Last week I spent a couple of days at the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth.

I spoke at one of the fringe debates that was organised by the Fabians. The topic of this breakfast debate was skills and was well attended including two ministers, a couple of MPs and number executives from business, the public sector, trade unions, lobbyists and voluntary bodies.

There was a heavy focus on basic skills and the facts that a large proportion of the adult workforce have poor levels of both literacy and numeracy.

I supported the need to tackle this problem, not least because the UK economy is forecast to need just 500,000 unskilled workers by 2020 compared with the 6,000,000 employed today.

I felt that a particular contribution I made to the debate was the ongoing need for improved management and technical skills and if these are not addressed, then some of the developing businesses in the UK may not reach their potential. The minister acknowledged that this is very important to the Government.

Later on in the conference I was invited to a private dinner hosted by the Corporation of the City of London. For those who may not be aware, the Chairman of the City Policy and Resources Committee, Michael Snyder is one of our members and also Chairman of Kingston Smith.

While I can't report the detail of the dinner, the EC Commissioner, the Ministers and former Ministers present engaged in a long discussion of whether the EU/UK Government should be regulating the private equity industry.

I was also fortunate to find myself sitting at an event next to one of Gordon Brown's special advisors. He was most interested to know what were the current issues facing the ICAEW and the Accounting profession. In this context we discussed the current service levels at HMRC and the impact that this is having, particularly in the area of new VAT registrations. He said that this hasn't been on Number Ten's radar at all - it is now!

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