Norman Blackwell

He was with Plessey between 1976 and 1978 and a former partner of McKinsey & Company from 1978 to 1994. Having been a Special Adviser in 1986 and 1987, he was Head of the Prime Minister's Policy Unit in 10 Downing Street from 1995 to 1997, following which he was Director of Group Development at NatWest Group, from 1997-2000 and non-executive director of Dixons Group from 2000 to 2003, chairman of Comensura in 2001. Appointed a Director of Standard Life in June 2003 and is Chairman of Standard Life Assurance Limited. He is Chairman of Interserve plc, non-executive Chairman of SmartStream Technologies Group, Senior Independent Director of Slough Estates plc, a non-executive with The Corporate Services Group 2000, and a Board Member of the Office of Fair Trading.

He is also a special adviser to KPMG’s Corporate Finance Practice, Chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies and of Global Vision and an active member of the House of Lords.

Politics

In the Financial Times, Blackwell, as Chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies, argued that the Conservatives should be leading the argument that “Britain cannot afford not to cut taxes”. Blackwell states that public spending will rise to 42%t of GDP by 2007 and tax rises will inevitably follow. Blackwell's argument is that high taxes divert resources from wealth creating enterprises into low productivity public consumption, and force more people into benefits, which put up taxes even further. Blackwell argues that the Government should ensure that public spending grows below the rate of economic growth, so that 'as tax revenues rise', some of the new income can be used to 'reduce tax rates' rather than fund public sector expansion. To encourage increased savings, Mr Blackwell argues that tax reductions should be diverted into long term savings and pension schemes.

Most of the CPS' and the Adam Smith Institute's board comprise The TaxPayers' Alliance Advisory Council In November 2004 and December 2005, a group of 'businessmen and opinion formers' (including Blackwell) signed two TaxPayers' Alliance letters to the Financial Times, and to the Daily Telegraph. These picked up on Blackwell's slogan that Britain "cannot afford not to cut taxes - and to discipline spending growth accordingly". The signatories included members of the super rich - Damon de Laszlo, Chairman, Economic Research Council, Sir Rocco Forte, Chairman, Rocco Forte Hotels, Rupert Hambro, Chairman, J O Hambro Ltd, William S James, LCF Rothschild Securities Ltd, Malcolm H.D. McAlpine, Director, Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd, Sir Nigel Mobbs, Chairman, Slough Estates Plc, Allen Sykes, Former MD, Consolidated Gold Fields, Lord Vinson, Director, Fleming High Income Growth Trust plc, Sir Mark Weinberg, President, St James Place Capital Plc, Sir Oliver Wright, Former Ambassador in Washington.

The Bruges Group are also supporters of the initiative, Blackwell is a speaker at their conferences and has written for the group with the work published by The june Press which is devoted to the anti-European cause.

Nigel Mobbs is the Chairman of Slough Estates and is also a member of Aims of Industry, Blackwell is also a director of Slough who fund Aims of Industry.

The CPS were also said by the Observer to be part of covert lobbying attempts surrounding the right's anti-Europe stance:

behind the campaign is a more shadowy alliance traversing the worlds of academia, politics and business. Everyone is linked to everyone else, whether it is by family, membership of anti-European organisations or party allegiance and more specifically Conservative Party affiliation. It has been a carefully orchestrated affair...[Conrad] Black is a board member of the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), the right-wing think tank and one of the founding pillars of the anti-Europe alliance.

The Observer report also notes that Blackwell has a strong association with the Bruges Group,

the second lynchpin, along with the CPS, of the anti-Europe alliance. Another who has addressed the organisation is Irwin Stelzer, the right-wing commentator who is one of the few people with an open line to Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the Sun. Stelzer, an American, is Murdoch's key economic adviser...Founded in 1989 by a group of 13 academics, the Bruges Group gained its inspiration from Thatcher's speech in the city a year earlier in which she said: 'We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level.'

Blackwell was part of a panel of commentators who gave evidence at the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee — as part of its inquiry into “choice and voice” in public services. The others included: Sir Christopher Gent, formerly Chief Executive of Vodafone and now Deputy Chairman of GlaxoSmithKline, and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Reform think tank, will be joined on the panel by Lord (Norman) Blackwell, Chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies and Philip Collins, Director of the Social Market Foundation. All three organisations are based within a stone's throw from each other and parliament.

Corporate Services Group

Roger Eden and Geoffrey Brailey - former directors of Corporate Services Group Plc - were found guilty of charges relating to accounting irregularities aimed to overstate profits. The circumstances (which predate the management of the company under its present board) revolve around the company's financial statements for the years ending 31 December 1997 and 31 December 1998.

"The defendants conspired with others to defraud existing and potential investors in the company. The defendants dishonestly caused and permitted the company's financial statements for 1997 to be prepared in such a way as to overstate the true extent of its profitability and that they sought to do so in 1998. In 1997, the overstatement amounted to just over £3 million. In 1998, the accounting irregularities came to light before the statements could be published. The potential overstatement of profit for 1998 is estimated to exceed at least £25 million."

Charles Earl in the Libertarian Alliance stated:

"CSG was involved in contracting labour and in training people in the computer field. The company had received grants from the government for each person it trained and who qualified, and this had led to widespread fraud at a lower level. This is well-documented, indeed a while back there had been a national scandal when it was revealed that the Individual Learning Accounts (ILAs) the government had set up to widen computer literacy amongst the workforce and general population had been milked by sundry training organisations."

CSG (owner of the Blue Arrow employment agency) was once the subject of a takeover attempt by former Conservative party treasurer Lord Ashcroft. After the concerns surfaced, Ashcroft, then Conservative Party treasurer, launched a last-ditch attempt via his Carlisle Group which offered to buy Corporate Services for £286m. Other investors rejected the offer and instead brought in new chairman Michael Davies and chief executive Peter Owen to rescue the company. CSG's auditor at the time was Arthur Andersen, which changed its name in the wake of the Enron scandal. The three directors left the group early in 1999, along with then chairman Jeffrey Fowler who has not been charged.

Further reading

• Blackwell, N. (2006) Cameron must state his Tory principles, The Guardian, Sunday October 1.
• Blackwell, N. (2007) Three cheers for selection: how grammar schools help the poor, Centre for Policy Studies, January 3. See also: Think tank calls for return to grammar schools
• Blackwell, N. (2003) What if we say NO to the EU Constitution? The Bruges Group.
• BBC (2003) The Conservatives should learn from the way George Bush made Texas the springboard of his presidential campaign, says the Tories' policy chief, October 8. "We should make all hospitals fully independent," said Lord Blackwell. "We should also give people the choice to take their £1,200 a year which goes to the NHS and put it with a private healthcare provider."
• Kruger, D. (2002) Is Labour learning to let go? The Observer NHS debate, Observer, May 26. Daniel Kruger is Director of Studies at the Centre for Policy Studies, and co-author with Norman Blackwell of Better Healthcare for All: Replacing the NHS Monopoly.
• Ahmed, K. (2003) Old pals plot to sabotage project for a new Europe: Newspaper magnates, Tory politicians and a collection of academics run the campaign, The Observer, May 25.