > :06:35.Studies, which we always used to regard as the holy grail of operable
:06:36. > :06:41.in terms of basic economic competence, it is worthwhile reading
:06:42. > :06:46.what they said about the Labour Party, they said many of their
:06:47. > :06:56.policies would be economically damaging and income trust for us it
:06:57. > :06:59.talks about our estimates of fiscal revenue to set spending commitments,
:07:00. > :07:03.it said that the Liberal Democrats are considerably more certain than
:07:04. > :07:09.the revenue raised by Labour. And of the Conservatives they -- the
:07:10. > :07:16.content is barely concealed. It said from the Conservatives we have
:07:17. > :07:20.little or nothing -- contempt. The manifesto is extremely light on tax
:07:21. > :07:25.and spending proposals. I think in terms of the deeper issues as well.
:07:26. > :07:30.At the end of the coalition government we had emerged from that
:07:31. > :07:33.awful crisis, we had got the recovery going, we were getting to
:07:34. > :07:37.full employment, but we were all very well aware that there were
:07:38. > :07:43.deep-rooted problems, British productivity was poor and therefore
:07:44. > :07:48.wages report. We had to somehow get up out of that cycle. We were very
:07:49. > :07:52.consciously to rebalance the economy, less dependent on the
:07:53. > :07:58.housing market for example. Where has that been discussed? The
:07:59. > :08:04.fundamentals of economic performance and economic growth had not made an
:08:05. > :08:10.appearance in this election. Let me say a bit more about the
:08:11. > :08:14.consequences of this complete blindspot as the two major parties
:08:15. > :08:19.appear to have about economics and the rule of business. Let me just
:08:20. > :08:24.start with the Conservative Party. Some of the things which tell us
:08:25. > :08:27.that they and in particular at leadership level are just not
:08:28. > :08:33.properly engaged with business concerns. If you remember, it
:08:34. > :08:38.started with the pledge about price controls for energy, which was
:08:39. > :08:43.rightly dismissed as economic illiteracy when it was first
:08:44. > :08:48.proposed by Ed Miliband. It has now been adopted as mainstream economic
:08:49. > :08:55.policy. We then had the taxation of the self-employed and an immediate
:08:56. > :09:01.retreat when it was seen as being inconsistent with previous policies.
:09:02. > :09:06.We have the proposals on immigration which involve a substantial
:09:07. > :09:14.financial levy compared with a very invasive system of bureaucratic
:09:15. > :09:18.controls. The third line premise of which the man in Whitehall knows
:09:19. > :09:23.best. Completely contrary to the whole understanding of market
:09:24. > :09:29.economics that the Conservatives are supposed to be believing. Then we
:09:30. > :09:36.have the crux of this election, the issues around Brexit. I don't want
:09:37. > :09:42.to hear until we run the referendum was in points around it, but the
:09:43. > :09:45.simple point is we don't need to leave the European Union while at
:09:46. > :09:53.the same time leaving the single market and Customs union. And each
:09:54. > :09:58.of those two things as to economic applications which don't think
:09:59. > :10:04.understand and the cost of which have not been spelt out. But I don't
:10:05. > :10:14.recall was ever discussed in the referendum campaign. If you are a
:10:15. > :10:18.Manufacturing company and you have a supply chain you are totally
:10:19. > :10:24.dependent on the uninterrupted flow of goods. It isn't adequate to say
:10:25. > :10:31.we wouldn't have an area because what matters is the common tariff
:10:32. > :10:39.around the area. If have different levels of protection it has been
:10:40. > :10:45.inspected each time you cross a frontier. You have improvised
:10:46. > :10:49.arrangements in Scandinavia but even countries is removed from the core
:10:50. > :10:55.is that the except they need to have a customs union. And yet it is
:10:56. > :11:02.casually overthrown. We need to have no trade deals. What do they mean?
:11:03. > :11:03.We don't know how many people followed the ignominy of Theresa
:11:04. > :11:15.May's visits to India.