Allan Leighton at The Times 'UK Economy' event

I have two bookends of a way to think about this. Number one, bookend is that you start off with a plan. I think we've all started off with a plan. In the past, I've done a bit of work with the British Army. They're really good guys because they see things pretty clear. Dana, who ran the Army, had this great expression: 'No plan survives the first contact.' I always love it because I think it's actually true. That means any plan, anybody who thinks they have a plan that will work forever, should go talk to the British Army because that's not the case. All good plans have three elements: if you've got a lot of debt, get the debt down; if you've got a lot of cost, get your cost down; but you also find a way of growing the company. You can manage debt and cost only for a period of time. Very few companies have been able to save themselves rich; most companies have to grow themselves rich. I believe business is about growth, and it's difficult to sustain a business without growth. I think it's the same for countries. Personally, I feel the whole Greek, Italian, Spanish, Irish thing is completely overblown. Sure, it's an issue, a political issue, and it'll have some impact on banks. But do I believe the resolution of Greek debt? I pointed out to somebody that since 1830, for 130 of the years between now and 1830, the Greeks have never paid their debt back. So why we would think this is something new, I do not know. We can do very little about Greece, Italy, Spain, or whoever it is. We can do a hell of a lot about Britain. Britain is dependent in my mind on two things: the small business community and the constituents of the FTSE 350, which is sitting on £600 billion of cash, never had as much cash. The problem is it's not investing that cash. If it invested that cash in some way, that would create jobs. If we created jobs, that stimulates consumer growth. If we stimulate consumer expenditure, that's good for the economy. I don't believe recessions are resolved politically. I think recoveries are consumer-driven. Nobody's really talking about in Britain what we're going to do about consumer recovery because everybody wants to focus on the political piece. For consumer recovery, the number one thing is about confidence. That's why I go to the hope thing. You can have an austerity program, a debt reduction program, but you've got to have some hope. A leader is a dealer in hope. At the moment, nobody's giving much hope. The small businesses: this credit easing is actually quite a good idea, invented overnight as they normally are, announced the following morning without a lot of thought. But there's a good idea in there, and we just got to make that easy so small businesses can get going again because they are the backbone of how the economy recovers. They've got to be able to access money. At the moment, it's hard to do if you're good, it's hard if you're bad. So we got to make it hard for the bad ones and easy for the good ones because that's where the growth's going to be. We also got to get ourselves in shape where some of the FTSE businesses start to invest in growth. I was reading about Mike; he might talk about one of the things he's been doing, investing in growth at this time because it's sensible. We have to do that, and we have to do something for the consumer. This whole VAT thing for me is a joke. We put VAT up by 2% to get £12 billion; it's probably cost us £100 billion in retail sales in some way or form, which we would have collected all the tax on. It's false economy, it's not investing. It's one of the things we would do when we sit down to do our budgets: we see a big number and think we'll take that out, then after three or four days we think that was a stupid thing to do, we'll put it back because it's not going to grow our business. For me, one thing I'd reduce VAT because I think it would have an immediate impact. Reducing it by two points would stimulate. I don't think it has anything to do with inflation. Food inflation is 5-6%, food volume down 3-4%. So what happens when food inflation falls away? There's a volume issue. Clothing: everybody says clothing prices are up 10-12 points because of commodity prices. This time next year they'll be down 10-12 points. So this whole thing about inflation being stimulated by retail is frankly wrong. Let's stimulate some growth. Retail is a good place to do it; it creates lots of jobs and also creates confidence. Let's get the FTSE 100 companies with some confidence to invest a lot of the cash they've got, and let's make it a bit easy for the really good SME businesses to borrow money and grow. Then you have two things: you've got to have a different plan. It doesn't mean you give up on the plan you started with; you adjust 20% of it. That's what we do all of our lives. That's what the politicians should be doing: adjusting 20% of it. It doesn't mean you don't do austerity; it means you do austerity and growth, because that's what good leaders do. They balance stuff, do a bit of everything. My whole thing is we need a dose of leadership that's about growth. I also believe that recoveries of countries are driven by businesses. Business has much more impact on how a country does than politicians do because businesses tend to think long-term, politicians tend to think short-term. So I don't think we should give up on growth. I think it's a bad thing that we have given up on growth. I think it's a bad thing that there's not many people standing up and saying there's some hope. And I think it's a bad thing that everybody thinks a one-trick pony can save yourself rich, and you can't.