Pictured: (l-r) David Frost CBE, Tom Vosa, Lord Digby Jones, Adam Marshall (of the BCC), Louise Bennett, Madeleine Atkins, Doug Squires (C&W Chamber president), Tony Whitehorne, Sir Peter Rigby, Caroline Spelman MP

Skills and exports will provide the key to growth for the local, regional and national economy, a major economic conference has heard. 

The Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce welcomed more than 200 delegates from businesses across the region to its 10th annual conference at the Coventry University TechnoCentre - the largest it has held.

Speakers included Lord Digby Jones, David Frost CBE, Sir Peter Rigby, Caroline Spelman MP and Louise Bennett, chief executive of the Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce.

Madeleine Atkins, the Vice Chancellor of Coventry University, Tom Vosa, the chief economist at Yorkshire Bank and Tony Whitehorne, managing director of conference sponsors Hyundai UK, also spoke at the event.

As well as shedding light on the local economy, the conference delved into the factors that will see the UK grow in the coming years.

While issues around planning and red tape were highlighted as examples of how business needs Government to remove barriers to growth, the issues of skills and exports returned to the agenda time and again.

A rousing conference was rounded off by an entertaining speech from former Trade Minister Lord Jones, who said the UK needed to get to grips with the fact that Asia was going to dominate the world for more than 100 years.

But, he insisted, Britain's standing was strong enough in the world for the UK to benefit from that and cited the number of overseas students at Coventry University as an example of that.

Warwickshire-based Lord Jones said: "When I have been around the world it is wonderful to see how many people are making the decisions about investment who were educated in our country.

"Don't listen to those people who say: we train them up and then send them off and they compete against us. Yes they do, but we also have a friend in court.

"I remember being over in the Gulf trying to sell Airbus. It turned out that the guy making the decision had been schooled and educated in the UK and that helped.

"It is wonderful that Coventry University is leading on this and I think I heard that there are over 130 countries represented there. We are a class act in Higher Education."

He added: "Businesses are the most important sector of society. Business is the only sector that generates taxation - there are lots of other parts that know how to spend it but very few earn it.

"When a business makes money it can do one of three things with it. It can pay the shareholders for taking the risk and they will pay tax on it.

"They can keep it in the business as profit and they will pay tax on it. Or they can employ people and they will pay tax on it.

"The taxes can go towards all those hard working people in the public sector - the nurses, the doctors, the teachers, the police officers and they will all pay tax on it. But if it wasn't for the wealth created in the first place, there would be no taxation.

"And I don't believe enough people get that - I think many believe it grows on trees. They certainly act is if it does. If we are going to sort out this mess, we have to get the elite behind business.

"We also have to recognise that this is Asia's time but globalisation was made for this country. We have been doing it for years."

Louise Bennett, chief executive of the Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber, said: "It was a great event and we were delighted with the turn out and the quality of the speakers. It certainly gave everyone food for thought."