PRIME Initiative

Anne Walsh, 53 from Manchester, went from BT operations manager to quirky craftswoman, when she applied for voluntary redundancy.

BT operations manager Anne Walsh was the breadwinner for a disabled husband and three children. Fed up with her office job, Anne promised herself she would change her life when she turned 50. Anne applied for voluntary redundancy, sold her Porsche, and bought a van. She began to make gifts for family friends, and to sell on eBay. Anne made flowers out of socks, cakes and trifles out of soap and face cloths, and large cakes out of baby’s nappies. Anne says ‘the cakes definitely started as a hobby, but more and more people wanted them, and it soon became a business.’ My Unique Gifts now caters for a wealth of occasions from births and weddings to dog and cat pampering, with products ranging from £3:95 to £55.

Research

Anne’s first idea was the ‘nappy cake’. This is a fake cake made of disposable nappies, which Anne saw on holiday in San Francisco in 2001. Anne researched the product on the Internet and found that though extremely popular in the US and Canada, the nappy cake was barely on the British market. Anne purchased a ‘teach yourself’ DVD, and began to experiment. My Unique Gifts now boasts a whole range of nappy cakes from single to five tiered, complete with 96 nappies, two bottles, a pair of baby socks, baby suit and matching hat or bib, receiving blanket, crystal keepsake, photo frame, and soft toy.

Training

When Anne registered with PRIME, she was told where to go for business advice. She attended a free HMRC Business Advice Open Day, where PRIME hosted a seminar on working for yourself. Anne then booked herself onto a free HMRC workshop on self-employment tax issues. Anne says ‘both events were extremely helpful in getting to know the basics.’ But she did leave some things to the professionals, and hired a bookkeeper to document her accounts. The rest of Anne’s training was simply trying new things and learning as she went along.

Marketing and development

An early marketing tool was to circulate an email round Manchester College. A family friend, worked at the college, and sent out pictures of Christmas cakes that were on offer. This was very successful, and large orders flooded in. Anne now keeps her own mailing list, and sends out details of new gifts, or seasonal promotions.

Anne attended a craft fair with her Daughter in the Lake District, and was thrilled by the positive feedback her gifts received. The buzz spurred her on and Anne began to go to craft fairs and farmer’s markets on a regular basis. This brought in repeat customers, and the business began to expand.

Anne is now considering larger trade markets and has applied for her first two day event, the Stars and Stripes Classic American Car Show in Cheshire. Larger markets are £25 - £60 for the pitch; more expensive than the small craft fairs Anne is used to. But they provide a great opportunity to hit a larger and more commercial audience.

When going to get a logo painted on her van, Alan, the graphic designer gave Anne a tip. He recommended investing in a 0800 number. This means that if Anne’s real number (or ghost number) changes, the business line will remain the same, and customers will not be lost. The freephone number costs Anne about £60 a year. Calls cost an extra 4p a minute, but Anne keeps costs down by using her answer machine to take messages, then phoning people back from her landline, which has free minutes.

Anne’s main marketing weapon came in the form of stepson Steven Walsh. Steven is the Director of Marketing Success Unlimited, a company which specialises in branding and marketing campaign management, with a focus on online marketing. Steven provided Anne with business cards, letterheaded paper and flyers, and crucially created her website and online shop. This made Anne’s products more visible and accessible to customers outside Manchester. It also allowed people to pay by credit or debit card, which made the transaction process easier and safer for customers.

Problems

Anne’s main problem was finding suppliers that would keep the costs down. Where the Internet had proven an invaluable research tool in other areas, a lot of old warehouses were just not online. The Internet pointed to expensive and commercial manufacturers, and Anne had to dig a lot deeper to find wholesalers that provided a cost-effective price. Word of mouth became the best resource here. Anne asked friends that worked in retail, and got some good leads. Finally she was able to get her materials at a bargain, and bring down the asking price of her own gifts.

Future

Anne’s business is steadily growing and expanding. With each request, more socks and nappies are taking over the house. On 1st June 2009, Anne opened a shop and workshop, giving her business more space and achieving her target for 2009. Free Cobwebs (information factsheets) on renting, buying and choosing business premises are available from PRIME on request.

Contacts

Anne Walsh
53B North Road
Droylsden
Tameside
Manchester
M43 6NN
Freephone no: 0800 043 7156
Website: www.myuniquegifts.co.uk

Two big changes affecting the way government deals with small business have emerged out of the current spate of resignations and today’s cabinet reshuffle.

Firstly Alan Sugar, the business star from TV’s The Apprentice has accepted a new role promoting enterprise from within government. The role is unpaid, but Sir Alan is expected to accept a peerage, which will enable him to speak on business topics from within the House of Lords.

Text of official announcement below.
Press comment: Sugar

Secondly the government department with overall responsibility for business in the UK, BERR, is disappearing in a merger with DIUS, the department in charge of higer education. The new merged department, called BIS or “Business, Innovation and Skills”, will be taking over both roles - under the control of the current Business Secretary Peter Mandelson.
Press comment: BIS

From BERR site

Sir Alan Sugar has been appointed as the Government’s Enterprise Champion.

Areas he may look at include access to finance, prompt payment, how to handle the downturn and how to start a new business. The post will be unpaid.

New Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)

Last updated 05 June 2009

Upward Curve PR has chosen PRIME as its Charity of the Year 2009 to 2010. “We are so pleased to be able to offer PRIME PR support”, says Helen Ashley of Upward Curve. “We chose them because we felt that with our aging population and the current recession, the charity’s focus is particularly relevant.”

“The over-50s face huge problems of unemployment and age discrimination in the job market. It’s great that we’ll be able to work with PRIME to help them raise awareness of these issues and let over 50s know how PRIME can help them set up on their own.”

Laurie South, PRIME’s chief executive, said “Upward Curve has exactly the right sort of experience that PRIME needs. We are now better able to help more people over 50 start in business than at any time in our history. But we need to get the message of what we can do out there and in front of people. We also need to keep support coming in, so we can scale up our services and make them available more consistently across the whole UK.”

Upward Curve PR is an award-winning PR and communications agency working mainly with clients in the public and not-for-profit sector. Based in Kingston near London it has recently celebrated its tenth anniversary, and brings this experience plus a strong ethical stance to the advice it offers.

Parents for Children (now part of TACT), an adoption charity specialising in finding homes for ‘harder-to-place’ children, was the Agency’s Charity of the Year in 2008. Edwina Brocklesby, Director of Parents for Children, said “I could not speak more highly of Upward Curve. They have transformed the potential of this agency and raised our profile beyond our wildest dreams.”

PRIME was one of 100 charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups applying for the honour this year.

Over the next 20 years the UK’s population will age faster than ever before in its history. There will be 5.4 million more people of pension age - an increase of 45 per cent. At the same time, our working-age ratio is declining. This combination has serious implications for the economy, with proportionally fewer workers supporting the growing number of older retired people.

One measure being implemented by Government from next year to tackle this issue is the introduction of later retirement ages. Through gradual changes in State Pension age (SPA), three million people who would otherwise be able to claim a state pension are being nudged rather hopefully back into the workforce.

This presentation given by PRIME recently (Powerpoint format) highlights the economic impact of these changes - and projects even higher levels of worklessness and poverty among older people if practical measures are not adopted now.

Of the three million workers eventually being removed from pension entitlement by the changes, most are women - in fact in the initial batch all are. We reckon that no more than 40 per cent of the total are likely to be economically active. This means that 60 per cent of the three million will be without a pension - and without a job. And that’s without taking into consideration the impact of the recession, since it’s impossible to say how long that will last.

But it does seem the consequences of changing the pension age haven’t really been thought through. In attempting to solve the problem of financing pension provision the state may only have succeeded in creating different problems elsewhere.

On the plus side, today around one fifth of the over-50 working population are self-employed, and many continuing to work beyond the current state pension age. So there is considerable benefit to the economy to be gained through assisting higher numbers of over 50s into self-employment.

But self-employment isn’t an option for everyone, so there would also need to be other measures to support older workers to remain in or re-enter conventional employment.

Without such action raising the state pension age won’t accomplish much - indeed it may do more harm than good. It’s not enough to put a whole lot of older women and men back into the workforce by administrative fiat. They also need some practical way of making a living.

See also What are the alternatives to a personal pension? on our other site.

PRIME has published Generations Forgotten, a study into attitudes to older people as entrepreneurs based on an independent survey of a thousand people.

The study demonstrates the difficulties the over 50s have in finding work as employees, principally because of ageist attitudes - which the over 50s clearly perceive as still rife. And it highlights the key role self-employment plays in making it possible to remain financially independent.

The results also show that there is an interest in self-employment on a huge scale among older people. But government local and national still seems to have a youth-centric attitude to enterprise which is inappropriate in an ageing society.

The survey reveals that there are far more people aged over 50 who are interested in enterprise than generally thought. One person in six in the 50-64 age cohort has considered it. Some 15 per cent of the over 50s polled had already started a business, with 4 per cent starting a business since turning 50.

Clearly self-employment will remain a vital lifeboat for the over 50s for as long as they continue to be discriminated against in the regular job market.

The production of this report has been funded by the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, one of the first fruits a larger ongoing partnership between PRIME and the foundation.

Download full press release (Word)

Download Generations Forgotten report (PDF),

Barbie has joined the ranks of the 50-plus, an event celebrated in characteristic style with an immediate facelift. Plastic surgeons at Californian-based manufacturer Mattel have given the world’s most famous doll “a more natural look, including a thinner jaw line, more almond-shaped eyes and fuller lips”.

It is notoriously difficult to judge people’s ages nowadays, as by and large people are looking much younger than their parents did at the same age. This doesn’t seem to prevent the all-too-common tendency by employers and some advertisers to lump all over 50s together as a single group, putting Baby Boomers and their elderly parents in the same category (often the same scrapheap). The mistake is to ignore the real differences in age, attitudes and ability to work between distinct generations.

In tune with today’s celebrity climate, let’s attempt to correct this by identifying some famous people born in the main years of the post-war boom. There are some surprises!

Selected Baby Boom celebrities by year of birth

1945: Ken Livingstone, Helen Mirren, Debbie Harry, Bryan Ferry, Rod Stewart - all 64 this year.

1946: Joanna Lumley, Susan Sarandon, Alan Rickman, Sylvester Stallone, Bill Clinton - all 63 this year.

1947: Alan Sugar, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Hillary Clinton, Salman Rushdie, Glenn Close, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elton John - all 62 this year.

1948: Prince Charles, Ozzy Osbourne, Samuel L. Jackson, Sven Goran Eriksson, Terry Pratchett - all 61 this year.

1949: Twiggy, Bill Nighy, Richard Gere, Duncan Bannatyne, Arsene Wenger, Martin Amis - all 60 this year.

1950: Richard Branson, Jeremy Paxman, Julie Walters, Bill Murray, Stevie Wonder, Robbie Coltrane - all 59 this year.

1951: Gordon Brown, Kevin Keegan, Michael Keaton, Jane Seymour, Sting all 58 this year.

1952: Vladimir Putin, Jenny Agutter, Sharon Osbourne, Liam Neeson -
all 57 this year.

1953: Tony Blair, Victoria Wood, Kim Basinger, Pierce Brosnan, Keith Allen, William Petersen - all 56 this year.

1954: Bob Geldof, Michael Moore, Annie Lennox, John Travolta, Jackie Chan - all 55 this year.

1955: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner, Ian Botham, Alan Hansen, Lesley Garrett - all 54 this year.

1956: Rowan Atkinson, Kim Cattrall, Mel Gibson, Martina Navratilova, Sebastian Coe - all 53 this year.

1957: Stephen Fry, Paul Merton, Daniel Day-Lewis, Dawn French, Donny Osmond - all 52 this year.

1958: Madonna, Prince, Sharon Stone, Michael Jackson, Kate Bush, Lennie Henry, Viggo Mortensen, Marg Helgenberger, Miranda Richardson - all 51 this year.

1959: Hugh Laurie, Theo Paphitis, Deborah Meaden, Ben Elton, Morrissey, Linzi Drew, John McEnroe, Kevin Spacey, Val Kilmer, Rupert Everett - all 50 this year.

1960: Nigella Lawson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Carol Vorderman, Hugh Grant, Sean Penn, Gary Lineker, Colin Firth, Antonio Banderas, Michael Stipe, Bono, Richard Farleigh - all 49 this year.

1961: Barack Obama, Barry McGuigan, Eddie Murphy, K D Lang, Meg Ryan, Nastassja Kinski, Boy George, Frank Bruno, George Clooney, Heather Locklear, Michael J Fox, Peter Jackson, Robert Carlyle, Sarah Brightman, Tim Roth, William Hague, Woody Harrelson - all 48 this year.

Perhaps even more suprising are some of those born in 1969, who will all be 40 this year - Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Lopez.

Worth a read: Advice for Barbie at age 50

Pension giant Standard Life has produced a very interesting report called The Death of Retirement. The key findings are that the current generation of older people are very different to their parents. Above all they want to keep doing things. Baby boomers want to travel, work - and even launch new business ventures. Retirement in its traditional sense is not a concept that appeals to them at all.

“Currently society constrains people into a post-65 mindset which is at odds with their ambitions”, says Honey Langcaster-James, psychologist and one of the report’s authors. “Government, society, industry – particularly the financial services industry, use entirely the wrong language.

“The messages currently conveyed to the next generation approaching third age imply slowing down, being less involved in society, being cautious, risk averse and preparing to be less active.

“Ageism is endemic and could have severe implications for the mental health of third agers because it will ultimately frustrate their ambitions.”

“A huge potential resource is left untapped by not engaging this population, drawing on their expertise, their drive to embark on new ventures and pursue society-enhancing activities such as voluntary work and enterprise.”

Honey Langcaster-James, psychologist

Large survey

The report is based on a large survey of 1,500 people aged 46 to 65 of broadly representative wealth living in the UK. It was then repeated among another sample of 1,000 people from the same age group but representing the wealthiest six per cent of society. So two contrasting groups of normal and great wealth were polled.

Setting the scene, the report says that people from this baby boom generation face a future in which they are likely to be more financially burdened than ever before. They may have to provide for parents who will live a long time and for children who may be financially dependent well into adulthood. This financial burden goes alongside having greater ambitions than any previous generation for their own future after the age of 65.

When asked about their intentions regarding working in the “long-term future”, 30 per cent of the sample representing the normal UK wealth range said they wanted to continue to be involved in work - but on their own terms. This rises to 42 per cent for the wealthier group, who were also asked what their own parents did. Only 15 per cent of parents continued to stay involved in work after retirement. This indicates a massive change between the generations.

When asked about starting a new business, six per cent of the sample of 46-to-65 year-olds of normal wealth want to embark on a new business venture in the future. There was only a slight increase to seven per cent among the wealthier group, so wealth does not seem to be a major factor affecting this aspiration. But the passage of time has certainly produced a change. Among their parents’ generation this aspiration was much less common - seven times less at retirement age.

“It is not that those approaching retirement want to stop working. As our research reveals, baby boomers want to remain active. The challenge for government, society and the financial services industry is how to enable them to remain productive to answer the dilemma of our ageing workforce.”

John Lawson, Head of Pension Policy at Standard Life

A Channel 4 Dispatches documentary has revealed that substantial barriers still face older people in Britain’s job market - despite the passage of laws supposedly outlawing such ageism. Called “Too old to work“, the programme transmits on Monday the 9th of February.

Not surprisingly, the investigation finds that being older - even over 45, is a big risk in today’s workplace. Older workers are more likely to lose their jobs, and are then much less likely to secure another one.

To test whether recruitment agencies do discriminate against older candidates, Dispatches carried out an experiment. It pitted two accountants, a 57-year-old father and his 25-year-old daughter, against each other in a contest to see who can achieve the most offers of work via agencies.

Martin Lloyd-Penny has 30 years of accounting experience whilst his daughter Tanne is still a trainee. They registered with the same recruitment agencies and kept video diaries of their progress. They had very different levels of success - no prizes for guessing who got the most job offers

The programme also looks into the impact of forced retirement, interviewing several people who have been forced out of their jobs, and reporting on the broader picture with a specially-commissioned You Gov survey.

Dispaches also investigates whether there is any scientific basis for commonly held beliefs about the effects of ageing. Professor Lorraine Tyler is shown measuring the brain activity of people aged 18 to 90 using neural imaging techniques. Her research contradicts the idea that older brains cannot function as well as younger ones.

The programme demonstrates through physical fitness tests that age is not necessarily an indicator of fitness or productivity.

Prince Charles describes the work of his charity PRIME and welcomes new sponsorship deal

Click on the right arrow button above to start video

I am delighted to speak to you today as the President of PRIME - the Prince’s Initiative for Mature Enterprise.

I founded PRIME over eight years ago after receiving large numbers of letters from people aged 50 and over telling me they were workless - had been made redundant or despite their best efforts were simply unable to find employment. Many of the letters referred to the Prince’s Trust, which offers practical solutions to change young lives. Some of them had even been active supporters of the organisation. But in one form or another, they all highlighted a lack of support available to help them when they needed it most.

This seemed to me to be a tragic waste of experience, of knowledge and skill. Here were people with at least a third of their lives in front of them, left feeling excluded from mainstream employment. People who had often already contributed so much to society, and learnt so much along the way. People who simply wanted to continue giving, and to develop and achieve as economically active adults.

In response to this I felt there was something I might be able to do to help, if I brought the right people together to examine the issue.

I truly believe everyone should have the opportunity to fulfill their potential and contribute to our communities. So that is why I founded PRIME.

PRIME therefore helps people aged over 50 to get back into the labour market, re-gaining the dignity of financial independence and the satisfaction of self-fulfillment by starting their own businesses. I have been delighted to meet some of the people PRIME has helped and know at first hand there are marvellous businesses out there. PRIME currently works across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and I hope it will shortly be active in Scotland.

Now I knew when I founded PRIME that there were a large number of over 50s who were workless, but was shocked when I discovered the true scale of the issue and challenge. Standing at 2.8 million - a simply huge figure, this number is growing all the time as our society ages. This means almost one person in three between fifty and the state pension age is workless. Yet almost a million people in this age group want to work.

If just five per cent of this group started a business, we would have 50,000 new enterprises, employing goodness knows how many more people. What an enormous contribution that would be to our communities and to the United Kingdom economy,.

I cannot tell you how delighted and grateful I was therefore to hear that Bank of America has made such an admirable commitment in becoming PRIME’s key corporate partner.

The unique approach adopted by the Bank of America, that includes supporting PRIME as a whole - from back office functions right through to client facing services, means the organisation  has a secure and firm foundation for future growth. This will enable PRIME to help even greater numbers of older people establish their own businesses, and also highlight and overcome some of the issues and stereotypes working against those over 50. It will also help PRIME expand its reach across the United Kingdom, which is something I am very much looking forward to.

Now more than ever, our economy and society needs the skills and knowledge built up over so many years that older people have to offer.

I therefore hope everyone watching this will think about their friends, their relatives, neighbours and colleagues over 50 who may be

• Workless or worried about their jobs
• Living on an inadequate wage
• Or nurturing an as yet unfulfilled dream, not knowing where to go for help.

Because you too can help us to help them. You can contribute to the leadership already shown by PRIME as a volunteer, as an advocate, as a mentor or as a donor.

Please remember, those over 50 have enormous potential and a huge amount to give. I hope you will work with PRIME, Bank of America and myself to turn this potential and promise into enterprise.

(( ENDS ))

HRH The Prince of Wales recorded at St. James’s Palace, London on the 19th November 2008 describing the work of his charity PRIME.

See also:

Bank of America backs PRIME’s mission

Garry Stephenson, 55, has set up an innovative photography company just months after being made redundant.

Garry, from Cannock in the West Midlands, was made redundant at Christmas from his job inspecting motor homes for a large local vehicle importer. His company SkyHiFotos.co.uk offers photography from an unusual angle – taken from the top of a special 50-foot mast.

Garry himself stays on the ground, controlling the camera from a laptop which shows the precise view being photographed. The Canon digital camera is attached to a motorised tilt-and-swivel head tilt he can control with his mouse. Garry is fully insured and is using professional equipment designed for this application – the extensible aluminium mast has wide legs and can be secured with guy ropes and pegs for extra stability when fully extended.

In addition to taking high shots made possible by this equipment Garry will also take ground level and interior shots to offer a full service. “I’d like to specialise in aerial photography”, he says. “But when you are first starting out you’ve got to do what you can – and go where the money is.” That said, he is keen to get work that allows him to develop his speciality – hence the Sky Hi name he has chosen for his business.

He first got the idea from the Internet. “I saw a pole advertised, then looked into what types there were, what they could do and what they cost. I found that I could get something suitable for not much more than buying a good fishing rod and all the kit.”

“For me it ticked all the boxes. Firstly something I could start almost as a hobby, but then secondly something I could work with as a business. And then thirdly something I could keep doing into retirement.”

Garry had always been a keen amateur photography. And indeed, over the years he had done some weddings for friends.

But aerial photography is what got him seriously interested in taking up photography as a means of making a living. It gave him what marketers would call his “unique selling point”.

“I could be a wedding photographer – along with about 200,000 others”, Garry explains. “Or I could be an aerial photographer – and one of about probably 50 maximum in the UK.”

Garry got little warning of the redundancy from his previous job. He heard in November that his employer was thinking about redundancies and then got his notice at Christmas. He received the basic statutory redundancy package (see below) rather than an enhanced package, so he needed to start earning again soon.

“At 55 it’s very difficult to get a job unless you want to be stacking shelves at Tesco or Asda. That’s not what I am. I was already thinking I could be doing something in photography. But when the redundancy came along it pushed me into it faster.”

Garry did get some advice on turning his hobby into a business from the Institute for Innovation and Enterprise, based at Wolverhampton University. He got a total 10 hours one-to-one business mentoring spread over a number of sessions.

“It was useful in that it took me in directions I would not normally have gone – it opened my eyes to other possibilities. By yourself you tend to get into a fixed frame of mind. If that doesn’t work you sort of fall flat on your face. With mentoring your thoughts open up to more possibilities. So eventually you do find your own niche.”

Garry’s advice to others is to get your business underway whilst still in a regular job if at all possible. “Get a couple of contracts in place fast to get the money flowing in. Work it around your existing job if you can, before deciding to go fully self-employed. It’s easier if you are already in work. I wasn’t quite ready when I was made redundant.”

Contacts:

Garry Stephenson sales@skyhifotos.co.uk
Tel: 01543 425753, 07523 897968 (mob)

Innovation and Enterprise
University of Wolverhampton University
Tel: 01902 518960
Email: innovation@wbs.wlv.ac.uk

More about redundancy pay and notice

How much notice you get and the amount of redundancy pay you are entitled may be written in your contract of employment. But there are legal minimums which you are entitled to anyway, and these depend on your age and how long you have been working for that employer. Legally you are entitled to one week’s notice for each complete year (up to a maximum of 12) if you’ve been continuously employed for two or more years after the age of 41.

The rules are fairly involved. There’s a useful calculator at the Direct Gov site.

If you are faced with redundancy it is also worth checking out the independent site Armchair Advice.

Some 800,000 people between 50 and state pension age are currently inactive but want to work, according to a new report commissioned by PRIME and written by leading economist Christopher Smallwood.

The majority of new businesses are created by people in their forties and fifties - indeed business owners aged over 50 account for 15 per cent of all business start-ups in England and Wales.

Companies started by older people have a 70 per cent chance of surviving the first five years, compared with only 28 per cent for younger people. Yet the report finds that finance for Jobcentre’s New Deal self-employment programme for the over 50s has been reduced.

“It is worth putting real money behind a drive to re-employ economically inactive over-50s”, says the report’s author Christopher Smallwood.

“In order to reintroduce them to the workforce, two things are needed: (1) widespread changes in employers’ practices relating to training, retention and recruitment, and (2) a more proactive approach from Government agencies to help people back to work, particularly in the area of self-employment.”

The report says that there are still a greater number of complaints about age discrimination in the workplace than about any other form of discrimination. However, the solution does not necessarily lie in more legislation.

What is required, argues Smallwood, is a change in attitudes and practices of employers both in the public and private sector, together with a greater focus on the possibilities for self-employment.

Self-employment also has an important role to play. A self-created job can put an individual back in control of their lives and build on the skills, experience and knowledge acquired over a life-time.

However, for people coming off benefits some significant poverty traps remain that make test trading difficult. “The confusion with HMRC needs to be resolved very quickly”, says Smallwood. At the moments it’s “confusing even to the advisers trying to explain the system”.

Smallwood report full text

Smallwood report executive summary

Christopher Smallwood is a leading UK economist, and has held a wide range of senior positions in government, industry, banking and media. He is a Member of the Competition Commission and until April 2005 he was Chief Economic Adviser to Barclays plc.