Chair: Christine Buckley
Christine Buckley will chair the debate.
She is Editor of the Journalist magazine and former Industrial Editor at The Times.
Brendan Barber
Brendan Barber is the General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress. He took up the post in 2003, becoming only the 9th person to hold the position since its introduction in 1922.
He was a driving force in the United Against Racism campaign, and has also played a prominent role in the establishment of the TUC Organising Academy – training organisers to help unions boost membership, and the Partnership Institute, whose aim is to promote partnership style relations between employers and unions.
Brendan is a Non-Executive Director of the Court of the Bank of England. He was a member of the ACAS Council from 1995 until May 2004. He was also a member of Sport England from 1999 until 2003.
Francis Chittenden MBA, PhD, FCCA, ACIS
Francis Chittenden is ACCA Professor of Small Business Finance at Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK. Before becoming an academic, he was a practicing accountant whose work experience had also encompassed manufacturing industry, distribution, retailing and banking. During this time he founded or co-founded four businesses.
Professor Chittenden is a member of the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, he sits on the Council of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), he chairs ACCAs SME Committee and is also a member of their Tax Committee. Francis is vice chair of the SME / SMP working party of The Fédération des Experts Comptables Européens (the European Federation of Accountants) and a member of the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group SME Working Party.
Francis is a Fellow, Council Member and past President of the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship. He is co-author of the Manchester Business School Tax Index and the British Chambers of Commerce Database of UK and EU Impact Assessments and a member of the editorial boards of the International Small Business Journal and the Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development.
Francis lectures, publishes and consults on entrepreneurship, Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) finance and the impact of the tax and regulatory regime on owner-managed firms. He has recently completed research projects with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, the British Chambers of Commerce, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and Eurochambres.
David Frost
David Frost has been Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce since January 2003. Prior to this he was Chief Executive of Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce and Business Link.
The British Chambers of Commerce represents over 100,000 businesses through a network of 55 Accredited Chambers of Commerce. The role of the BCC is to promote the interests of British Business and represent the interests of the Chambers of Commerce. A subsidiary company, BCC Enterprises, develops a range of commercial activities for the benefit of Chambers and their members.
David is Chairman of the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship. He is a Board Member of Ufi/ Learn Direct and also a member of the National Employer Advisory Board for the Reserve Forces. In February 2008 David received an Honorary Doctorate from Birmingham City University.
His interests are motorcycling, cycling and sailing and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and is a member of the Court of Assistants of the Worshipful Company of Loriners.
Howard Reed
Howard Reed is the author (with Stewart Lansley) of “The Red Tape Delusion“. He is Director of the economic research consultancy Landman Economics, which specialises in complex econometric modelling work and policy analysis. He is also a research associate for both ippr and Demos.
Previously, Howard has worked at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (where he was responsible for the TAXBEN microsimulation model) and IPPR (where he led a project on the impact of immigration on wages and employment in the UK).
His recent projects include a publication for Compass, “In Place of Cuts”, which argued for a package of progressive tax increases as an alternative to large scale public spending cuts in the next parliament.
